Alternative Android Market To House Banned Apps 114
sl4shd0rk writes "In contrast to the Apple's iron-fisted control over their App store, the Android Market is much more open. Google does, on occasion, remove apps it deems inappropriate, such as emulators, legally-questionable music services, tethering apps and one-click root apps. But if Koushik Dutta of CyanogenMod fame has his way, these heretic apps may have a home after all. Dutta plans an 'underground' Android Market complete with an approval process to weed out malicious applications; something Google doesn't do. Ideally, this will give Android users a more trustable source from which to get applications without having to resort to dictatorial software control."
Re:How is this any different than BlackMart? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, for a start, it's unlikely to require access to Facebook. That gives it a strong credibility boost from the outset.
Re:trust is the key element (Score:5, Insightful)
particularly if an app's been downloaded 5 million times.
Really.. that is not a good judgement. What if the app is a popular one, you decide to trust it, use it for 6 months, then get alerted to an update. You download the update, through the market, only to realize that your precious mission critical (to you) app, no is either ham-strung or personal info reporting malware. Basing an apps security off of it's popularity is not wise my friend. Hell, Melissa and ILOVEYOU got downloaded millions of times!
Re:If they're banned, it's probably for a reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Writing an emulator isn't stealing anyone's IP. But the IP cartels will apply pressure and abused laws to persecute them anyway. Likewise, game rules cannot be copyrighted (art, and particular expression of the rules can) but that hasn't stopped purveyors of popular games from trying to strong-arm free variants offline.
Re:If they're banned, it's probably for a reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Even without homebrew - I own many Playstation games. The emulators let me play them on another device. That's practically a textbook case for fair-use format-shifting. Luckily, since I use Android and not iPhone, I can just install those apps from their project homepage like I can any other app on my computer.
Non-infringing use must be substantial (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a bit confused to why Google has taken down all the emulators since they are used for legal purposes (see homebrew).
I asked about this on Fedora's legal mailing list once, and let me paraphrase the answer I got [markmail.org]: The Betamax defense to contributory infringement of copyright requires a substantial non-infringing use. Two dozen homebrew games compared to a thousand infringing ROMs is not clearly substantial to the point where Red Hat would have an open-and-shut defense against Nintendo.
Re:trust is the key element (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the things I like about the Fdroid market (in addition to housing only free software that I can get source code for), is that it houses multiple versions of software. This is important for the reason you suggest. If the thing suddenly goes crazy, I can downgrade.
Re:trust is the key element (Score:4, Insightful)
It pays to check the permissions of an app prior to download the first time, regardless of how many people use it.
Android will not auto-update an app or allow you to select the "update-all" option in the Market on an app where the permissions have changed. This has seen many apps instantly weed out the old bait and switch scam. Even if it's done by accident, one popular app from an Australian supermarket had an update and suddenly requested permission to the address book, contacts, make phone calls, etc. The app suddenly had 100 new 1 star reviews along the lines of "wtf permissions?"
Mind you this does not protect against against bullshit apps like Where's My Water? from Disney [android.com]. Now here's an incredibly popular game that for some reason requires permissions to intercept outgoing calls, WAP messages, and read my contact data, modify global system settings, and change my contact sync settings.
Ummm NO! I don't care how popular your game is. I don't care if this is accidental. This kind of bullshit should not be installed on a phone, and an app with these permissions when not needed should no get even remotely near a 4.5 star rating.