A bill in Arizona, HB2005, would allow app developers to use third-party payment systems to circumvent the 15% to 30% cut that the Apple and Google app stores take from app sales. It’s similar to bills in other U.S. states that are being pushed by Match Group, Epic Games and the broader oxymoronic misnomer, “Coalition for App Fairness.”
MacDailyNews Take: If reality were the goal, it should really be named the “Coalition of Wannabe Freeloaders.”
Arizona State Rep. Regina Cobb hadn’t even formally introduced her app store legislation last month when Apple and Google started storming into the state to lobby against it… “We went through a very difficult weekend where Apple and Google hired probably almost every lobbyist in town,” Cobb said…
Cobb said she was first approached by Ryan O’Daniel, a local lobbyist who represents Match Group and the Coalition for App Fairness, in early February with the idea that would become HB2005, an amendment that would force smartphone app stores to allow third-party payment systems. “I felt like it was a good idea right away,” Cobb told Protocol…
Kyle Andeer, Apple’s chief compliance officer, said at a hearing last week that HB2005 amounts to a “government mandate that Apple give away the App Store… This bill tells Apple it cannot use its own checkout lane and collect a commission in the store we built.”
Similar legislation failed in North Dakota last month… But the North Dakota legislation was broader — it would have forced major platforms to allow alternate app stores altogether, while the Arizona legislation only bars Apple and Google from forcing their payment-processing systems onto developers.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, we want to sell MacDailyNews T-shirts and mousepads in Target, using their physical stores, roof, heat, cooling, electricity, floor space, staff, parking lot, their online store, server capacity, storage, more electricity, staff, etc., but we demand that we keep 100% of our sales.
That’s fair, right?
Obviously, using exceedingly simple logic that even a five-year-old could understand, this Arizona App Store bill is ill-conceived and likely unconstitutional. It sounds like something a video game company lobbyist would scribble out, as they did in North Dakota, before hooking some gullible politician ignoramuses to sponsor it.
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away. — Ronald Reagan