Research for app purchases

[Peter Dolding]

On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 8:31 PM Alexander Larsson <alexl at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks a lot for this thorough discussion of Australian laws wrt
> selling software. However, I think you might be overthinking some of
> the wording in that document. This is an API for how we can (at a
> technical level) handle the protection of content in the flatpak
> system, not a description of a user-facing service. The listed use
> cases are not a description of what flathub will do, but a list of
> possible workflows that need to be taken into consideration when
> designing the API and mechanisms, to ensure we're not accidentally
> limiting us to something that someone might want to do. In fact, even
> if something is not possible to do legally in Australia doesn't mean
> we should not technically support it, as someone might  want to use it
> elsewhere.

This is kind of why you need be aware of this stuff now.   What you
just wrote is not as straight forwards as you think.

> Of course, eventually we *do* want to make use of this for flathub,
> and then all these legal complexities do come into play. And yes,
> things will be different for each geography,

This idea does not in fact work under Australian law.   Reason why we
are allowed to break regional coding on dvds.

Australia has fair trading laws .

1) Fair trading laws of Australia means it legal for a to use a VPN
pretend to place we are buying from to be a different country then
enforce on them our consumer protection/retail laws.
2) Fair trading laws of Australia also allows going overseas buying
something coming back to Australia then enforce our consumer
protection/retail laws.
3) Fair trading laws so protect expat Australian citizens.   So
Australian citizen living in the USA buying stuff in the USA has
choice of Australian or USA consumer protection laws.

Basically here rub Australia laws apply to Australian citizens no
matter where they are   Same goes when you sell to them..

Yes you can do somethings different per each geographical region.
But somethings have to be done based on the citizenship of the person
purchasing particular what they declare that is.  Remember Australian
law allows Australians to lie and then send you correction after you
have already sold the product.

I am not against being careful you don't design a limited API and mechanisms.

When it comes to operations of items effecting software on the local
machine you need to be able to provide it as per Australian law to
anyone who says they are Australian.

The Australian laws apply to Australian citizens always is a double
sided sword of course.  If Australian citizen goes overseas and does
something illegal by Australian law but is legal in that country the
Australian law applies to them when they get back to Australia or what
to use their passport(blocked passport so forcing them back to
Australia or never able to return to Australia).

Basically the "each geography" idea turns out not to be legal valid
many one case is when dealing with Australians.  But there are other
countries as well where geography split is not legal either.

The rules that apply to a sale is based off the following.
1) the citizenship of the seller.
2) the physical country of the seller.
3) the citizenship of the buyer.
4) the physical country of the buyer.

It is in theory possible to have a sale where you have 4 countries
laws all in effect at the same time and any conflict between those
laws could make the sale illegal to perform to one or both parties.
Please note this is only the starting point.   Like another 2 lines
could be added for the citizenship and the physical geography crossed
in shipping the product between buyer and seller.

International sales of products can turn into quite a migraine and is
nowhere near as simple as one would suspect.   Australia is a good
reference in these cases because most of these there are legal
precedents.   Lot of other countries like the USA you are fairly much
crossing your fingers a lot that you are legal because solid legal
rulings where the lines are don't exist yet.

Remember particular USA laws do say that you cannot sell to particular
items to particular countries or those countries citizens no matter
where they are so geography splitting is technically not good enough.

Peter Dolding