> If I don't want Initech Inc. to be associated with file sharing, fire arms, or even the Irish, that's entirely within my rights. I'd be far more aghast if companies were forced to take any comers.
I'm rather aghast that any companies think this way. You might as well say that it is well within Google's right to shut down my Google Docs account because they don't want to be associated with the bad poetry I write using it.
One problem with this attitude is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly functioning economy. If I have to worry that any online service might chose to shut down my access for any arbitrary reason, then I am strongly disincentived from using online services. The strength of any economy is in no small part due to the ease and fluidity with which trusted transactions can take place. Remove the forces that allow us to trust the transactions, and the economy will falter.
The only reason that people are mostly willing to overlook this issue is because service providers exercise their putative right to deny service for arbitrary reasons rarely. But if you as a service provider exercise this putative right more liberally, then you are damaging the entire economic system (albeit only to some small degree for an isolated provider).
The only silver lining in all this free market rhetoric is that hopefully the free market will step in and put you out of business. Unfortunately, however, this often takes a lot longer than it should once network effects have engaged.
P.S. What's with this trend of downvoting people just because someone doesn't happen to agree with what someone else has to say. This is rather rude, if you ask me.
> I'm rather aghast that any companies think this way. You might as well say that it is well within Google's right to shut down my Google Docs account because they don't want to be associated with the bad poetry I write using it.
What he is saying is that he believes it is Google's right to do that and it is irrelevant to the fact it is stupid.
> One problem with this attitude is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly functioning economy.
Sure if people just put up with it but I don't think anyone is suggesting we just accept dropbox's position and pretend it never happened.
> What he is saying is that he believes it is Google's right to do that and it is irrelevant to the fact it is stupid.
And what I'm saying is that it is NOT within Google's right to do this. Among other reasons, it is not within Google's right to fsck up the economy that everyone depends on.
On the other other hand, I fully acknowledge that the best remedy is not always more government, since that doesn't always lead to the greatest utility either.
> it is not within Google's right to fsck up the economy that everyone depends on.
I shut down a non-technology brick and mortar store almost a year ago, partly because of dwindling sales due to the economy, and more importantly because I had a single customer that maintained over 60% of my revenue. That customer decided to move the business they were giving me in-house. Negotiations had been ongoing for over 4 years, both to (naively) prevent them from doing so (it wasn't a surprise that they did, they had been talking about it for years), and to suggest that we could merge businesses. Suffice to say, they hired someone else and I was forced to walk away.
I went through a period of "Fuck them", but I had known all along that if they walked away from me, I was screwed. Relying on a single 3rd party API is exactly the same thing. It's a contract with another business entity. If they decide to implement your additions into their core product (take for example today's Podcast app release form Apple), or if don't like your hair color, or they just don't like what you are doing, it's not "fuck them" it's "what's phase 2?". Grow up and move on. This is business. No one is entitled to consume another company's API, or else there would be no such thing as an API key.
> No one is entitled to consume another company's API, or else there would be no such thing as an API key.
That would depend on what you mean by "entitled" and by "consume". Lawsuits happen all the time because one entity believes that another entity backed out of a deal in bad faith.
> One problem with this attitude is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly functioning economy. If I have to worry that any online service might chose to shut down my access for any arbitrary reason, then I am strongly disincentived from using online services.
You're looking at only one side of the issue, and the smaller one at that. Let me flip it around for you:
One problem with the attitude that by providing an online service I'm obligated to maintain it for users I don't wish to is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly functioning economy. If I have to worry about supporting users when it's against my better interest, then I am strongly disincentivized from offering an online service.
> If I have to worry about supporting users when it's against my better interest, then I am strongly disincentivized from offering an online service.
The situation is different for individuals or small companies than it is for large companies. Large companies (that are not structured as mutuals, or somesuch) generally only have one interest: maximizing their profit. But they often tend to use a Prisoner's Dilemma's strategy against the world that might maximize their next quarterly return but does not act to make the economic pie bigger for everyone.
I'm rather aghast that any companies think this way. You might as well say that it is well within Google's right to shut down my Google Docs account because they don't want to be associated with the bad poetry I write using it.
One problem with this attitude is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly functioning economy. If I have to worry that any online service might chose to shut down my access for any arbitrary reason, then I am strongly disincentived from using online services. The strength of any economy is in no small part due to the ease and fluidity with which trusted transactions can take place. Remove the forces that allow us to trust the transactions, and the economy will falter.
The only reason that people are mostly willing to overlook this issue is because service providers exercise their putative right to deny service for arbitrary reasons rarely. But if you as a service provider exercise this putative right more liberally, then you are damaging the entire economic system (albeit only to some small degree for an isolated provider).
The only silver lining in all this free market rhetoric is that hopefully the free market will step in and put you out of business. Unfortunately, however, this often takes a lot longer than it should once network effects have engaged.
P.S. What's with this trend of downvoting people just because someone doesn't happen to agree with what someone else has to say. This is rather rude, if you ask me.