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These are lawyers that make money from such lawsuits.
It is well known that the term "theft" has been pirated by them to (colloquially) portray copyright infringement.


...and once you look at these statutes (through the links provided, for instance), there's no mention of "theft" or "stealing" in that section of U.S. code.

It is copyright "infringement".

The law also has a title about embezzlement and theft - which does not contain the provisions for copyright infringement.


The bold heading for a 2004 10-page Bureau of Justice Statistics report does legally prove the point.


It's right there to disprove claims that copyright infringement is "theft".
Copyright infringement can be a little more expensive. If not illegal, it’s definitely unlawful.

 
Piracy also isn't morally in the same category as theft. As in, if I steal someone's lunch, they no longer have their lunch. If you copy someone's song, they still have their song.

Morally, sure. How does apply here? What is being stolen by installing a torrent app?

A torrent app isn't piracy. There is nothing illegal, nor stolen, by offering or downloading this app.
 
Transmission, a well known torrent client for Mac & PC, is a notarized app on macOS, if I recall correctly.

If the refusal to notarize the iPad app (sorry, I don’t see myself using this on my small iPhone) is due to the uses that can be made of this software, for that same reason, macOS torrent clients such as Transmission shouldn’t get notarized as well, right? But they still are. That makes me think that maybe they found something in the code…
 
So what about people who buy digital goods online and then the storefront (Amazon, Apple, Google) take it away because they lost the distribution rights to the item? That's arguably closer to theft, because someone is being denied the right to use something they legally paid for.
You don’t buy digital goods from Amazon, Apple, Google. Technically, even when you buy physical media on a disk you don’t own music on the disk. You buy a license to use those goods. If you read the license, it can be revoked at any time. Do I agree with this? Heck no but that’s how it works.
 
The recently passed DMA certainly DOES give Apple the rights to dictate what an Alternate Store offers AND the criteria for removing content.
"To be sure, Notarization won’t cover everything—as discussed further below—like
app content, business practices, and other App Store protections for users."

"Notarization Review Guidelines will not include the content and commerce
policies in the App Store Review Guidelines, and so will not prohibit or check
if apps go against those policies. This means Apple won’t be able to prevent
apps with content that Apple wouldn’t allow on the App Store—like apps that
distribute pornography, apps that encourage consumption of tobacco or vape
products, illegal drugs, or excessive amounts of alcohol, or apps that contain
pirated content
(or that otherwise steal ideas or intellectual property from other
developers)—from becoming available on alternative app marketplaces."
 
Morally, sure. How does apply here? What is being stolen by installing a torrent app?

A torrent app isn't piracy. There is nothing illegal, nor stolen, by offering or downloading this app.

Edit: I just checked, thanks to below post, and Transmission is notarized by Apple.
Yes, it’s the same way devices to clone car keys aren’t stealing. They are just devices used to steal.
 
Yes, it’s the same way devices to clone car keys aren’t stealing. They are just devices used to steal.

And those aren't illegal if you don't steal a car with it. I can clone the own key to my car without any legal concerns.

Funny how the Transmission app is signed by Apple and has been for years, without an issue, as another poster pointed out. I just checked, and it is, and always has been.
 
Given the fact that it's one torrenting app that was removed, not all of them, seems likely that it's something related to that app rather than torrenting in general.
Agree.

Something related to that app, a collateral damage - or honest mistake.
I normally would give Apple little benefit of doubt with regard to their app store/notarisation policies - but in this case, we probably should.
 
Agree.

Something related to that app, a collateral damage - or honest mistake.
I normally wouldn't give the Apple the benefitof doubt with regard to their app store/notarisation policies - but in this case, we probably should.

Just taking a moment to point out you and I agree on a point in an EU/Alternate App Store thread! It's a rare event worth celebrating, and I won't ruin it by adding further commentary :)
 
Be intellectually honest and admit that torrents are only used to download pirated material; there are no legitimate files that can only be downloaded via torrent. What can't you download from your smartphone that requires the use of torrents, other than a few movies or TV series?

I don't know and can't admit it. I haven't used a torrent in over 15 years...

But here is a legitimate torrent link for your enjoyment:

 
Nonsense. If there were a known threat, Apple should be telling their customers not to use the app. Since they are not, we can reasonably assume that is not why the app was removed.

Why try to help justify this? We already know Apple is not a fan of Torrent apps, despite legal uses. Unless they say otherwise, there's no reason to give Apple any benefit of the doubt.
That is pretty silly logic. Apple doesn’t have any responsibility to people downloading apps from a third party source.
 
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Meanwhile, torrent apps can be freely downloaded with a browser on a Mac
Apple has a longstanding policy that users can run any code they want on a Mac -- even that means you'll have to explicitly ignore and/or disable many layers of warnings and defenses. Normal users are not supposed to override these protections. Meanwhile, iOS is designed as a pure "consumer" (as opposed to "developer") operating system, so they only run code that's known safe -- signed, notarized, reviewed, etc.
 
I don't know and can't admit it. I haven't used a torrent in over 15 years...

But here is a legitimate torrent link for your enjoyment:

Yes, the world is full of people who download Linux distros from their smartphones every single day 🤣

Besides the fact that you've proven my point, it's an alternative method... you don't need torrents to do it. But you do need them if you want to pirate software.
 
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"To be sure, Notarization won’t cover everything—as discussed further below—like
app content, business practices, and other App Store protections for users."

"Notarization Review Guidelines will not include the content and commerce
policies in the App Store Review Guidelines, and so will not prohibit or check
if apps go against those policies. This means Apple won’t be able to prevent
apps with content that Apple wouldn’t allow on the App Store—like apps that
distribute pornography, apps that encourage consumption of tobacco or vape
products, illegal drugs, or excessive amounts of alcohol, or apps that contain
pirated content
(or that otherwise steal ideas or intellectual property from other
developers)—from becoming available on alternative app marketplaces."

A torrent client doesn't contain pirated content though
 
Read the license you use to purchase the music. It expressly forbids you to distribute the song.

You don’t own the song in any sense. You simply pay for a license to listen to it during your own life time.
All of that still doesn't make piracy the same thing as theft. They are not, have never been, and never will be equivalent. If I steal your car, you're unable to use the car. If I copy your song, you may or may not have lost potential revenue, and you still have your copy of the song, too.

One thing they both have in common is that the most effective deterrents to theft and piracy are the technical design of the goods and/or their distribution methods. Legal deterrents clearly aren't doing much in either case, and expecting progress in that area is foolish. For one, there is often no way to enforce these laws across borders.
 
A torrent client doesn't contain pirated content though
True.

Hard to argue though that they‘d block a torrent app on grounds of potential copyright infringement by end users (when there‘s also many legitimate uses for such apps) - if their claim is true that they won‘t and aren’t responsible for apps that contain „pirated content“ themselves (as part of the app bundle, that is).
 
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