Apple Can Delist Apps 'With Or Without Cause,' Judge Says In Loss For Musi App (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0181026306
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/17/2321225/apple-can-delist-apps-with-or-without-cause-judge-says-in-loss-for-musi-app
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/judge-upholds-apple-delisting-of-free-musi-app-that-streams-songs-from-youtube/
> Musi, a free music streaming app that had tens of millions of iPhone downloads and garnered plenty of controversy over its method of acquiring music, has [1]lost an attempt to get back on Apple's App Store . A federal judge dismissed Musi's lawsuit against Apple with prejudice and sanctioned Musi's lawyers for "mak[ing] up facts to fill the perceived gaps in Musi's case."
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> Musi built a streaming service without striking its own deals with copyright holders. It did so by playing music from YouTube, writing in [2]its 2024 lawsuit against Apple that "the Musi app plays or displays content based on the user's own interactions with YouTube and enhances the user experience via Musi's proprietary technology." Musi's app displayed its own ads but let users remove them for a one-time fee of $5.99. Musi claimed it complied with YouTube's terms, but Apple removed it from the App Store in September 2024. Musi does not offer an Android app. Musi alleged that Apple delisted its app based on "unsubstantiated" intellectual property claims from YouTube and that Apple violated its own Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA) by delisting the app.
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> Musi was handed a resounding defeat yesterday in two rulings from US District Judge Eumi Lee in the Northern District of California. Lee found that Apple can remove apps "with or without cause," as stipulated in the developer agreement. Lee [3]wrote (PDF): "The plain language of the DPLA governs because it is clear and explicit: Apple may 'cease marketing, offering, and allowing download by end-users of the [Musi app] at any time, with or without cause, by providing notice of termination.' Based on this language, Apple had the right to cease offering the Musi app without cause if Apple provided notice to Musi. The complaint alleges, and Musi does not dispute, that Apple gave Musi the required notice. Therefore, Apple's decision to remove the Musi app from the App Store did not breach the DPLA."
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/judge-upholds-apple-delisting-of-free-musi-app-that-streams-songs-from-youtube/
[2] https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/11/20/2152229/musi-fans-refuse-to-update-iphones-until-apple-unblocks-controversial-app
[3] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437479/gov.uscourts.cand.437479.96.0.pdf
Re: (Score:1)
> You wanted this.
Me?
Walled Garden (Score:3)
If you play in the walled garden, better not anger the groundskeeper.
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Anti-trust is dead, long live monopolies! Competition is for "losers"
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I'd agree if Musi were offering a different product, and not just repackaging an existing product owned by someone else while collecting fees.
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> I'd agree if Musi were offering a different product, and not just repackaging an existing product owned by someone else while collecting fees.
The problem in this case has less to do with what Musi was doing, and more to do with the means of enforcement.
Honestly, I'd agree that the app itself was problematic in what it was doing. I might even agree that there should have been an injunction against Musi.
That, however, isn't the problem.
The problem is that Youtube went to Apple and said "de-list this app for us because it violates *our* TOS"...and Apple said "sure thing". Apple didn't say "give us a court order and we will comply with the court orde
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On the one hand, yeah. The challenge is that Apple's biggest competitor in the mobile market is attempting to wall off its garden too. And both companies are actively attempting bad-faith responses to regulators requiring third-party app store availability. Even if proper support arrives on both platforms, user proficiency in finding them will be a massive hurdle for any developer who wants to avoid the walled garden. This is a market failure happening right in front of us.
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> Even if proper support arrives on both platforms, user proficiency in finding them will be a massive hurdle for any developer who wants to avoid the walled garden. This is a market failure happening right in front of us.
I hope that, someday, a group of large app makers (Microsoft, Adobe, Meta, ... anyone not Apple and Google) bans together and removes their products from the official stores - though that will require reasonably good support for at least one 3rd party app store for them to move to. People would move quickly and in mass. They haven't pissed everyone off enough just yet, and maybe they'll avoid it, especially as web based apps continue to improve and would be much harder to block.
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Indeed. From what I can gather from 5 mins of searching, this Musi app was essentially a YouTube wrapper. It streamed music directly from YouTube without actually showing any YouTube assets or - more importantly - ads.
Calling themselves a streaming service seems like a stretch. What they did was stream YouTube's content and place their own ads over it. Apparently they made over $100M in one year doing this.
You can argue about the actual legality of what they were doing, but it definitely breached YouTube's
Gatekeeping (Score:2)
On one hand, I think a company should do what they want.
Oh the other....a company of any size should not be able to dictate the market by abusing it's power.
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This is why capitalism requires regulation - without it, the dominant player simply dominates and the market is no longer free. If you are the player, or someone on their payroll, you probably approve of this. If you're the vast majority of the population, you should be very angry this happens.
But Musi's a scam, repackaging someone else's work and replacing the ads with their own.
It doesn't work like that for everyone (Score:2)
If Apple can delist any app, why was Epic Games able to challenge their policies, and brought to court and forced them to change the policy?
Risk Is High With iOS Development (Score:2)
I don't understand the mindset of getting involved in the iOS app market today. It made more sense in the early days but now the market is highly entrenched and Apple can either delist your app for no reason or release a competing app that doesn't have the usual restrictions of third-party developers. The risk to reward ratio seems to have drifted way too far.
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The issue is as of 2026, too many things are iOS+Android only. This duopoly means that if they decide to ban an app together, your software will be banned from the "smartphone" ecosystem. This is not the case of a normal "brick and mortar store". A normal "brick and mortar store" isn't capable of banning a good from sales worldwide.
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Is that Apple's fault? A company could choose to make Android-like phones, but w/ Graphene OS or Legacy OS or one of those Android variants, and then give it an app store that is more permissive than Google's or Apple's
Or Musi could have a website - including mobile website - that people could use to stream or download music, and not bother about any app store. Assuming that they couldn't get sideloading to work
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So, a duopoly.
There are ways of dealing with monopolies/duopolies. Break them up. Probably can't do that effectively with Apple/Android. Then there's regulation. You place the entity(s) under the authority of some thing like a utilities commision. They want to make any changes to their pricing or terms of service, they have to seek approval from the commission. Such a situation is so onerous that those subject to it (even utilities) do everything in their power to weasel out from under it. And one obvious
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It apparent is true. The judge in this case just ruled as such.
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> If I owned a brick and mortar store, I can refuse or chose to carry anything I want, and deny service to any person for any reason.
Where do you get that idea?
"carry anything I want" - try stocking fentanyl and heroin.
"deny service to any person for any reason" - run a diner and try denying service based on race, color, or creed.
"refuse ... anything I want" - run a restaurant without a choking poster, or run afoul of OSHA safety issues.
There's also Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018). Though the supreme court found the cake shop could refuse to make a custom cake based on religious grounds, it was a narrow ru
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Not if you look at how Musi actually worked.
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>> There are many other music streaming apps allowed on the store, so discriminating against one of them should, IMO, require more justification than, "with or without cause", don't you think?
> Not if you look at how Musi actually worked.
Um... would that not venture into "with cause"? That's a whole other can of worms, and it doesn't sound like that was tested at all for this decision.
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Bake the cake, bigot!
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When you have government-granted monopolies in the form of copyright and patent law, the rules should be very different from the ones your neighborhood grocery store is subject to.