"The main
thing in investigative actions is not to get out on ourselves."
The Prosecutor General of the USSR
Part 2:
Taking into account the deadlock situation, we decided to write about our problem to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, maybe they will help. In our appeal, we referred to the harsh actions of the American company Apple not only against Russian programmers, but also against the Russian company, which has invested money in domestic developments for a number of years. In the letter, we asked to intervene and, if possible, instruct the relevant services to figure it out, giving the resolution of the problem an acceleration. Exactly 3 days later, a letter of instruction came to the post office: to the Ministry of Finance, to the Federal Antimonopoly Service and a response to the applicant.
Due to the fact that in the wording of our letter to the President of the Russian Federation it was indicated - dominance in the world market in the region ..., our issue was taken up by the FAS. There was some hope that the harsh Russian authorities would call on the Americans to report the obvious reasons for the revocation of licenses, and we will at least get to the bottom of the truth.
When I decided to clarify the status of the appeal, the responsible FAS specialist on the phone reasonably noted: - And where is the guarantee that you yourself are not carrying any blizzard to a reputable company? Show the original letters from Apple, prove that it was your account that was blocked on the basis of the official decision of Apple and it is desirable that we see that the letters from Apple came to your account really from the Apple account, etc. By that time, my Apple account had been securely blocked by a reputable company for half a year, and no internal correspondence was conducted. At that moment, I wanted to burst into a forbidden exclamation.
And then one day an accident led me to an idea. When I was talking to a notary about my day to day business, I remembered that I could not confirm my email correspondence with Apple. After all, this company, without explaining the reasons, or rather without the facts presented to us, under an unknown pretext, brought our company into the category of a fraudster and plagiarists thereby depriving the software developer's licenses, albeit on its own iOS platform. The notary gave good advice. It turns out that in Russia specialized software for notaries has been developed, thanks to which it is possible to notarize, step by step, as a result of a special procedure, all or almost all of the correspondence on the Internet between competing subscribers.
The next day I fly to the recommended notary office, where there is a specialist in "cybernotariat". I will not go into the details of the process, I will describe it as follows. Together with the notary, we open the investigated mail account on the computer of the notary's office and track the sequential chain of correspondence files, which then creates an unambiguous, recorded and legally formalized inspection procedure in the form of an "Inspection Protocol", certified by the signature and seal of the State Notary. Further, an apostille of the English-language correspondence is issued (so that the FAS can read the correspondence in Russian) - a form of official confirmation of documents for the proper recognition of their legal force in all countries that have acceded to the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961.
As a result, a solid folder of files was collected for the FAS, which contained: notarial documents, certified copies of our patents for inventions in Russia and the USA. Patents for utility models, trademarks, certificates of registration of computer software codes and a bunch of other necessary paper carriers. These documents were supposed to disavow the alleged violation of someone's copyright, as well as refute the issue of spam and fraud on our part. The fact that the icons of custom applications, although in our case had a certain resemblance to the DO-RA logo, were endowed with special prefixes that, according to Apple, perform the function of spam. In fact, the client software has been produced for different types of gadgets. Namely: with audio, digital, BLE data exchange protocols of a gadget and a smartphone or other device.After all, Apple also labels its range of smartphones with prefixes - 3G, 3GS and its software 7.0 - 14.4.2, etc.
As a result, the collected package of documents from Intersoft Eurasia was sent to the FAS for familiarization with our case. Based on the documents provided, the FAS made a request to Apple in November 2020. The American company asked for a response to the FAS for 3 months. After that, in February 2021, a communication came from Apple with comments on the reasons why our lead programmer Vadim Bashurov, better known in the Habr environment under the nickname PapaBubaDiop, was for the first time deprived of the developer's license for the iOS / Apple platform. So , it took 2 years to routinely find out the reasons that triggered the sequential deprivation of the entire DO-RA project team of licenses with account blocking, including the intersofteurasia.ru company itself !
The reasons for blocking the account and revoking the Apple license of our colleague are citing literally, it is extremely important for objectively establishing the primary reasons, as well as for dispelling possible delusions in one's own innocence. I can only note that Apple's position sobered us and made us think seriously about conducting additional own internal investigation.
Appl – : Apple Inc., DO-RA.Pro App Store 17 2019 . . bashurov@mail.ru , , . , App Review ( Jaws-2, Clicasso Bugs, Half of Clash, 16s, Match Tri, . - 2019 .). App Store, , 3.2(f), 11.2(f) Apple .
Finally, we found out where the dog is buried, and asked the coder to restore to the smallest detail the reasons that could lead him to the first "black mark" from Apple. Having received detailed explanations from Vadim Bashurov, we understood why the other license holders were deprived of the privileges of a software developer on the Apple mobile platform. On the other hand, it followed from the explanations of our coder that the facts on the basis of which he was deprived of the Apple license are in a sense comparable to the claims made against the former owner of the car by the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate. It so happens that the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate issues fines for offenses committed after the sale of the car by a new individual, the former owner of the car. However, Apple is far from being a traffic police officer.
Appl – -: Apple Inc. , DORA.Pro App Store . elin.vladimi@gmail.com 18 2020 . 3.2(f) Apple . 2019 ., Apple Inc. . , , App Store, (.), . Apple Inc. . .
. , Apple Inc. . . , . , App Store: , . . . , App Store . , Apple Inc. , . Apple , 2020 .
, Apple Inc., DORA.Plus App Store 4 2020 . « », App Store. - . . . , DORA.Plus , « », DO-RA.Pro DORA.Pro . . . , DORA.Plus , 11.2(f) Apple , - , Apple Inc.
Nevertheless, after carefully reading the explanations from Apple, we plunged into the abyss of thought and doubt. Are we guilty, based on the rules and regulations of Apple, violated etiquette, procedures, creating problems for a huge corporation, falling into our own naivety, not attaching special importance to risks ?!
Although, if you look at the essence, then working applications migrated from our coder to my account: Do-Ra; DO-RA.Uni; DO-RA.Pro and DORA.Plus, developed by our team since 2011 and repeatedly tested by the App Store service for various gadgets of the DO-RA line. But we wrote software with various data transfer protocols when mobile platforms such as WP7, JavaME, BlackBerry, Symbian, Bada, etc. were still alive.
In the next article, there will be a detailed explanation of why we are most likely not guilty, and what exactly could lead to an error, in connection with which Artificial Intelligence threw us a "black mark".
To be continued
on April 22, 2021.