Content Rights for an app that uses the Safari component to display web pages?
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When submitting an app to the Mac App Store it's asking me this questions:

Content Rights

Does your app contain, display, or access third-party content?

Do you have all necessary rights to that content or are you otherwise permitted to use it under the laws of each App Store territory in which your app is available?

My app uses the Safari component to display web pages, so, it can display third party content, and I believe I don't need any permission to do so the same way any other vendor doesn't need permission to produce a browser.

Laplante answered 11/11, 2015 at 19:19 Comment(0)
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Using the component to wrap an entire site to make it look like an app and present it as your own is probably an "offense". But clearly showing that web pages are loaded and displaying them as they were intended by the website creators could not be an offense. It would go against the entire structure of the WWW. If some people actually do put websites on the publicly accessible web and want to keep it private they did something wrong to start with :). It can't be the responsibility of each and every browser developer to keep track of that. And a browser is a browser, if it's on a mobile device or a desktop. So it would be ground breaking if this would be judged otherwise. And if it was, it could probably easily be contested. Not to mention the sh*t storm that it would start online if this was their public stance :)

Puerperal answered 23/11, 2015 at 9:19 Comment(0)
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The only source I could find on it is here, where it says that it is "most likely to affect apps which use the brand names or logos of other companies". You are not displaying third-party content, you are displaying a browser. Unless that browser window is filling up the entire screen (so that it seems like they are not seeing a webpage) and you make it seem like that website is part of the app, I can't see why they would stop your app.

I would think that you don't need to say that you access third-party content at all, and if Apple disagrees then they may pull your app. But as you say, it would be the same as every browser app. Either the safari component is third-party content, so no browser should be allowed as they show content that they do not own, or it's not third-party content and you should be OK.

Vandervelde answered 23/11, 2015 at 9:0 Comment(0)
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If what you are trying to do is displaying any webpage on your own browser using the Safari component you already have the rights to display it. If the owner of the content doesn't want you to display it the webpage would require a username/password to access the content. This is an implicit "contract" when you create a public site on the internet, anyone can see it/use the information provided. If there is an explicit ban of some domains due to government laws your application will not be able to access the site from that location (like use to happen on some mid-east countries/china) but the block will be on the physical network and you don't need to worry about it.

If you can access the domain from the application in any given location, you can display the content "as is" without any modification or claim of property, this is probably not obvious but you cannot claim that you produced the content, you can however display it and use it. IF the site has a protection requiring the user to provide a username/password, you can still display the login/home webpage without any explicit permission, this permission is already granted because it is public. Once the user of your application inputs a username/password "his" session will be granted the required permission to access the remaining content, again since the server sends you the information you can still display it "as is". In the case that your application stores the username/password for later access you need to explicitly inform the user about this, moreover he needs to agree on that. You can use those credentials to access the site later for that user. You cannot store the username/password to automatically login a user different than the owner of the account nor use yourself the contents of the protected webpage trough any means (i.e. scraping and storing for later use).

In short, if you can access the website you can display it as is and that's legal. If the site is protected you can still display what the server sends you (probably home page + some login webpage/option). You can let the user interact with the webpage like any other browser does and he can log in to the protected webpages and you have the right to display that content for that user, not to store it or duplicate/publish/etc.

You can not: show a webpage and claim you built it, unless you have explicit permission from the owner/legal representative of the webpage to do so. You can't even change the webpage to "disguise" it is as something that looks like you built it, without you claiming you did.

For a regular browser-like interaction with internet in general, you already have the rights to display the contents of the webpages that are publicly accessible.

Hope it helps!

Thuggee answered 26/11, 2015 at 23:34 Comment(0)
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According to Wikipedia

On OS X, Safari is a Cocoa application.It uses Apple's WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (originally based on KDE's JavaScript engine, named KJS). Like KHTML and KJS, WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and are released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple improvements to the KHTML code are merged back into the Konqueror project. Apple also releases additional code under an open source 2-clause BSD-like license.

LGPL ?!

The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate software released under the LGPL into their own (even proprietary) software without being required by the terms of a strong copyleft license to release the source code of their own components. The license only requires software under the LGPL be modifiable by end users via source code availability.

You are allowed to display any content you wish , Unless the content has copy rights from 3rd party , only then that 3rd party has the right to claim its rights , assume you are displaying a pirated movie produced by Warner Bros in your app , only then this will be illegal , but still is out of Apple's scope.

Bluenose answered 28/11, 2015 at 17:50 Comment(0)
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Under Content and Intellectual Property Rights (guidelines)

8.5 Apps may not use protected third party material such as trademarks, copyrights, patents or violate 3rd party terms of use. Authorization to use such material must be provided upon request

You aren't doing that. You are allowing your app to utilize safari, what the user does from there falls under the same guidelines they accept when they utilize safari. You are just extending your app to use safari. You aren't granting anyone access to content you aren't allowed to use, you're not facilitating the bypass of any locked content, etc.

This can be found on: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Bonzer answered 29/11, 2015 at 18:59 Comment(0)

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