Law bill to give developers a choice to opt out vanishes this week
A law bill proposed in Arizona that would allow app developers to avoid Apple and Google’s mandatory in-app payment systems and associated commission fees has stalled – after state senators mysteriously skipped a vote on it. The legislation was put forward by state House Representative Regina Cobb (R) and narrowly passed the US state’s House by 31-29, with Republicans mostly for it and Democrats mostly against. It now requires a sign off by the state Senate and governor to become law. The bill, HB2005, forbids any “digital application distribution platform” with more than a million downloads a year from forcing application makers domiciled in Arizona to use “a particular in-application payment system as the exclusive mode of accepting payments from a user to download a software application or purchase a digital or physical product or service through a software application.” It also, among other things, bans platforms from retaliating “against a developer that is domiciled in this state or an Arizona user for using an in-application payment system or digital application distribution platform that is not owned by, operated by or affiliated with the provider or retaliate against a developer for that use to distribute applications to or accept payments from Arizona users.
