Excuse Me, We’re Going To Build On Your Property

2010.02.13   prev     next

For all you people out there who think that Apple’s refusal to allow Flash on the iPhone and iPad is an anti-competitive, monopolistic, 1990s-Microsoft move — here’s a little analogy to explain why it isn’t:

Nerdhobby Inc. buys a big piece of land in suburbia, sets it up with an infrastructure of roads, plumbing, and electricity, then invites retailers to come build stores there. Many do, and the place is soon a thriving shopping mecca. One of the most successful stores is a seafood restaurant, The Wharf.

Then, Nerdhobby starts jacking with the road signs and utilities in a way that causes trouble for The Wharf and its customers — and at the same time, Nerdhobby builds their own competing seafood restaurant across the road.

Would Nerdhobby get in legal trouble for this? Of course. The Wharf would have liked very much to know before they built their restaurant on Nerdhobby’s property, that Nerdhobby was going to sabotage The Wharf like that. Such sabotage is a form of fraud — implying The Wharf can count on these roads and utilities to function well, then purposely making them function poorly.

On the other side of the city, another land developer, Eden Shopping Ltd., builds a big, indoor mall and invites retailers to come occupy the slots and anchor positions of that mall.

But Eden makes it clear from the beginning that there are many restrictions on what kind of stores they will allow, and that it’s ultimately up to Eden to decide who gets in and who doesn’t.

Then one day, Clay Corporation drives up with a truckload of materials, specially prepared for a store interior in this exact mall, and says, “Hey, look, we’re all ready to occupy one of the slots in your mall with a store that sells bricks. All you have to do is give us the go-ahead, and we’ll be up-and-running in 24 hours. Now, we know your stated restrictions don’t allow stores that sell construction materials. But we thought maybe if we got everything ready to install in your mall, you wouldn’t be able to say no when we drove up? Right?”

And guess what — Eden says no. Take your truckload of specially prepared materials and leave.

Would Eden get in legal trouble for refusing to allow Clay’s store in their mall? Of course not. Eden made it clear that no one could open a brick-selling store in their mall, and it’s not Eden’s fault if Clay spent a lot of time and money getting those materials ready, in the silly hope that Eden wouldn’t be able to refuse. (WTF?)

Clay, there’s no law against a private company building a mall with a prohibition against construction-materials stores. Eden didn’t cause you to waste all that time and effort preparing your stuff to go into their mall. If they had said, “Sure, come on in,” and then suddenly changed their mind after you went to all that effort, that would be different. Or if they had let you into their mall, and then later sabotaged your store while opening their own brick-selling store in the same mall, that too would be different.

But they didn’t. You took it upon yourself to prepare this truckload of stuff. That’s your fault.