OPINION:
Even with President Trump’s historic and effective deregulating of several industries in America, businesses of all kinds still face numerous roadblocks on the path to prosperity, from bonding and licensure to mountainous legal fees to ensure compliance. The fact is, although our president has done solid economic work in his short time in office, it is still an incomplete endeavor in danger of a potential reversal should the GOP suffer big losses in this coming November’s midterm elections.
If the pressure applied by unelected bureaucrats working for government agencies with nominal-to-questionable value wasn’t enough, businesses also face the obstacles provided by some powerful so-called industry watchdog groups. Many of these groups are lesser known, yet well-funded and have the power to drive changes to standard business practices by simply wielding their influence via the media and other sources.
Some of these groups operate in a fashion not unlike the Costa Nostra in some ways, in that monetary requests are customarily made in return for inclusion and private businesses that refuse to subscribe to their heavy-handed demands are routinely blacklisted from their respective industry.
One industry that suffers at the hands of this treachery is the ever-growing anti-virus/anti-malware software industry. According to Statista, “In 2015, global annual revenues from security software reached 22.1 billion U.S. dollars, representing a significant segment in the overall information security market, which itself was expected to achieve revenues of 75.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.” Statista also forecasts revenues growing to $120.7 billion by the year 2021, which represents a surge of more than 35 percent growth over just a six-year period.
That growth is threatened by a group known as AppEsteem. According to their website, AppEsteem claims to “fight the bad guys so you don’t have to — and so you can download and use apps without fear.”
The theme of some soon-to-be-adopted new punishable violations according to AppEsteem’s arbitrary standards, which were uncovered via an industry leak, is ACR-004. This new “rule” includes the language “You must not charge the consumer to fix free scan results if you are offering an ongoing service,” effectively providing a death sentence to independent software publishers using a standard sales model that has been employed since the mid-’90s.
AppEsteem is cutting Independent non-OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) software publishers out of an information security products and services market that produced more than $89 Billion in total sales in the year 2017 in favor of larger industry giants creating an artificial oligopoly.
According to a May 2018 report from the Clean Software Alliance, that was prompted by “a groundswell of complaints and expressions of concern received by the CSA from industry members” regarding AppEsteem’s “deceptor” program, members of the AV software community felt that, “The Deceptor Program lacks integrity in its design and implementation. Specifically, the program appears to be applied subjectively and with a double standard. This means that certain products one would expect to be on the deceptor list (assuming an even-handed application of the criteria) are not, in fact, on the list; and certain other products will be placed on the list and thereby suffer potentially undue and disproportionate punishment for unintentional or non-deceptive behavior.”
The report also pointed out that the concerns asserted by many in the industry — including that the AppEsteem deceptor program is an “overly aggressive business development tactic,” was supported by the fact that deceptor criteria was being introduced without input from the industry and being made subjectively. AppEsteem aggressively deploys the program and pressures companies into an association that is monetized by AppEsteem and asks the anti-virus and anti-malware makers to employ their criteria as an industry standard, thereby amplifying AppEsteem’s reach and influence in the industry.
This is not only tantamount to a shakedown of these private companies, which included more than 50 total respondents and approximately 10 AV/security companies that command more than 63 percent of the global Windows anti-malware market (excluding China), it also deceives consumers. Nowadays, many PC users rely on overlapping layers of protection on their personal networks and online devices, and this “deceptor” program may trick consumers into thinking that trusted and previously relied upon products are malicious software.
In a world that is digitally driven, this type of “fake news” can only lend assistance to the cybercrime black market that is expected to inflict more than $6 trillion in losses by the year 2021, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. The worst part of it all is that it is being committed, not by legislators or bureaucrats, but by questionable actors looking to enrich themselves and force artificial changes to a thriving sector of the economy.
The Gadsden Flag read, “Don’t Tread on Me” in part, as a message to big government interference in private business affairs. In the exploding PC utilities market, private-sector watchdog groups must remember to not tread on economic growth and consumer choice.
• Julio Rivera, editorial director at ReactionaryTimes.com, is a small-business consultant based in New York City.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.