Comment by rglullis
3 days ago
> in many cases what you are specifically paying for is the combination of the software and the service that are designed to work together
And in many cases like Claude Code and the Anthropic models, they can and do work perfectly independently.
> True but the opposite is also true, just because you don't like the terms it does not make it illegal.
This is not me "not liking it". Like I said somewhere else in this thread: these types of tie-in are illegal in Brazil. This practice is clearly not done to favor the consumer. You can bet that if the US was anything closer to a functional democracy and the laws were not written by lobbyists, this would be illegal in the US as well.
What law is actually being broken in Brazil?
Are MMO’s illegal in Brazil? Is PlayStation Plus illegal in Brazil? Is Spotify, Apple Music, etc etc etc also illegal in Brazil?
It would be ridiculous to argue that I could pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft and make my own third party client to play the game with. (Obviously you are free to argue it all you want but I would be very surprised if this was actually illegal).
> And in many cases like Claude Code and the Anthropic models, they can and do work perfectly independently.
Unless I am mistaken Claude Code does not have a local model built into it, so it requires a server side component to work?
As far as the Anthropic models, yes like many other services they ALSO have a public API that is separate from the subscription that you are paying for.
The critical difference here being that in the subscription it is very clear that you are paying for “Claude Code” which is a combination of an application and a server side component. It makes no claims about API usage as part of your subscription, again the technical implementation of the service you are actually paying for “Claude Code” is irrelevant.
When it comes to “Claude Code” for all that we should care about, again given that “Claude Code” is what you are paying for, they could be sending the information to Gemini or or a human looks at it. Because it’s irrelevant to the end user when it comes to the technical implementation since you are not being granted access to any other parts of the system directly.
> What law is actually being broken in Brazil?
"Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good).
The examples you are giving are not "tie-in" sales because the service from Playstation Plus, Spotify, Apple Music, etc is the distribution of digital goods.
> Unless I am mistaken Claude Code does not have a local model built into it, so it requires a server side component to work?
Which part are you not understanding?
I don't care about Claude Code. I do not want it and do not need it. All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!
> When it comes to “Claude Code” for all that we should care about, again given that “Claude Code” is what you are paying for.
No, it is not! I paid for Claude Pro. Claude != Claude Code.
> "Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good)
I will keep my response to this part in particular limited because I have limited understanding of this law. However based on doing a little bit of searching around the law is not as cut and dry as you are presenting it to be. It is possible that Claude code would fall under being fine under that law or no one has gone after them. I honestly don’t know and I don’t feel like having an argument that it is highly likely both of us don’t fully understand the law.
That being said I do question how exactly “Claude code” differs from those services as a digital good.
> I don't care about Claude Code. I do not want it and do not need it. All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!
OK! That is not what you’re paying for as part of Claude Pro, end of story. You are not paying for the API. It is no different that the people that have a free plan and can only chat through the web and the app also don’t get access to the API even though it is obviously using an API to access those endpoints as well.
Or are you also going to argue that free users should have access to the API because they are already using them in the browser.
> No, it is not! I paid for Claude Pro. Claude != Claude Code.
Claude Code is one of the features you are paying for as part of Claude Pro so yes in a way you are paying for it. And again not on that list is the API.
Claude Pro = claude.ai, and they made no changes to that arrangement. Both claude.ai and Claude Pro are products built on top of the Claude API. You are free to buy access to the Claude API itself, with or without the other two, but the pricing is different because the price of claude.ai and Claude Code includes the API charges they incur.
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> All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!
But that's not a product that they're offering. That ability was an undesired (from their business perspective) trait that they're now rectifying.
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Could you clarify exactly what you think is an illegal tie-in? Because it seems like what you are upset about is literally the opposite -- Anthropic unbundling their offerings so you aren't required to buy the ability to offer third party access when you purchase the ability to use Claude code and their other models. Unless I really misunderstand you, your complaint is literally thaf
The laws prohibiting tie-ins don't make it illegal to sell two products that work well together. That's literally what the laws are designed to make you do -- seperate products into seperate pieces. The problem tie-in laws were designed to combat was situations like Microsoft making a popular OS then making a mediocre spreadsheet program and pushing the cost of that spreadsheet program into the cost of buying the OS. That way consumers would go "well it's expensive but I get excel with it so it's ok" and even if someone else made a slightly better spreadsheet they didn't have the chance to convince users because they had to buy it all as one package.
Anthropic would be doing something much closer to that if they did what you wanted. They'd be saying: hey we have this neat Claude code thing you all want to use but you can't buy that without also purchasing third party access. Now some company offering a cheaper/better third party usage product doesn't get the chance to convince you because anthropic forced you to buy that just to get claude code.
Ultimately this change unbundled products the opposite of a tie-in. What is upsetting about it is that it no longer feels to you like you are getting a good deal because you now have to fork over a bunch more cash to keep getting what you want. But that's not illegal, that's just not offering good value for money.