Imagine if video service came with a free TV that watched you, and was really opinionated about what you watch, and you could only watch your videos on the creeper TV.
Then I would not use it because it does not work the way I want it to work...
But if that is the service they are making and they are clear about what it is when you sign up... That does not make it illegal.
I can see why people think they should be entitled to do this, but it does not align with how they are selling the service or how many other companies sell services. In most situations you don't get unlimited access to the individual components of how a service works (the API), you are expected to use the service (in this case Claude Code) directly.
"Both parties are okay with the terms" is far from being sufficient to make something "legal".
Tie-in sales between software and services is not different from price dumping. If any of the Big Tech corporations were from any country that is not the US, the FTC would be doing anything in their power to stop them.
> Tie-in sales between software and services is not different from price dumping.
I disagree, 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 do not work independent of eachother.
There are countless cases of this, that what you are paying for is a thing that is made up of a piece of software and a serverside component. MMO's (and gaming in general) being a major example of this, but so are many of the apps I pay for subscriptions for on my phone.
The actual technical implementation of how it works is irrelevant when it is clear what it is you are paying for.
> "Both parties are okay with the terms" is far from being sufficient to make something "legal".
True but the opposite is also true, just because you don't like the terms it does not make it illegal.
> 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.
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.
"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.
> but the pricing is different because the price of claude.ai and Claude Code includes the API charges they incur.
If that was true, then getting equivalent usage of the API without claude.ai and Claude Code should cost less, not more.
You can try to find all sorts of explanations for it, at the end of the day is quite simple: they are subsidizing one product in order to grow the market share, and they are doing it at a loss now, because they believe they will make up for it later. I understand the reasoning from a business point of view, but this doesn't mean they are entitled to their profits. I do not understand people that think we simply accept their premise and assume they can screw us over just because they asked and put it on a piece of paper.
We don't know if, on average, paying API prices for Claude Code is cheaper or not, so we don't know if they're operating it at a "loss". That math doesn't make sense in any case since it would be a "loss" based on their own external prices. The entire company is operating at a loss, regardless.
In any case, the point is it's not tying; you're free to choose any combination of products.
> n any case, the point is it's not tying; you're free to choose any combination of products.
These products can function independently, and the acquisition at a heavy discouont for one of them is conditional on the acquisition of the other. It definitely is a tie-in sale.
- It was possible to do it.
- OpenCode did not break any security protocol in order to integrate with them.
- OAuth is *precisely* a system to let third-party applications use their resources.
It's not what they wanted, but it's not my problem. The fact that I was a customer does not mean that I need to protective of their profits.
> (from their business perspective)
So what?!
Basically, they set up an strategy they thought it was going to work in their favor (offer a subsidized service to try to lock in customers), someone else found a way to turn things around and you believe that we should be okay with this?!
Honestly, I do not understand why so many people here think it is fine to let these huge corporations run the same exploitation playbook over and over again. Basically they set up a mouse trap full of cheese and now that the mice found a way to enjoy the cheese without getting their necks broken, they are crying about it?
You'd have to point me to an authoritative source on that (explicitly saying users are allowed to use their models via private APIs in apps of the user's choosing). If something isn't explicitly provided in the contract, then it can be changed at any point in any way without notice.
Honestly, I'm not big on capitalism in general, but I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide things exactly the way they want at exactly the prices they would like to be charged (if at all). That's just not how the world/system works, or should, especially given there are so many alternatives available. If one doesn't like what's happening with some service, then let the wallet do the talking and move to another. Emigration is a far more effective message than complaining.
> I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide things exactly the way they want at exactly the prices they would like to be charged
This is a gross misrepresentation of my argument.
I wouldn't be complaining at all if they went up and said "sorry, we are not going to subsidize anyone anymore, so the prices are going up", and I wouldn't be complaining if they came up and said "sorry, using a third party client incurs an extra cost of on our side, so if you want to use that you'd have to pay extra".
What I am against is the anti-competitive practice of price discrimination and the tie-in sale of a service. If they are going to play this game, then they better be ready for the case the strategy backfires. Otherwise it's just a game of "heads I win, tails you lose" where they always get to make up the rules.
> Emigration is a far more effective message than complaining.
Why not both? I cancelled my Pro subscription today. I will stick with just Ollama cloud.
It's not tie-in. They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point. The apps are technically negative value for them from a purely upfront cost perspective as their use trigger these discounts and they're free by themselves.
Good on you re that cancel. May you find greener grass elsewhere.
> They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point.
There was a third choice, which was better than both of the ones presented: use any other client that can talk with our API, at whatever usage rate they deemed acceptable. If the "private API" was accessible via OAuth, then it's hardly "private".
We can argue all day, when I signed up there was nothing saying that access was exclusive via the tools they provided. They changed the rules not because it was costing them more (or even if does, they are losing money on Pro customers anyway so arguing about that is silly) but because they opened themselves for some valid and fair competition.
There was no third choice if they didn't explicitly state that there was.
> If the "private API" was accessible via OAuth, then it's hardly "private".
If you invite people on your porch for a party, and someone finds that you left the house key under the mat and went off to restock, then it's hardly "private". It's perfectly fine for whomever feels like to take the party indoors without your permission. Pretty much what you're saying, reframed, but I seriously doubt you'd agree to random people entering parts of yours premises to which you didn't explicitly invite them.
Try not making it sound like the company is doing me a favor by letting me access the thing I was paying for. I wasn't "invited to a party", I was sold on an agreement that by paying a guaranteed monthly fee I could have access to the model at a rate that was lower than the pay-as-you-go rate from the API.
The primary offering is access to the models. That's what the subscription is about. They can try as hard as they want to market it as Claude being the product and access to the model being an ancillary service, but to me this is just marketing bs. No one is signing-up for Claude because their website is nicer, or because of Claude Code.
> I was sold on an agreement that by paying a guaranteed monthly fee I could have access to the model at a rate that was lower than the pay-as-you-go rate from the API
Yes, that agreement is there, with the condition that their app is used. That's option B. And I'd think it fairly obvious that if one has to go to extraordinary lengths to gain access, like finding a key under a mat, or needing to login with an official client to gain access to a token for an unofficial client, then - implicitly - it's highly unlikely that that method of access is part of the agreement. And Anthropic has now made it explicitly clear that no, that access method is not part of the agreement.
Nope, there's no tie-in sale[0] as you do not pay for the apps. And particularly, there's no real competition angle[1] as the market is loaded with LLM service providers, not to mention downloadable options.
There's a reason in this particular case why the particular APIs aren't documented: they aren't intended for public use. And they've made it crystal clear, so all you have to do now is take your wallet somewhere that offers the access you desire. You have no case here.
> as the market is loaded with LLM service providers
The LLMs are not commodities. The program that interfaces with them are.
> they aren't intended for public use.
It was available at first, it made possible for people to use the LLM model without having to use their specific CLI tool. It's a bait-and-switch.
> You have no case here.
I don't need to have a legal case here to keep thinking it's a morally dsgusting practice. What I don't understand is: why do you keep defending it? Is there something in it for you, or are you just trying to rationalize your way into acceptance of their terms?
They're commodities to an appreciable extent. They all do generally the same thing, with the differing factor being output quality.
People can still use their model without using their CLI. Use the API that they've provided for such. They didn't break the agreement that they made; they clarified the terms of their existing agreement.
There's nothing morally disgusting here. They're providing a service that they've poured a lot of effort into, in a way that's (hopefully) sustainable while being valuable to users. There's significant cost involved, which must be footed by those who value and use the service. They found a way to offer a discount for some of that cost, providing even greater value, but it has a condition which is possibly directly connected to their ability to provide that discount. And you want to benefit from that discount and avoid that condition.
I have no horses here; heck I wish they could offer it all completely free. But the reality is that there's ongoing cost to them in research, hardware, electricity, etc that has to be paid. And unlike many other large companies out there, they're providing something seriously valuable (you wouldn't be complaining so passionately if it wasn't), and they haven't enshittified it (unlike what the other large player is increasingly doing, but that's actually also understandable to a point). What I see here is you - as in all who want discount without condition - acting in a way that, if allowed, will very likely lead to the detriment of the service, which I definitely don't want to happen as that'll leave the market worse off. If you like the value so much that you find it next to impossible to stay away, then you should be happily following their agreement to the letter, and lean toward paying the full amount to help ensure their continued sustainability. It's well worth it.
> They found a way to offer a discount for some of that cost, providing even greater value, but it has a condition which is possibly directly connected to their ability to provide that discount.
That is a lie. It's the excuse they are giving, but it has no grounds in reality. They are setting a trap, and hoping that most do what you are doing and reason your way into falling for it.
> I wish they could offer it all completely free.
No, that would be even worse. What I wish is that dropped all subsidies. Charge one price for pay-as-you go API access, charge a monthly subscription to get some "volume discount" and to secure minimum revenue per user, but DO NOT tie the discount to some orthogonal product.
My complaint is not "things are more expensive now", it's "they are making it clear that they are keeping the price artificially low in the hopes that they can find a way to exploit the user base later".
> If you like the value so much that you find it next to impossible to stay away.
Sorry, you must be mistaking me with some other bootlicker. I just cancelled it, switched to Ollama Cloud and got OpenWebUI locally.
> toward paying the full amount to help ensure their continued sustainability.
It's not sustainable. Measures like these are a clear indicator that inference alone is not profitable, not at $20/month at least.
> It's well worth it.
Giving away your agency, letting corporations push their narratives without a minimum of pushback, contributing to the acceleration of capital concentration and encouraging others to do it? For what, some marginal benefit or "the alternatives are even worse"? Fuck that! This is almost as morally reprehensible as them.
Actually I came to that thought independently, then saw others saying the same. And you can't say it's a lie because you don't know how their backend works. I assume you know of prompt caching; that's one way to huge token savings, and works best with a cooperative client. I've also noticed that whenever I send an initial prompt to their web chat, the first message that pops up is the system trying to find skills that can handle the request. Who knows what skills they have available that can handle special cases and thus also contribute to savings, which also requires a cooperative client.
> some orthogonal product.
That's just your assumption. And if they really are "keeping the price artificially low", it's still to the benefit of users who don't mind the condition of using an official client. It's absolutely up to them how they run their business, as long as they aren't actually exploiting users in a market they've cornered (which they can't with all the providers out there).
> It's not sustainable
If not then eventually they'll up the price, or drop it and only offer the per token API. Until that hypothetical there will still be those who benefited from it while it was though. Nothing can change the fact that they've been offering users great value. It's kinda wild you're trying to detract from that even now, with 0 basis. Enjoy Ollama Cloud.
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.
Look at it this way: the service that you're accessing is really a (primarily desired) side-effect of the software. So re subscriptions, what they're actually providing are the apps (web, desktop, etc), and the apps use their service to aid the fulfillment of their functionality. Those wanting direct access to the internal service can get an API key for that purpose. That's just how their product offering is structured.
