> It’s apple’s own private system and infrastructure and they’re within their rights to control content delivered using that system.
I dunno: to me, Apple's "rights" stop at their doorstep, and if they don't want their service to be accessible to third-party clients, they are more than welcome to just not build such a service (as we honestly don't have any reason to provide legal defense for this one specific business model).
We don't merely generally avoid extending rights over other people... usually we protect people from incursions into their rights by companies, whether by contractual or even by technological means: we have many laws and legal precedents designed to ensure interoperability, fair markets, and basic things such as "legal ownership" (see the right of first sale doctrine, for example).
When Beeper sues Apple (which I do hope is their next step), it is not at all obvious that Apple will get to keep doing what they are doing here... and, even without Beeper's involvement, we're already seeing government regulators and politicians rightfully poking around at the situation, ready to provide some clarification to the rules in order to prevent this kind of thing.
> and if they don't want their service to be accessible to third-party clients, they are more than welcome to just not build such a service
That is exactly what they did. Or rather didn’t. They haven’t sued beeper, or retaliated in any way. They merely blocked beeper from hacking into their network. It is crazy to think that beeper could sue them for that.
Beeper can sue. Anyone can sue. But it’s whether the case has merit. Beeper’s would have none. Apple would counter sue, claim CFAA, and probably win without much effort at all. Their network, their rules, period. I am truly baffled how many people on HN think it’s cool for some third party to circumvent protections and use a network they don’t own or control. Remember peaking? Yeah.
If this was YOUR network, would you be fine letting some third party, who’s not paying you, to use it as they wish and profit from that use? I really doubt it. If you say sure, that’s totally fine, I will challenge anyone here to prove it. Accordingly, please post your WiFi network credentials and GPS location here. We can use your network just like Beeper used Apple’s. Then sell access to others through our connection.
Comparing a third-party using Apple's iMessage API (not network) without their blessing to someone connecting to your home network, compromising your security, is laughable.
I dunno: to me, Apple's "rights" stop at their doorstep, and if they don't want their service to be accessible to third-party clients, they are more than welcome to just not build such a service (as we honestly don't have any reason to provide legal defense for this one specific business model).
We don't merely generally avoid extending rights over other people... usually we protect people from incursions into their rights by companies, whether by contractual or even by technological means: we have many laws and legal precedents designed to ensure interoperability, fair markets, and basic things such as "legal ownership" (see the right of first sale doctrine, for example).
When Beeper sues Apple (which I do hope is their next step), it is not at all obvious that Apple will get to keep doing what they are doing here... and, even without Beeper's involvement, we're already seeing government regulators and politicians rightfully poking around at the situation, ready to provide some clarification to the rules in order to prevent this kind of thing.