It’s not a public API. Hacking someone’s private API is already against law - charging $$ for it moreso.
Comment on Beeper vs Apple battle intensifies: Lawmakers demand DOJ investigation - Android Authority
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 9 months agoThey didn’t, someone made an App to interface with it. Trying to shut that down is anti-competitive.
btmoo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
Reverse engineering an API is not illegal
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Reverse engineering it is not, sure. And Beeper could do that and run their own messaging service with their own infrastructure running their reverse engineered version.
Lutra@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Ah, common misconception - hacking an API != creating a compatible program. ( reverse engineering)
Imagine a drill company has a special shape for its bits. Our law allows someone else to either… make bits that can fit in that shape OR make their own drill that can accept those bits.
“BUT they copied!” - it doesn’t have to be a copy to be compatible, and they don’t even have to use the ‘special shape’ just be able to work with the special shape. The law does not allow for protections around that. Doing so would be by definition anti-competitive. Our anti competition laws or rather our IP protection laws are not intended in any way to ‘ensure a monopoly’. The IP laws give a person a right to either keep something they do secret OR share that knowledge with the world so we all benefit, in exchange for a very limited monopoly.
Practically speaking, If I got the KFC Colonel to give me list the 11 herbs and spices in a Poker game, and then started making my own delicious poultry that is totally cool. Likewise, If I figured out that all that was inside a Threadr-ripper was blue smoke and started making my own blue smoke chips, the law is ok with that.
In this case roughly, Having a public facing endpoint. And then saying that the public can access that endpoint is cool Saying that only the public using the code I alone gave them – well… that’s not been litigated a lot, but all signs point to no.
It’s like Bing saying its for Safari only, and suing people who accessed it using Chrome. It is a logical claim, but the law does not provide that kind of protection/enforcement.
tl;dr these concepts are old but being newly applied to fancy technology. The laws in place are clear in most cases. A car maker can not dictate what you put in the tank. FedEX and UPS can’t charge you differently for shipping fiction books or medical journals or self published stories. And they’d probably get anti-trust scrutiny they even told you what brand/style of boxes you had to use.
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
They didn’t hack it, they spoofed a device, they just tricked the systems around the api
jon@lemmy.tf 9 months ago
That counts as unauthorized access in the eyes of the law. It’s a private system and they did not have any agreements permitting them to use it as they wanted.
mark3748@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Quite literally the text of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. Unauthorized access of computer systems can get you 20-years at club fed. Seems like some of these people need a history lesson.
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
What this guy said lemmy.world/comment/6119756
darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Genuinely curious, what’s the law against reverse engineering an API? I can maybe see the argument for charging for the service, but beeper mini is planning to integrate other services as well so I don’t know if that’ll really hold water.
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They can reverse engineer it and run it as their own service with their own infrastructure. But that doesn’t mean they can then start accessing Apple’s implementation and using Apple’s resources without permission.
LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 9 months ago
What do you think an API is? They have reverse engineered the iMessage API and are using that to connect to the iMessage servers. It is literally impossible to do as you suggest (use entirely their own resources) because iMessage is centralized and cannot federate with any other server, even if one did exist.
darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
If they function identically to a normal client though what’s the issue? As an example Google indexes pages all over the web without the explicit permission of those websites, that requires them to read the page and make requests to someone else’s infrastructure.
What part exactly here is illegal?
ripcord@kbin.social 9 months ago
Hacking someone’s private API is already against law
"Hacking" is the wrong word here. But in general, no, this is not true.
btmoo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s also a huge security hole
LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 9 months ago
How? It’s not a MitM or anything like that, it’s connecting exactly how an Apple device would connect. Everything is still E2EE, just one of the ends can now be an Android device.
btmoo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
A non-trusted 3rd party that has the capability to decrypt messages? It’s a big problem.
darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
So is having unencrypted messages with all non-iOS devices with no real solution in sight. Security is obviously not their concern here, it’s vendor lock in.
GrayBoltWolf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
SMS doesn’t support encryption, nor is Apple preventing you from downloading any number of encrypted chat apps that work cross platform.
If google didn’t release a new chat app every 6 months we might have a more widespread standard in the US already - and yes RCS is coming to the iPhone next year.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Funny how you twist this from defending Apple to blaming Google, the irony is palpable.
Make up your mind.
No one has to use Google’s apps either.
I despise SMS, have for years, since I could first run a real messenger on my phone. I’ve used XMPP on Android since 2010, and it worked with most every XMPP-based messenger system.
There’s no reason we’re here except end users can’t be bothered to use something if it takes any effort. I have a friend (a millenial, who grew up with tech) who bitches about SMS failures and shitty attachments constantly, but refuses to use any other messenger, doesn’t want to have to “figure out” how to message someone. 🤦♂️ I’m so tired of hearing this excuse. It’s laziness, full stop. Do we struggle to figure out how to phone someone, or send an email (which address?)? Plain old childish laziness. For older folks it’s a different story, but anyone under 40, yea, no, I’m calling bullshit. And I’m in that well-past-40 group.
I use whatever system I can have in common with people, with some exceptions (no privacy-antagonistic garbage like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat, etc, and nothing immature like RCS).