Comment on Beeper vs Apple battle intensifies: Lawmakers demand DOJ investigation - Android Authority
darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 6 months agoGenuinely 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 6 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 6 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 6 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?
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The websites in question getting crawled and indexed are generally open and available for anyone to browse. There are parts of the web that are gated off and require authentication and authorization to access. Imagine now that Google found a way to authenticate with your bank’s website and index your online banking portal. (It’s not a perfect analogy to what’s happening with Beeper, but I’m just using the one you laid out.)
In a similar way, iMessage as a service requires authentication and authorization to use. It is not open for anyone to use. Beeper is doing something to spoof or otherwise fool Apple into giving the client access. This is the part that’s illegal. And potentially not just “file a lawsuit” illegal but criminally so.
It doesn’t really matter why Apple doesn’t want Beeper or anyone else to use it. The fact that they simply don’t is all that matters.