Submitted 11 months ago by Bebo@literature.cafe to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.androidauthority.com/beeper-vs-apple-us-senators-letter-doj-3395333/
US senators have urged the DOJ to probe Apple’s alleged anti-competitive conduct against Beeper.
Why would they need to look into Apple’s conduct here? Investigate Beeper for CFAA violations since they cracked into Apple’s internal APIs and ignored large chunks of their ToS in the process.
Of course Apple is going to shut down unauthorized access to their messaging system. They’d lose all customer trust instantly if they didn’t.
Reverse engineering for interoperability is legal, is it not? This is interoperability.
Australian legal case on Reverse engineering.
ToS have almost universally been shown to be unenforceable in court. I’m also not sure what the hell you mean by customers would lose trust. It’s not as if they had access to information they shouldn’t, all they did was reverse engineer the protocol. They still had to have an account and a login and they still only had access to the data that account should have. There’s nothing to lose trust over the only thing beeper was doing was emulating being an iMessage client
More like senators are trying to make another show trial of BS they really have no plans to do anything about, and probably shouldn’t be getting in the middle of, to make it seem like they are being productive in some way.
Answer me yes or no, If I stand in this room and use my phone can I send a message to your phone? — some senator to Tim Apple.
Tim: “No,… because I blocked your number.”
Yeah good luck with that. It’s very much a dick move but I don’t think you’ll have success arguing in court that Apple is obligated to open their personal messaging system to competitors.
You’d have much better luck arguing that they need to open up SMS use to other apps, and that that they need to allow sideloading and other app stores. These are the REAL anticompetitive concerns.
Man… Some of the Apple fans in this thread are making me lose faith in humanity. They have no idea how technology works, but they are defending an objectively shitty behavior from the world’s most wealthy corporation based on… I don’t know… their feelings?
I wonder if this case affects the tug of war Apple has with the EU about opening gatekeeping services up. I wonder if it occurs to some power that be that they might use this case (no matter how stupid it is) to argue Apple is a gatekeeper and has to open up iMessage at some point.
Likely won’t happen though since it’s not an EU problem really. The thing that’s more possible is that California or some other progressive-ish US state follows the EU’s lead in busting monopolies as they did with the GDPR, and does something about this in two decades.
SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
I don’t get it. iMessage is Apple’s service. Why are they obliged to open it up for everyone to use? Would it be nice? Yes, of course. Should Apple be legally required to open up access to their service?
Zak@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The US Federal Trade Commission puts it this way:
It further explains that “market power” means:
Emphasis added. What the government might argue in this case is that Apple has market power in the online message space because it preloads its own messaging app on its smartphones, which I believe enjoy a majority market share in the USA. One remedy the government could seek is requiring Apple to allow third parties to develop clients for its messaging service.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They aren’t excluding competitors. Anyone is free to write a cross platform messaging app that has blue bubbles in it. The preloading thing could be an issue if you can’t uninstall imessage. Otherwise it would follow the IE/edge ruling.
But we’ll see what the courts say.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They didn’t, someone made an App to interface with it. Trying to shut that down is anti-competitive.
btmoo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s also a huge security hole
btmoo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s not a public API. Hacking someone’s private API is already against law - charging $$ for it moreso.
kpw@kbin.social 11 months ago
Yes, they should be legally required to open up access to their service. No more walled gardens that hold a large number of users hostage.
GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
So by this thinking all cars should have compatible parts.
The world just ain’t that way bruh
holdthecheese@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You can argue that they’re unfairly using monopoly power. Same reason why MS was forced to allow windows to switch browsers.
whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Monopoly on what?
Mongostein@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
How would you argue that? There’s plenty of other options and iMessage falls back to MMS, which all phones are capable of.
akilou@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I think the problem is that it’s unnecessarily hardware locked. They shouldn’t have to “open it up” insofar as anyone can access it from whatever app like beeper is doing. But it’s only fair that they support other operating systems. They can still control it or even charge a fee to access it from other OSes.
Uglyhead@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wish this kind of thing was more spotlighted when Palm and Windows Phone developers were trying to use Google API’s to make apps for their OS’s and got shut down at every turn, eventually killing off the Palm and WP because of device lock-in.
I still miss what Palm could have been before Google bent them over a barrel with their massively anti-competitive bs.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When I message was announced they planned to bring it to other platforms. That died when they realized how much of a lock in it was
JoeCoT@kbin.social 11 months ago
Because their practices are anti-competitive. School kids are getting bullied for using Android phones because they're "green texters" in iMessage. But most importantly iMessage's connection with SMS causes all interaction to be very low quality images and videos. And when people complain to Tim Apple about the experience, his only response is "Get your grandma an iPhone". Our only saving grace is that the EU is requiring Apple to support RCS, which should solve these issues, except they'll probably find some new way to be anti-competitive about it.
Dippy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How is creating a proprietary service anti competitive? There are many other methods of messaging and Apple is not stoping anyone from using them.
Kids being bullied in school has nothing to do with being anti competitive.
DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 11 months ago
That’s a people problem, not a market-share problem. From experience, kids will always find something to bully others about — if it’s not the colour of the bubbles, it’s something else: the brand of shoes they wear, the suburb they live in, the sport they play (or don’t play). Bullies will do what they do.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Kids don’t use imessage, they’re on fucking discord
Maggoty@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If they’re going to default message service to it then yes.