US senators have urged the DOJ to probe Apple’s alleged anti-competitive conduct against Beeper.

  • jon@lemmy.tf
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    10 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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 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.

      • loki@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Apple reverse-engineered Office to release iWork. So Apple isn’t new to reverse-engineering others proprietary shit when it benefits them. something, something, history lesson, hmm…

        I don’t know laws in the US but my limited understanding in the case of Beeper is that its users are the ones that grant themselves unauthorized access to the Apple servers. Beeper is a tool that packages pypush to accomplish it. So Apple should sue all the Beeper users?

        As an example, there are tons of tools to exploit vulnerable systems in Linux. Metasploit is a penetration testing software and can execute exploits on old unpatched systems. I don’t think anyone is suing Metasploit developers for Computer Fraud and Abuse aCt. The users who use it are responsible for the access of unauthorized services and broken ToS.

        If Apple thinks Beeper users are exploiting its servers, they should patch them (which they did).

        Beeper did try to monetize it, so i’m not sure how it fairs but Beeper is not forcing anyone to gain unauthorized access. Beeper even welcomed Apple to audit Beeper mini code.

        And I’m sure Beeper has a legal team that analyzed these scenarios better than anyone of us. And Apple has sued companies for less. They’d have done it the moment the app landed on appstore. They could have crushed it before gaining any attention.

        Again, I have no idea how legal it is. I have both Apple and android devices and never use iMessage. But you gotta hand it to Beeper devs. That’s some old school hacker shit and I’m here for it.

        I guess we’ll have to wait and see.