I think one of the underlying issues is that many are now going to be hesitant to even bother with Beeper Mini anymore. I don’t think there is going to be a high tolerance for this game of cat and mouse from the end user perspective
I also don’t think goading apple is going to do much here either. Regardless of the current feelings around apple’s walled garden, they are not going to suddenly keel over and give up on locking out these commercialized attempted to bypass their security
All Apple needs to do is send a few scary C&D letters from their army of lawyers and this will be done. If they run the infrastructure for imessage, I'm sure there's something in a ToS somewhere that talks about spoofing device IDs and unauthorized use of their services blah blah Apple's sole discretion.
In theory I love it but in reality it'll be dead soon as Apple has too much to gain from the walled garden they've spent decades and billions building and defending.
If it was obviously bogus (think SLAPP territory) then that would make sense, but I don't think it is as likely to get their attention if the offending behavior can reasonably be classified as a potential violation of the CFAA.
(Whether it is a violation or not, I certainly couldn't say, but my point being that there is a reasonable good faith interpretation of the behavior that would not raise eyebrows.)
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. In other words, "Sue somebody when they criticize you, hoping the legal expense will make them stop." This isn't exactly the same scenario, but would be similar (in the poster's hypothetical) in that it was a lawsuit meant to intimidate rather than to seek justice.
The problem is that Apple has valid case, because these guys are making money with the app, by using Apple’s private backend services without permission.
Eh, just being really big isn't going to be enough by itself. Apple has just a bit over half the market, they're definitely not a monopoly. The gov't won't get involved.
Beeper isn’t using Apple services (at least not in Beeper Mini, their new e2ee iMessage client), and thus is not subject to any Terms of Service from Apple.
They’re publishing client software, which is protected expression provided it’s original and doesn’t infringe any trademarks or copyrights.
The end users are the ones potentially violating the ToS by connecting to Apple APIs.
Apple has no basis to tell Beeper to cease and desist from the publication of software that it is legal to publish.
They could take it the other way and start suspending accounts that use a spoofed device id. For me that's my main hesitation, I don't want to have my apple accounts suspended for violation of ToS.
Apple doesn’t even need to do that. They can send the DOJ after Beeper.
Many people hear about a reverse entering exception in the DMCA and call it a day. But it’s not that simple.
Reverse engineering is allowed for a very narrow case, namely interoperability between two software programs (for which you have a license granting you legal permission to use), as defined in paragraph 4 of Section 103(f).
The DMCA decidedly does not permit you to use reverse engineering to package someone else's software or service and sell it.
Jurisprudence also established that EULAs that explicitly prohibit reverse engineering supersede the exception granted in the DMCA, see Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, 320 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2003)[0]
Apple has explicitly forbidden reverse engineering in their macOS license agreement[1], the iOS license agreement[2], and the Apple Media Terms of Service[3].
Agreement with those terms is necessary to reach the parts that need reverse engineering.
There’s also the matter that the pypush repository seems to include Apple’s proprietary code, which wouldn’t fall under reverse engineering.
Worst of all, even if reverse engineering was allowed, it still doesn't allow you to connect to other people's servers. The Computer Fraud Abuse Act of 1986 explicitly prohibits unauthorized access to computer systems, and the DMCA exception doesn't supersede the CFAA.
A lot of states have criminal statutes that mirror the CFAA.
So, at this point, it wouldn’t be inconceivable for Apple to try and get the DOJ involved.
Yeah I was super excited to try it out last week, but then it went down and I didn't receive important messages from my wife (didn't even realize the app was down).
I probably won't try it again until it has a few months of uninterrupted service.
Right now Beeper Mini only works without registering your phone number, and I'd be ok if that's all I ever got. In fact, I hope they make number registration optional if they do get that working again.
I still have my Macbook if/when Beeper is cut off again.
It definitely might be better at the moment without registering your number as then you won't have messages disappear into nothingness if the service goes down again.
I missed a few messages when I switched from iPhone to Android because I hadn't deregistered my number from Apple.
I don't think I'd use my existing Apple ID for this -- probably easy enough to create a new one with a new email.
"We’ve made Beeper free to use. Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again. If you want to keep supporting us, feel free to leave the subscription on ."
> We currently offer a 7 day free trial, afterwards there is a $1.99 per month subscription. Beeper Mini is available to download today with no waitlist.
That doesn't sound free to me. Am I missing something?
I agree that right now, most people shouldn't give this a try. But at some point it will reach a steady state.
Either Beeper manages to make a client that is truly indistinguishable from old iPhones, and gets to exist for a few years, or Apple somehow manages to patch all existing iPhones in a way that makes it impossible to spoof (not sure if that's possible with old hardware that don't have a secure enclave).
> It really isn’t any better than SMS anyway, so I put the value at $0.
Depends on what you do with it. You can send much higher-quality photos and videos over iMessage than SMS/MMS. You can also do things like play games (chess, for example) entirely inside iMessage.
If you're just sending short messages of plain text, yeah, it's not much of an improvement.
Seems a silly distinction. So you're saying Beeper could make paper clips, sell them to you for $2/m, and then give you Beeper Mini for free and you'd consider it free?
Imo the only thing that should be done here is only valid Apple IDs should be able to use this service. Then paying customers are the ones using it. Problem solved, right?
Right, I know Windows isn't free. My point is, it's the same situation with OS X, and with iMessage. Just because OS X is made by the hardwae developers doesn't change it. Windows still isn't free on Surface laptops, believe me that the OS team gets a cut of hardware sales.
Maybe it seems confusing because OS X isn't sold as a standalone product, but consider how Apple cracks down on Hackintoshes. They definitely consider it stealing.
Hackintosh isn't cracked down on. Commercial use of it is. I had an osx snow leopard partition I hackintoshed and I was trying old HDDs and it booted on my netbook. Most of the times it doesn't work is based on broken APIs or changes that aren't related to osx. 10.8 or 10.7 was the first free osx and the first one that included iMessage.
The difference is that my device isn't incompatible, Apple just doesn't want me to run iMessage on it. They don't just not care, they're actively blocking companies that released clients.
There’s iMessage the app and then there’s the proprietary Apple Push Notification Service. that Apple use in its implementation.
The iMessage app is incompatible with non Apple devices - there is no iMessage app available period outside of those that run on Apple operating systems.
The APN is not licensed for “public” third party usage unless permission is explicitly and expressly granted by Apple.
So yes, your non Apple device is 100% incompatible with iMessage, and unauthorized usage of the underlying APNs is illegal under the Apple Terms of Service.
> You are the one asking if iMessage is “free” (as in beer) software.
No, i was asking if it was free in respect to beeper, because the beeper not being free is literally the comment i replied to. I feel like you're looking at my comment in isolation, but expecting me to keep your comment in context - which also seems to be lacking context.
graphe: “iMessage is reliable, ‘free’ and encrypted. Beeper mini is unreliable, paid, and encrypted. I wouldn’t recommend it anymore to my Android friends.“
You: “Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?”
Not sure where the confusion is. Seems from the quoted text you were expressly asking if iMessage was free or not.
If not, what is the “it” you were referring to in your reply? Your initial response did not seem to compare cost to beeper.
I was definitely referring to iMessage. I was just saying that the conversation is about Beeper and iMessage. The comparison was taken place in the quote you posted.
Anyway, i'm just saying that the mints on a hotel pillow are "free" too, but if you cannot acquire them without paying for another service or hardware, they're hardly free.
Best i can give iMessage is that it's complementary. Please correct me if i'm wrong, but almost no one gets iMessage without paying Apple for an associated product to gain access. It's a mint on your pillow.
I dunno, it just feels some silly definition or thought experiment to define away the money missing from my wallet.
I'll concede all day long that i may be using the wrong definition, that's definitely not my objection. However free is pretty simple. Entrance fees or any price blocking you from the "free" thing is in any practical sense, hardly free. At least imo.
A lot of things are free if you ignore what you paid for in the first place.
Out of curiosity, how would you even define what is free and what isn't? Lets say a snickers bar released an April Fools edition where you paid the standard price, but only for the wrapper. The snickers bar inside is free. Or the silly paper clip example i gave, with beeper mini. Is there some definition that you would see apt to describe these as practically (as in, how people would interpret them) not being free?
They said they made ‘beeper’ free, not ‘beeper mini’ free. Unless they combined them since the last post. But maybe they should say beeper mini is free.
I also don’t think goading apple is going to do much here either. Regardless of the current feelings around apple’s walled garden, they are not going to suddenly keel over and give up on locking out these commercialized attempted to bypass their security