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by GeekyBear 908 days ago
> I don't think neither Beeper nor Apple is doing anything illegal here.

Beeper could definitely be prosecuted by the Feds.

Aaron Swartz is probably the most famous example of someone being prosecuted using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was merely accessing a web server without permission and wasn't even trying to turn a profit.
1 comments
lxgr 908 days ago
The question is: Would they really?

There are many instances of "adversarial interoperability" (somebody else already mentioned screen scraping of online banking for budget management tools already in a different thread), and I haven't seen the CFAA being thrown at the responsible parties all that often.

I'd be quite curious to see precedent being set here, but I doubt it'll happen. Apple has much more to lose than to gain from that:

They can play cat and mouse on the tech side as long as they want, but with all the attention and scrutiny of a lawsuit, I could see a small chance of Apple ending up having to open up their service for interoperability.

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GeekyBear 908 days ago
> The question is: Would they really?

If they're willing to prosecute some kid who wasn't even trying to make a profit off of his access to a web server, why wouldn't they prosecute a company for trying to sell hacked access to someone else's servers?

Also, there have been many prosecutions under this law. Aaron's case is just the most infamous example.

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prmoustache 907 days ago
This is totally different.

Beeper is trying to use an api to send message to users. They are not getting nor trying to get shell access to apple servers.

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GeekyBear 907 days ago
No, Beeper is using Apple's servers without authorization, in the same way that Swartz was accessing web servers without authorizaton.
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prmoustache 907 days ago
Not really in the same way. And you forget that what is the most important in a prosecution is the intent.

Beeper intent is to serve both Apple customers and non Apple customers to exchange messages securely. Its goal is interoperability, not stealing, or blindly using resources it doesn't own.

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GeekyBear 907 days ago
> you forget that what is the most important in a prosecution is the intent

The intent is to sell hacked access to somebody else's servers.

If I sell hacked access to Microsoft's Office 365 servers, I can claim to have any motivations I like. It's still a crime.

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