[nicce]

> Does it? This seems like a pretty textbook case of reverse engineering for interoperability.

The problem is that everything works through Apples private services, even if there is no DMCA things in the app. On top of that they are making business with that. Quite unfair use.

What if I use Amazon’s private APIs for running my cloud. Even share it to others and charge even money from it?

[stuartjohnson12]

Seems legitimate to me.

There's no reasonable case for trespass under the CCFA as proper credentials are being used and there's no intent to use that access to commit further crime.

You can't infringe on intellectual property of a server by making requests to it, that doesn't make sense. Any case there would be access violations under the CCFA which are already covered above.

The only real claim would be the intellectual property of the client app in the way that it forms requests and accepts responses which this system is undoubtedly based on the reverse engineering of. The only problem with that argument is that the DMCA includes a specific exemption for interoperability as fair use.

Note that simply building a new client app doesn't necessarily constitute fair use, but in this case the client app extends to a platform that is otherwise not supported. Seems a pretty obvious case for interoperability in my eyes.

"Fair" or "unfair", what is the crime? Your intuition pump doesn't include enough details to be useful, I don't understand it.

[nicce]

> "Fair" or "unfair", what is the crime? Your intuition pump doesn't include enough details to be useful, I don't understand it.

Beeper does not talk only to Apple devices but also to other Beeper clients. There is no authorization by Apple to use their backends, and they are not sharing any revenue from their business, while Apple funds all the million messages.

CCFA covers the value gain, should be less than 5000 in one year, what I doubt is happening here.

I am not even sure if they are authorized in any point, because they violate ToS. Technically they fake authorization by preventing to be something other than they are, and not authorized by the terms and conditions.

[AnthonyMouse]

> while Apple funds all the million messages.

A text message is, on the high side, 1000 bytes, so a million messages is <1GB. For reference paying $0.09/GB for bandwidth is considered a high price.

This is not a number which is literally zero, but it's a number which rounds to zero.