[jonhohle]

iMessage infrastructure belongs solely to Apple. It’s a value add for people who hit their products. What is owed to people who are not their customers?

If you ran a business and provided a service to your paying customers, should you be forced to offer it gratis to anyone who wants to use it? That’s an absurd position.

[treyd]

You have to be an Apple customer to use Beeper Mini with iMessage. What's your point?

[cwillu]

> If you ran a business and provided a service to your paying customers, should you be forced to offer it gratis to anyone who wants to use it? That’s an absurd position.

Yes, it is absurd. It's a great strawman.

A more realistic option would be to say that Apple has to sell access to its infrastructure via the API its own app uses, at a cost allowing some reasonable profit; this would conveniently align with other court decisions regarding anti-competitive practices by incumbent providers with strong market positions.