4 ms·

What would they demand they cease doing? Publishing software? If the use of this software is against their rights in some way, the end users running it would

• graphe 3y ago
  This was tried by apple. https://www.engadget.com/apple-drops-its-lawsuit-against-a-manufacturer-of-i-phone-emulators-082100357.html https://www.engadget.com/apple-drops-its-lawsuit-against-a-m...
  • sneak 3y ago
    Emulation software isn’t wholly original as it needs firmware and software from the device so emulated. An iPhone emulator with no bootrom and no iOS isn’t very useful. An open source client for an API need not include any non-original works.
    • graphe 3y ago
      They are though. https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38534247 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38534247
      • rezonant 3y ago
        After digging in more I believe that is only done in that proof of concept. If that's the case then it's too bad they didn't go back and update the POC to avoid the need for the binary.
        • sprite 3y ago
          For the app it is probably just done server side.
    • captn3m0 3y ago
      There is a very useful iPhone emulator with no bootrom and no iOS: https://touchhle.org/ https://touchhle.org/ It targets games, so manages to be useful without having to emulate or re-implement the majority of the OS.
    • lxgr 3y ago
      Depends on whether you consider a private key an "original work": https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/albert.py#L16 https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/albert.py#L16 The situation seems very similar to the AACS key leak back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
      • comex 3y ago
        Note that a key cannot be copyrighted, but it can be considered a circumvention tool for access controls that protect other copyrighted works.
    • reallynattu 3y ago
      What are the potential legal and ethical ramifications for developers and users in using such emulation methods or accessing private APIs?
• p-e-w 3y ago
  > Publishing original software is protected expression. That means Jack Shit in a world where a lawsuit can ruin a person's life regardless of its legal merit, with zero consequences for the corporation that filed it even if it gets tossed out by a judge eventually. LPT: Live as if human/constitutional rights didn't exist. Because if push ever comes to shove, you will quite possibly find that they indeed don't exist in practice.
  • rezonant 3y ago
    But there are consequences. Even if the financial costs are not meaningful to a big company, the backlash created by such actions can have wide ranging implications, from lost sales to loss of the public mindshare, to attracting legislative attention.
    • smashah 3y ago
      We are in an age of shamelessness and self-interest. There's no story in the world that will get people to stop using services like Whatsapp or Instagram. The only thing stopping these big companies is potentially setting a legal precedent that interop projects are legal. They can potentially win such a case as it stands because the targets for their threats are few and far between. If we as digital humans want to solidify this digital right then we need to have a unified front against threats like this. That means we need to have an OSS union behind which companies and individuals can unify if a precedent setting case ever does come up
• __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Tell that to Alexey Pertsev.
• lxgr 3y ago
  One prominent counterexample to this thesis is DRM circumvention software, which regularly gets taken down via DMCA notices. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple even invokes that particular law.
  • berkes 3y ago
    "Section 1201 provides for felony liability for anyone commercially engaged in bypassing a DRM system: 5 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for a first offense." So it's even worse than the risk of being taken down. Way worse. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/drms-dead-canary-how-we-just-lost-web-what-we-learned-it-and-what-we-need-do-next https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/drms-dead-canary-how-w...
    • crystaln 3y ago
      iMessage is not DRM. It is not protecting IP.
      • Spoom 3y ago
        The component that tries to identify that you're accessing it from the right device isn't DRM? I don't think courts would agree with that.
        • LocalH 3y ago
          It's not done for the purposes of content protection/DRM. There may be other laws it falls under, but I don't think the DMCA is one.
          • lxgr 3y ago
            Interestingly, the reference implementation does seem to reference FairPlay, which is very much a copy prevention/anti-circumvention system (used for iTunes content, but also video encryption via HTML EME): https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/albert.py https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/albert.py Assuming that DMCA does not cover API authentication (i.e. preventing unauthorized third-party clients from being able to access a server-side API – and I really don't know if it does or doesn't!), I wonder what the implications are if the same mechanism is used for both DMCA-covered DRM mechanisms, but also non-covered other purposes. My intuition would be that it can't be good to "multi-purpose" a DRM tool from a DMCA enforcement point of view, but maybe that was never Apple's plan, and they just used the most secure attestation technology they had available on each platform, which for Intel Macs might just have been software-only FairPlay.
• smashah 3y ago
  Yes they demanded us to delete and stop working on all projects. At the time it seemed like a serious threat.