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There is no judge on the planet who will take the position that a 3rd party is allowed to circumvent a service’s security controls and TOS to build a monetized
by ethanbond 3y ago
There is no judge on the planet who will take the position that a 3rd party is allowed to circumvent a service’s security controls and TOS to build a monetized product using a backend that neither they nor their users pay for.
Absolutely zero chance.
- madeofpalk 3y agoImagine reverse engineering AWS keys, using AWS services for free, reselling them, and then trying to sue AWS when they fix the security hole.
- smashah 3y agoMaybe lack of imagination? There are handsomely VC funded successful startups that do exactly this in banking, for example Teller: https://jobs.lever.co/teller/ebf503af-bb82-49fb-97bd-6d9bcbb403e2 https://jobs.lever.co/teller/ebf503af-bb82-49fb-97bd-6d9bcbb...
- ethanbond 3y agoThis is not “exactly this.” Teller is giving users additional access modalities to services they’re already separately “paying for.” The directly analogous format would be if Teller was allowing you to store your money at Bank of America but Teller was preventing BOA from collecting revenue from you.
- smashah 3y agoNo. It's like if teller allowed you to make a boa account as well. As if this one small feature makes it some egregious criminal activity. Many beeper mini users already have apple devices + Eric in his post said he's willing to pay some reasonable fee. Nobody pays for iMessage directly.
- ethanbond 3y agoNobody pays for bank accounts directly either. Oh Eric said he’s willing to pay? Guess that counts as a deal then!
- GeekyBear 3y agoHowever, there is every chance that circumventing a service's security controls is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
- rootusrootus 3y agoThat's something I've been wondering about myself. People have run afoul of the CFAA with less egregious actions than these. I guess the Beeper guys talked to their lawyer at least, before taking this course of action.
- smashah 3y agoThis type of project is protected from CFAA by Van Buren. AFAIK the only untested precedent is ToS violation.