Have you ever received C&D for your work? There's a big problem of OSS projects being TOS-trolled by billion dollar companies and having to shut down out of fear.
You know, your question is very interesting: no, we didn't.
Anecdote: we reverse engineered several Microsoft products and before Microsoft Windows 7 launch we were contacted by Microsoft QA and they offered us support to check if our software was compatible with it! BTW, our software was installed in millions of computers around the globe. For example, Trend Micro used our software for supporting their antivirus in Outlook Express and Windows Mail.
Our Deviare Hooking Engine [1] was eclipsed when Microsoft Detours [2] turned to an MIT license and free. Even when our was superior in several ways. This is why I wrote that you should continuously fight for "adversarial interoperability".
I agree. After receiving a C&D from Meta for my OSS project (along with some other maintainers from some other projects) I strongly believe adversarial interop is a basic digital right that is required to fulfil the broken or revoked promises of web 2.0
If you know anybody that can help please let me know because I want to get back to maintaining the project.
Did you contact specific organizations such as FSF, EFF, etc and/or specialized lawyers? There were well known people defending itself or being plaintiffs. For example, https://cr.yp.to/export.html
Meta has done this before to insta and android devs.
Some never came back to their projects. It causes insane amount of stress and depression amongst the devs I've spoken with who went through the same thing.
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 be the ones in violation. Publishing original software is protected expression.
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.
"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.
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
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.
Yeah, and when exactly should everyone expect to stop seeing DMCA take down notices that didn't abuse the system, willingful harm creators, and an appeals process that is an unfunny joke?
Until then, it doesn't matter what the law says. They will abuse it, because PROFITS.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
