No need for a zinger, every single one of your examples presumes falsely that iMessage provides a unique service that isn’t available elsewhere, a fact you yourself have already admitted isn’t true. Further, you seem to believe iMessage itself is of some critical value to society such that the absence of its availability to others is of sufficient pain so as to justify the violation of the concept of ownership, but you do this without justification.
What it seems to boil down to is entitlement. You feel entitled to this product because it’s common. That’s a wild violation of the social contract and demonstrates a thoroughly unconsidered approach to how society handles the reward of novel ideas and if normalized would utterly kill innovation and ruin the very things you seem to care about.
So you’re faced with a choice; let Apple continue to control iMessage, or give up on the idea of rewarding innovation. You don’t get both, despite your apparent belief that you are entitled to the works of others.
Funny that back in the day Apple reverse-engineered MS office formats to make Mac software that could open Microsoft documents [1]. Sounds like you and them want to prevent anyone from doing what they did when they were a smaller growing company. Kind of ironic, huh?
> your examples presumes falsely that iMessage provides a unique service
You know that anti-trust laws apply to all kinds of anti-competitve situations and not just monopolies on a unique good, right? Things like building walled gardens and buying up the competition can fall into this category.
> violation of the concept of ownership
There's nothing sacred about current ideas of ownership. They changes over time. It used to be that peasants and women and children were property and kings owned all the land. Intellectual property rights have changed. We compromise ownership rights with things like imminent domain, property taxes, zoning and libraries. Why do you assume that a messaging protocol should be owned the same way as other property?
> but you do this without justification
The root of this issue is that people are unsettled with the direction big tech has taken, concentrated in so few companies, they way they embrace and extend, weaponize the legal system, lobby politicians, profit off people's privacy, attention and well being, etc. Governments are taking action because this is what people want. That's how the world works.
Do you assume that people are supposed to adhere to your principals when they are unhappy with what big tech is doing? This is all new, why would you assume that the rules shouldn't be adjusted for new situations?
> You feel entitled to this product because it’s common
This isn't just me and this isn't just this product. It's much bigger than that. People are unhappy with the direction big tech is going. In general they are exploiting old rules with new technology. You're not providing any answers here.
> violation of the social contract
The social contract is not guaranteed to stay the same for you or anyone else. It evolves when there are significant changes. Things like the bubonic plague, the printing press, the new world, the industrial revolution, large scale farming and container ships and other things all drove significant societal changes, some good and some not so good. The amount and pace of change due to the internet and mobile computing is unprecedented. Stuff like this prompts changes to the social contract, in an attempt to fix problems. The social contract is always changing, every generation there are tweaks.
The people who wanted to keep slavery legal said the same thing you're saying - it's not fair to violate the social contract. Well sometimes that's the right thing to do.
> if normalized would utterly kill innovation
Wouldn't open protocols tend to encourage innovation, like what happened with the internet and open source software? Instead of these companies milking profits for years because of network effects and their ability to lock out the competition wouldn't it be better if switching costs were lowered? Wouldn't that create a lot of possibilities for alternatives, and lower prices, and a better balance between these big companies and the rest of society? That's what people want.
Innovation is not Apple reverse-engineering MS Office formats then later using the legal system to stop others from doing the same thing.
What is it that you are afraid of? Do you think these big companies can't compete if they had to open some of their protocols? Do you ever worry that a few big tech companies have carved up the world and will stifle anything or anyone that gets in the way of their profits?
So in other words, you want to benefit from your own ownership, but strip good ideas from others because you want them? Hypocritical, shortsighted, and even more selfish than I initially thought.
…or you would be if you actually believed any of this. Of course you don’t in any meaningful sense, otherwise you would live substantially differently, to the point that even using HN would be impossible. So it’s just hateful, selfish rhetoric then. It costs nothing to you to write these completely unsubstantiated ideas on the Internet, but it would cost you everything you enjoy to actually implement.
It’s abundantly clear you’ve never considered any of this before, and have zero conception of the consequences of what you’re suggesting. HN wouldn’t exist, your job wouldn’t exist, nor would whatever you do for fun, the main ways food is delivered to your grocery stores, clean water into your home… nothing you value would operate if we eschewed basic ownership concepts such as what your suggestions here would require.
You claim to want to return us to the stone age, so forgive me if I in no way believe you.
I presented all that detail - philosophical justifications, legal precedents, court rulings, new laws, how the social contract and concepts of ownership have changed historically to address conflicts between new technology and old rules, how open standards foster innovation as opposed to letting companies manipulate the legal system to maintain profits, and how even Apple themselves did such things in the past.
But you know, without even addressing any of that, you have changed my mind! You just kept repeating the same things about ownership and entitlement, and that making changes was all my crazy idea. You even pointed out a couple times that I was thinking thoughts I didn't know I had.
I had no idea that hacker news would cease to exist if we mandated open protocols for big tech messaging. I don't see how that's related, but it must be, you said so. I'm surprised hacker news made it as far they did with all the open protocols that already exist. We'd be so much better off if CERN never opened the http protocol. Just like how mandating telephone network interoperability decades ago will destroy that industry. Any day now I'm sure.
All of those people and their concerns about big tech, and all of those countries passing new laws about big tech, I just saw one about Japan cracking down on app store monopolies, they must all be wrong. Because those companies own that stuff, like you said. Those who want choice are wrong. All of those people and governments must be hateful and selfish like me. We should let those big companies do what they want. These companies got big first and that entitles them to continue to control how most of us communicate, censuring us with their algorithms, etc. No big deal, it's not like communication is important to people. Too bad for those other companies that weren't in the right place at the right time, they don't have a moat or a enough lawyers and lobbyists to protect themselves. The printing press showed us how inconsequential communication revolutions are, just the whole reformation and enlightenment happening afterwards, no big deal. And what's with these new copyright laws at the time? If you own a book you should be able to copy it! Rules are rules and can't be changed. If we make any changes to mandate open protocols we'll utterly kill innovation, just like you said. The success of the everything built on the open internet and OSS proves that. It'll be another stone age if we keep that up, like you said.
Why didn't I see this before? Maybe I think too much, that must be my problem. Who needs logic or historical context to understand this stuff when emotional words like kill and hate and destroy carry much more weight and make so much more sense. So insightful. The current order is paramount, no matter how the world changes. I never knew how reassuring it was to be a reactionary and just dig in and ignore everything to the contrary, sure that I'm always right. I like this feeling of not having to challenge my preconceived notions, or explain myself. It's comfortable.
Over and over again you play this game of “hide the ball” where you respond as if you’re advocating for the subsumption of Apple’s iMessage product, then flip over to responding as if you merely are here to advocate for an open messaging protocol. My responses have always addressed the former, and ignore the latter, as the latter is an uninteresting and wholly obvious concept.
Should people be able to agree on a shared and open protocol for communication? Yes. Should the US government nationalize iMessage? No.
What it seems to boil down to is entitlement. You feel entitled to this product because it’s common. That’s a wild violation of the social contract and demonstrates a thoroughly unconsidered approach to how society handles the reward of novel ideas and if normalized would utterly kill innovation and ruin the very things you seem to care about.
So you’re faced with a choice; let Apple continue to control iMessage, or give up on the idea of rewarding innovation. You don’t get both, despite your apparent belief that you are entitled to the works of others.