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Gaim Speaks Out on MSN Ban
joejg writes "As FootNotes is reporting, the developers at Gaim have responded to the ban Microsoft is placing upon users of third-party clients accessing the MSN protocol. It appears that starting October 15th I will not be able to talk to my MSN friend in South Korea." Gaim's site is more optimistic, saying they may still be able to connect, only without a license to do so.
I don't understand why people are all pissy about this.
Microsoft built a private system for communication, they allowed/tolerated anyone connecting to the network with any compatible client up to this point.
MS, obviously, incurs a cost for maintaining this network/service. They have also been at the forefront of any legal liability for activity on the service. The chat rooms may be virtual, but the computers and bandwidth they use are quite real. They are now seeking to fix these two problems by:
1. Limiting who can connect and how
2. Probably charging a fee for third party clients
If you think this is a bad thing for MS to be doing then let me ask you this:
Do you allow just anyone to walk in to your home unannounced, without permission and do whatever they want? Why should MS (or the cable or telephone company) be any different? Private property is private property.
If the government thinks the property would be better used in the public interest, they can condemn the property and pay a fair and reasonable price for it as compensation.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
As is many times the case, whatever protocol MS decides to come up with will eventually be reverse engineered and incorporated into a later release. We know this from CIFS (Samba). They can't win. They might be a step ahead because it's their code, but its nothing to worry about. The people at gaim will figure it out. I have faith in them.
I think one could argue that this is a beginning step to eventually charge for the service. Initially, the Messenger has an open network to encourage alternative clients to increase use in their battle to unseat Instant Messenger. Now that MSN has it's own foothold, it seems they are going to shun what helped make them popular. I wonder, too, if this has anything to so with the fact that so many alternative OS users access the MSN network via the alternative client software.
A possible method to block out other 'rogue' clients which was used by AIM for example, is to have the 'challenge' a random number/offset, and the 'response' being the value in the executable at that offset. Hence the only way to connect is to have a copy of the entire executable, any 3rd party clients would need a copy of this and may be breaking some 'DMCA crap' in doing so.
Of course, another method is to just use PKI, but then extracting the key out of the MSN client for use in login may not be seen as a breach of copyright/other rights/DMCA crap etc.
I.O.U One Sig.
GAIM ON!
It's difficult sometimes, but this is yet another reason that anyone who can, should move to Jabber posthaste.
The realm of those who "can" (ie: people that are able to leave their current instant messenger for something like Jabber) has gone from very slim to very wide, thanks to Gaim - Gaim is a hell of an IM client, and it provides a great bridge from the current proprietary world of IM, to the way it ought to be - decentralized, and based on open standards, just like email is now. Imagine if email wasn't a universal, open standard, like it is now [insert stupid spam joke here] - imagine what an open IM standard could do for IM's usefulness...
The Free desktop that Just Works
What about:
Lots of people run multiple message systems. Setting up an extra account to bypass those petty limitations really isn't THAT hard. I know it would be nice if more people opted for an open standard like Jabber, but unless South Korea has some kind of weird nationwide ban on using anything besides MSN, I don't see what the big deal is.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
MS did NOT build a private system for communication. This is NOT a BBS, or a network. Or a service. This is a piece of software that uses a P2P communication protocol. MS incurs no cost to "maintain this network/service". The only costs they incur are in the maintenance and improvement of thier client. Just like MS Office.
The house analogy is flawed. The MSN clients that are being denied access to are NOT hosted at MS, nor is there a central server at MS managing them. This is pure P2P.
Telephone and cable companies, OTOH, are very relevant examples. Not very good ones for the point that you are trying to make. The telephone companies are specifically REQUIRED to allow people who are not thier customers to connect to people that are, as well as lease out thier spare capacity. The cable companies are specifically required to share thier capacity.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
I read on bugtraq that one of the anonymous sites had to change the client after federal pressure to provide a back door.
Could this be related? Could M$FT be making some changes for "Patriot Act" related requests that makes 3rd party clients incompatable?
Or am I just getting really paranoid =)
is that people think nothing of the power they give to a third party when they agree to use private and centralized systems such as AIM, or MSN. These systems change often, and with unpublished protocol specifications, interoperability is a mere hack that can be broken at the whim of the company.
What we really need is some sort of Jabber based universal chat system for example. (Or, without trying to start a holy war, maybe we can avoid excessive markup and not use XML).
I use Fire on OS X, and I can interface with both Jabber and AIM. Often I'll set my away message on AIM to: "Download Trillion or Fire to talk to me on the superior Jabber network."
Or... I know! How about a nix `talk` revival!
Give it a go.
As of 2000, Microsoft has been bundling MSN Messenger with Windows XP. It is naive to think that they aren't charging the customer for it.
They're moving MSN Messenger exclusively to a new protocol and requiring a license for everyone else . So no, it's not just a matter of being on the newer protocol, it's a matter of dealing with a license written by MS lawyers. *added by me to clarify the quote
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Before this ends up causing us more trouble than we need, please note that when Slashdot said we are optimistic that we can connect without a license, that is far from our plans.
As stated on the site, it may be possible for people to find a way to connect without a license in the future, but if this is something that will cause us legal problems, we will NOT do it. We will, however, look into other options, such as acquiring a license from Microsoft, depending on the requirements for a license.
If we cannot use it legally, we will likely drop support.
Thank you.
Please don't spread FUD.
We will be contacting them for a license. Did you actually read what we posted?
"They still encourage clients to connect to their network, so with any luck, we can work something out."
Don't comment on how we're doing things wrongly until you find out what we're doing.
Java Anonymous Proxy was backdoored by Court order. Here is a link.
Help fight continental drift.
Let me get this straight... They're stopping the development of OutlookExpress, InternetExplorer won't be available for download any more and now they're seriously limiting who can connect to MSN Chat?
:)
Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming!
I will post an update later clarifying this.
I have said all along that it's Microsoft's servers, and they can do what they wish. However, they are making a point to tell people that they are willing to work with all third party clients to connect. They just want to formalize an agreement between MSN and the clients. This may not be a bad thing at all, depending. It may also be a really bad thing. We just don't know yet, and we have th same information everybody else does.
As usual, the majority of the users on Slashdot decided to react before researching. Guys, if you don't have MSN support down the road, then it's gone. People can switch clients. It's really not a big deal, especially with clients like Gaim, Trillian, and Fire available. Leave the worrying and stuff to us. We will be doing all we can to keep MSN support in, but really, it's just a protocol. One I happen to really like, but it's just a protocol. Don't yell at Microsoft for this. They have every right to make this decision, and it may not even be a bad one.
Modding that one up shows a major failure of the moderation system.
FREE??? Hardly! Microsoft is forcing people to upgrade, (the old version will stop working), and those fools who do will really get screwed by the new EULA - From this article "By clicking on the new agreement, users promise to pay for future upgrades and to acquire future chargeable upgrades whether they're wanted or unwanted." You agree to pay for upgrades, and the upgrade price isn't even stated (or limited!)
Free now, but by clicking you agree to pay whatever they demand later!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Like maybe looking into securing their own software first?
Here, let's look through a quick timeline:
1994: People laugh at the GoodTimes virus, because everyone knows viruses can't spread through email!
1995: Word macro viruses first created, and now viruses are easier to write than ever before. Meanwhile, Microsoft has plenty of time to figure out how to prevent them, especially since their users hardly ever use macros in the first place, and especially not to, say, destroy the Windows registry or something.
1996: Macro viruses spread to the extent that Microsoft distributes them as well--unwittingly, we hope.
1997: Word '97 released; the dawn of VBA viruses.
1998: With over 1,000 word macro viruses out there, it's worth making virus scanners for them!
1999: Melissa word macro virus spreads over email and infects Word thanks to Microsoft; as they mention, if you don't use Outlook, you're safe. If you do use Outlook, you might get infected without ever looking at the attachment yourself; previewing it may be enough.
2000: The love bug virus spreads over email thanks to Microsoft Outlook, and causes an estimated $8.7 billion in damage.
2001: Code Red spreads, attacking Windows NT and 2K. Sircam emails itself absolutely everywhere, again thanks to Microsoft.
2002: Klez and Nimda spread.
2003: You guessed it, even still yet more viruses spreading faster than ever, thanks to Windows, Outlook, Word, blah, blah, blah.
So what has Microsoft done? Well maybe by securing their MSN network that'll stop e-mail viruses from... ahh, nevermind, they don't give a fuck about their customers. Otherwise, they could have stopped most of this back in 1996 at the latest. And remember, security is top priority over there now. Ha.
I'm just glad that I don't pay to get infected, like so many of their other customers. Instead, I just have to deal with the spam and network traffic that they're responsible for. But at least the files on my Linux desktop are safe!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
This really reminds me of the whole netscape / IE thing, except this time they are taking on the IM side of things.
Honestly i have to say that MSN messenger is a great tool. The new additions it has added make total sense,
video conferencing, audio conversation, games.... to me these are totally great things to implement and make a whole lot of sense.
Hey wait a second... video, audio, games,, all through MSN? Is there some sort of trend here? Do MS have plans to continue pushing content onto MSN exclusive setup? If they do to me this is really really dangerous, think about the critical mass they will be able to pull in no time at all. MSN will continue to ship with windblows, no doubt about that.
Perhaps I am subscribing to a conspiracy theory here, but to me it makes sense. MS has pulled stuff like this in the past and will continue to pull stuff like this in the future. Unless they keep dominating, shareholders get angry.
To me the only way this will go away would be to make a better, open alternative, at the moment there isn't.
I actually don't know anyone who uses MSN. And most of my friends aren't very computer-savvy. Everyone I know uses AIM, simply because it got their first. They all signed up for AIM accounts in high school 5-6 years ago before MSN existed (or before it was big anyway), and so they've all kept them now. The people at my college pretty much exclusively use AIM too -- it's assumed you have an AIM account, 'cause otherwise you won't be able to talk to anyone, since that's what pretty much every single person at the college uses.
Really I was under the impression that nobody used MSN/Yahoo/Jabber/whatever. But I suppose this might vary regionally.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This type of thing is exactly the reason I have de-microsoftized my personal computers. I am sick of the stupid way Microsoft tries to make everything they own into this elite club for Windows/Microsoft users only; the moldy puds that they are.
The friends I use IMs to communicate with mostly use AIM or Yahoo. I think I only have 2 friends that use Microsoft's messenger, so I really don't care that much since it will impact me little. However, I still think Microsoft doing this is like Panasonic creating a phone that only accepts calls from other Panasonic phones. It's completely stupid.
1) If using MS' service without using the official client is 'freeloading', I still think that it's in MS' interest that we freeload off them, and not one of their competitors. I use GAIM pretty much exclusively, but most if not all of the people on my buddy list use Messenger under Windows. I add a small amount of value to their experience of the service :-), and this makes them marginally more likely to use it (and hence see the ads etc.) whenever they want to talk to me.
2) I suppose an alternative for those who just want to connect would be to try to run Messenger under Wine. I gave it a cursory try, it didn't work straight away and I moved on to something more pressing, but has anyone else tried this with more success?
Weren't MSN whining about AOL banning them when they needed the subscribers? But now they have millions of subscribers, it's apparantly alright to ban others.
It's possible they don't...
I haven't actually seen anyone mention this yet, so, why not :-)
MSN Messenger is one of the pieces of 'bundled middleware' that is continuing to cause Microsoft legal troubles under antitrust laws... the last I heard things were moving forward in Europe to do something about it.
If there is ever going to be an antitrust ruling about messenger, I'm pretty sure this will make the ruling harder on Microsoft... maybe they'll have to give $200 million worth of software to schools instead of $150 million :-/
(I personally dislike messenger. Virtually everyone I know uses it simply because it came with Windows. This is the sort of thing antitrust laws are supposed to protect against...)
There's the barren wasteland known as ICQ, there's aim, there's the ever so buggy yahoo. And a few more out there... I use trillian which works on multiple networks and doesn't support ads. So I don't really care which system I talk over, and I'm sure many people here use multiple systems. It's not like people will be so desperate to stay with MSN that they won't be willing to leave it. What would be really nice though is if Trillian and Gaim go together and came up with a compatible encrypted messaging standard. Then I could just get all my friends to move over to one of them.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
The problem with MSN, AIM, Y!IM and so forth is that they are centralised. One entity both controls and pays for the hub of the service without which the service will not function. Obviously they must somehow recoup costs, which they usually do via advertising in the official client.
What we need is a decentralised IM system. We techically already have one in the form of Jabber, but noone uses it for reasons I can't be sure of. I suspect the major problem is the high barrier of entry: you must either use the jabber.com/jabber.org servers (centralisation, again) or install your own Jabber server, which is where things get tricky.
In order to run your own Jabber server, you must have a box somewhere preferably with an always-on connection and static IP. This box must be Internet-accessible, at least on the ports Jabber uses.
Had Jabber been invented around the same time as email and news, ISPs would no doubt run Jabber servers on behalf of their customers as they do with USENET news servers and SMTP servers. Unfortunately, it's now far too late in the game for this to happen. Convincing one ISP to do this would be nearly impossible, so convincing the majority to do it will never happen.
As with most new things on the Internet today, it seems like peer-to-peer is the only answer. The clients must also be the servers, and it should be no harder than simply running the program. Designing an efficient peer-to-peer system for instant messaging which works behind NAT gateways sounds tricky, but not impossible. Is anyone working on this already?