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MSN Messenger Kickbans Third-Party IM Clients
No_Weak_Heart writes "As reported here back in August, October 15th is the day Microsoft set to ban third party clients from logging in to their IM service. This eWeek article notes that the day is upon us, and MS is offering few details about its progress in creating licensing agreements to continue access. The licensing issue was previously discussed here. And my copy of Fire cannot log in. Anyone else find their IM clients non-responsive?"
I have just tried gaim. Disconnects immediately with the error, 'Protocol not supported'.
You should've stayed logged in. Microsoft did not throw anyone out, they just forbid some people to come back when they leave. ;-)
;-)
I'll quote the BitlBee FAQ here about this matter:
Will MSN ever work again?
In theory: Yes. Gaim still works, so with some efforts those fixes should be portable to BitlBee. That's going to be quite a lot of work though.
Unfortunately Microsoft is threatening with the DMCA to anyone who touches "their protocol". Probably not a big issue, but certainly not something we want to have trouble with. Even though the local European/Dutch law allows reverse-engineering for interoperability, we don't feel like being banned from the USA, especially not by Microsoft.
Anyway, ATM backporting changes from Gaim would be a waste because the current IM-system used by BitlBee is about to be ditched in favour of something new/better, which means all the efforts put into a fix would be wasted. We know we've been saying this for ages, but this time we really mean it!
And as always, if you do feel like spending your time on this, go ahead and write a patch. We'll see what we can do. Let's hope DMCA doesn't prohibit our site to link to your patch. Oh, sorry, I promised to stop being paranoid eh?
ATM I don't feel like wasting my time on this, especially as long as they're still talking about these licenses. I can't imagine they won't cut off Gaim and other clients again soon. Why would anyone buy such a license right now if they can get on the network without one as well?
When Microsoft was fighting AOL, because AOL wouldn't let MSN use AIM servers for free, every Microsoft-fanatic was claiming that AOL was the bad guys.
Now that Microsoft is closing their own network, Microsoft fanatics are claiming that it is well within their right to choose who gets to use their free service
That's a flawed argument. Exactly how does it cost MS more money if you connect to them using trillian instead of msn messenger? The only thing you could sort of, kind of, argue is that messenger displays ads and trillian (pro) doesn't. But the mac version doesn't either, so are mac msn users in the wrong too then?
When I use MSN in windows, I see the ads, but I never ever click them or buy a product from the sites they mention. Am I a freeloader too? Should I uninstall MSN?
The reality is that MSN is a free network, with public access. Sure, it's not documented well, but it's documented well enough to be able to build chatclients for the MSN network.
Let's make a hypothetical case of another network service, http. How would you feel if amazon made a deal with MS and started locking out everyone using anything but IE. Would that be fair too? Would that be "alright"? And if that's acceptable, what if MS made more of those deals, and gradually you (I mean you as replacement for alternative browser user) would be locked out by CNN, ebay, yahoo, google, and various other core webservices. Would that be OK too? I guess so, because since they are private enterprises they can do WHATEVER they want, right? And after all, it's not like they have a monopoly in their respective markets, so...