> But they absoltely didn't have them, and if they attempted to exercize them as if they had them, they'd be ignored, prevented, beaten up, or worse.

Our disagreement is that you think a right is something granted by the law and inability to excecise a right means you don't have it. A right simply means there is a valid justification to allow a person to do not do something. You can have a right and it can unjustly be taken from you. The government or even the fundamental rule of law exists in part to enable justice and justice exists beyond the confines of law and government. If it is just for a person to or not do something and there is a valid and reasonable explanation for that thing then it is justifiable and preventing or coercing a person to contradict that would be unjust therefore it is a right. If the law fails to codify a right then the law is unjust with that respect.

To put it differently, after a law is passed to recognize a right, people can ask for compensation for past injustices even though in the past the injustice was legal. This is because despite legality, a person had rights and due to a failure of law and society that right was not protected and damage was done.

> But you didn't discuss morals, you wrote "by what right or authority". Well, they have the right and the authority, so?

Well that is what I am challenging. The EU or governments in general don't have absolute authority over all things. In the case of EU and democratic governments there is a contract of law between the people and the government defining the authority of the government. I don't know EU law well but in the US the government has the right to regulate commerce which iMessage as a free app is excluded. In a free society, unless the government has explicit authority to regulate something it can't just restrict what you do, that's the whole point of liberty. I was genuinely asking what authority the EU had to regulate the activity of offering a free service to the public that doesn't involve hosting content, only transporting messages. This authority if legit would mean the EU can for example interfere in moderation decisions by sites like HN.

> Sorry, but if you come here to sell something, you better sell it on our terms and under EU laws. If you don't want to do that, you

But nothing is being sold, iMessage is a free app so your point is invalid.

> Also, you don't know what "consumers want" in general. Did you ask consumers if they want to keep Messages closed?

There are people who prefer a closed messaging ecosystem. For people who want a more open system there is Signal, Wire,Briar, Threema, All the Matrix clients,etc... there is no shortage of optiond and most of them are supported on the iPhone. So you and the EU don't care about open apps being available to the EU. You just want to force others to not have a closes messaging system.

You're the bully here.

I agree with your philosophical understanding of rights and law and government. I disagree that iMessage is free or that because it's free the government does have authority over it. And I disagree that you're applying your principles consistently to your argument or to the situation at hand.

First off, arguably it's very much not free because it's only available if you purchase an Apple product. The cost of operating iMessage is built into the price you pay to use Apple's services and software when purchasing their hardware. I can't go to Apple.com and freely sign up for iMessage.

Second, I can't set up a free lemonade stand on my lawn and secretly add harmful substances to the lemonade and gov't can't touch me because I didn't charge a fee. I mean come on, that's not how the government works either.

We cede a monopoly on violence to the government so they may govern all aspects of life where we believe they are needed, not just commerce. In order to protect and maintain a free society, the government must discourage and punish people that encroach on other peoples' rights universally.

If we reach consensus that as a society the mechanism we use to communicate with each other should be standardized and open so that anybody may interoperate with it, because it's in line with a free society where we believe individuals have a right to the liberty of running their own software in whatever way they see fit (much like your choice of car or clothing), then that's that and the government can step in and try to protect those rights.

s/does/doesn't

>Our disagreement is that you think a right is something granted by the law and inability to excecise a right means you don't have it. A right simply means there is a valid justification to allow a person to do not do something. You can have a right and it can unjustly be taken from you.

Without a law granting/protecting your right to X, or at least the power to grant it to yourself and enforce it, you don't have a right to X.

You, at best have, a "justification for having the right to X". And even that is debatable. You might just think you have a justification, but ther people might disagree with you that X is any kind of right you oughta have.

So, where does this "valid justification" comes from? God? Some holy book? Some wise document written by founding fathers? Sorry, we don't believe in those things in these here parts. It needs to be based on either law or a body (could be "the people") that can force it into law.

> But nothing is being sold, iMessage is a free app so your point is invalid.

Doesn't matter to my argument whether its paid, or given free as a lure to keep you in the ecosystem (which is the money maker) - or even just given free in general, out of the goodness of their heart.

If a company doesn't like the terms under which a country or union of countries asks them them to sell and/or give away their app, they can always stop giving it to that country/union of countries. Easy as that.

>You're the bully here.

"Bully" against a company? For making make their app more open and compatible? That's some next level Ayn Rand shit right here...

> Some wise document written by founding fathers? Sorry, we don't believe in those things in these here parts. It needs to be based on either law or a body (could be "the people") that can force it into law.

This is actually false. Our founding fathers very much were not settled on where rights originated. Some believed, like GP do, that rights are innate and that it's the responsibility of a government to try and protect common ones. Others believed, like you, that rights need to be enumerated. One of the arguments against enumeration is that such a list could be used, as you are trying to do, as a mechanism to exclude rights not officially listed or known or conceived of at the time, which could lead to unintended oppression.

Should the government have innate power to oppress by omission? Are laws an allow list or a deny list? Does the government only get the power we the people grant it, or does it get every power we don't specifically reserve for ourselves? Neither position is absolutely correct. That's why we have courts and process. But the scales tend to tip towards the government only only being allowed power we cede to it, not the reverse.

Here's a relevant example: consider freedom of thought. Western governments generally do not explicitly codify such a concept. But we practically universally believe that human beings are afforded the the privacy of their mind. After all we're allowed to express ourselves freely and all our laws are designed to punish actions. The bill of rights was created at a time when it was impossible to know the nature of someone's thoughts, so this question was preposterous. But it's becoming possible now to capture an image of one's thoughts. If we could use that information to discriminate, it's very sane to imagine a self-serving bureaucracy would try to. So how do you establish your right to think in a society where it's innately oppressed by virtue of not being explicitly granted? See: civil disobedience.

I agree with your position but not with your rhetoric.