Legality of .NET Messenger (MSN Messenger) with Pidgin/GAIM

[David Woolley]

I've been using GAIM to access .NET Messenger from Linux, but have just 
upgraded my Windows partition to XP.  When I tried to log in to MSN 
Messenger, it said there was a mandatory upgrade, which I downloaded.

I am one of those people who actually reads small print, so I read the 
licence terms and it seems to say that I may not use unauthorised 
clients to access .NET Messenger.  Not unsurprisingly, Pidgin/GAIM is 
not amongst the small list on their authorised clients sites.

I abandoned the install to avoid agreeing, until I'd researched the 
issue more.

Is there any news on this restriction?
-- 
David Woolley
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