U.S. Government to Explicitly Allow iPhone Jailbreaking

[chris200x9]

The Associated Press briefly reports (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100726/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_digital_copyright) that the U.S. government has defined new rules that will permit users to "jailbreak" their iPhone and skirt Apple's App Store ecosystem to add unapproved third-party applications.



Owners of the iPhone will be able to break electronic locks on their devices in order to download applications that have not been approved by Apple. The government is making that legal under new rules announced Monday.

The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a federal law that prohibits the circumvention of technical measures that control access to copyrighted works.

[whiskeylover]

About time!

[Lucradia]

Goodness me, the first open "law" I've seen.

[jerenept]

Isnt the "jailed" iPhone a form of DRM, and therefore, "jailbreaking" will be illegal by the DMCA?

[chris200x9]

Isnt the "jailed" iPhone a form of DRM, and therefore, "jailbreaking" will be illegal by the DMCA?

Listen this is the government they don't have to make sense or follow their own rules.

[VH-BIL]

listen this is the government they don't have to make sense or follow their own rules.

lol

[aysiu]

OK, it's legal. But does that mean it won't void the warranty?

[Macskeeball]

Isnt the "jailed" iPhone a form of DRM, and therefore, "jailbreaking" will be illegal by the DMCA?

No this sounds like one of those DMCA exemptions that the government periodically adds. This particular article doesn't explicitly say "DMCA" but gives a description that the DMCA matches perfectly, and also says that the law this exemption is for was a 1998 law. According to Wikipedia, the DMCA went into effect on October 28, 1998.

What makes me most certain that this is a DMCA exemption is that the article says that another exemption for the federal law in question is to "allow college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos." I read an article about that some time ago that explicitly referred to that as a DMCA exemption.

Edit: Yep, it's the DMCA they're talking about. Ars Technica article (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/apple-loses-big-in-drm-ruling-jailbreaks-are-fair-use.ars)

[Warpnow]

OK, it's legal. But does that mean it won't void the warranty?

Since when has a warranty been worth more than the paper its printed on? The last several times I claimed warranties on electronics they tried to charge me for the repairs. Becoming ridiculous.

[aysiu]

Since when has a warranty been worth more than the paper its printed on? The last several times I claimed warranties on electronics they tried to charge me for the repairs. Becoming ridiculous.
Except for Cowon, which sold me a bum iAudio 7 and then wanted to charge me more for the repairs than a new Sandisk player (which I got, believe me) would cost, I've had pretty good luck with warranty stuff.

My wife and I bought an LG TV last year. After thirty days, it failed (apparently the power supply was bad). LG repaired it the next day and replaced it with a new power supply. No charge. No fuss. It's worked wonderfully since.

I inherited my wife's old Macbook Pro from 2008, and not long ago, its graphics card failed. It was long past warranty, and we didn't have AppleCare for it, but the Apple Store replaced the graphics card and logic board for free, because it was a known Nvidia defect for that particular model.

[98cwitr]

keeps them from forming a monopoly on the "apps" market

[earthpigg]

In addition to jailbreaking, other exemptions announced Monday would:

-allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.

-allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.

-allow college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos.

-allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

-allow blind people to break locks on electronic books so that they can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

My initial understanding/response to this:

No one has ever really gone after American citizens that develop and distribute software/hardware to accomplish these things, but the previous legal status meant that big business and big money in America could never participate.

What was once a market that could only be exploited by foreign business interests, can now be local.

It is now possible for Amazon.com, for example, to sell a device or software that "breaks technical protections on video games". The only caveat that I see is that it'd need to be marketed as a "security auditing" tool.

For the first time ever, also, an American company could sell software intended for blind folks that breaks e-book DRM. The company would just have to ensure that their advertising features blind people, and not teenagers clicking around on a .torrent client.

Does that sound about correct?

[Lucradia]

-allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.


Cheating communities for cheat codes that go into Action replay, Gameshark and codebreaker are going to love these new laws.

[McRat]

Well, at least it's a step in the right direction.

I like the "security dongle" issue. I cracked our machine software (in 1995) so it would run without the dongle after we had a dongle fail, and new ones were not available.

Now I'm not a criminal. I can stop wearing horizontal stripped clothing and get rid of this steel cannonball chained to my leg.

[t0p]

Every year, the US Copyright Office (re)evaluates exemptions from the DMCA. This year, the EFF and its buddies won the ***-kissing competition (http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26). Maybe next year Apple will prevail and jail-breaking will be illegal again. Who knows? It's hard to predict what the US will do, especially with such a publicity-philic president as Obama in charge.

What I find more interesting is the exemption concerning the network-unlocking of cellphones. I advise all US cellphone users to have their phones network-unlocked asap, before the government changes its mind again and decides it is illegal to choose for yourself who you're gonna give your money too.

[Merk42]

I advise all US cellphone users to have their phones network-unlocked asap, before the government changes its mind again and decides it is illegal to choose for yourself who you're gonna give your money too.
It's actually not that simple, the phones use different technologies hardware wise. I'm pretty sure you can't just up and take a Verizon (CDMA) phone and start using it on AT&T (GSM)

[chriswyatt]

This is good news, if you buy something you should be able to do what you want with it.

DRM has always bugged me too and I've always tried to boycott DRM'd material if possible, e.g. I remember buying a copy-protected CD a while back, I couldn't rip it to stick on my MP3 player. Great, I bought this CD with my own money and I can't listen to it on my own MP3 player!?! Then later the software that came with my MP3 player was updated, and now I could rip that CD no problem. So, a legal piece of software circumvented the DRM in a newer release, what the hell is that all about? DRM's just one big ironic mess that makes it even more beneficial to get illegally sourced entertainment that isn't crippled with this sort of rubbish.

[MaxIBoy]

It was *never* illegal in the first place. Like that idiot Apple Store manager who called the police to report an "illegal" jailbroken iphone, there seems to be a misconception that EULAs are legally binding come hell or high water. It's not a legally binding promise not to jailbreak! It's an agreement not to invoke the warranty if you jailbreak, that's all. And even then, the agreement is fairly tenuous.

[Dr. C]

This is excellent news. It means that Apple can no longer use DRM to censor at will.

So for example GNU go can now be released legally in the US for the Jailbroken iPhone without infringing on the FSF's copyright. It also means Free Software for the iPhone. US citizens can now break the DRM that Apple uses to censor the Dalai Llama in order to please the Chinese Government. Some more examples of Apple censorship that can now be defeated in the US: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/apple-censorship-from-the_n_645142.html#s113750

By the way reading the response of Apple to the DMCA rule making process speaks volumes on how this company fought to preserve censorship.

[itlarson]

Personally I'm more interested in the possibility of Ubuntu being distributed with functioning DVD support than in Iphone jailbreaking. Today's Ars technica article seems to say the court ruled that simply breaking the encryption isn't enough to be a DMCA violation. At least as long as the reason for breaking it falls under fair use- like for instance playing a DVD on a linux machine.

[aysiu]

Personally I'm more interested in the possibility of Ubuntu being distributed with functioning DVD support than in Iphone jailbreaking. If you buy Ubuntu from Dell preinstalled, that's how it is distributed.