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According to Apple, Jailbreaking is illegal

The pressure is on the Dev Team, which is really what Apple is going after according to Gizmodo's comment, "But the bottom line, according to Apple, is that the act of jailbreaking itself constitutes copyright infringement because it "involves infringing uses of the bootloader and OS, the copyrighted works that are protected by the TPMs being circumvented."

Of course I am no lawyer, but logically once Dev Team is out of the picture, JB community pretty much breaks down from there.
 
There are some interesting legal issues here. The DMCA challenge is one that every sensible person saw coming as a possibility at some point, since the previous DMCA exemption for unlocking a phone was for service interoperability and not application interoperability.

I think there are also possible arguments of the jailbreaking techniques as being essentially rootkits and functioning in some cases as malware (e.g. if a company gives me an iPhone and I hypothetically modify it to disable some kind of security mechanism the company wants on the iPhone by way of using jailbreaking).

I don't particularly support Apple's position, but it is an interesting legal question.
 
CocoaPuffs said:
The pressure is on the Dev Team, which is really what Apple is going after according to Gizmodo's comment, "But the bottom line, according to Apple, is that the act of jailbreaking itself constitutes copyright infringement because it "involves infringing uses of the bootloader and OS, the copyrighted works that are protected by the TPMs being circumvented."

Of course I am no lawyer, but logically once Dev Team is out of the picture, JB community pretty much breaks down from there.
Click to expand...

That's a bit of a skewed interpretation, If Apple wanted to go after jailbreaking and the dev team, they would go after them directly, they aren't shy about suing people, they would have hit the dev team and websites covering jailbreaking with DMCA desist orders. This is Apple responding to the EFFs request for an exemption covering JBing the App store.

I'm with the EFF on this, but let's not exaggerate it into claiming Apple is hunting down and killing JBers with their own shin bones.
 
^^ I think it would be wise, on the other hand, for the "legitimate" Jailbreaking community to take some steps to distance themselves from the pirates who have appeared on the scene after the App Store came out. Cydia and Installer should blacklist pirate sites and refuse to install applications from them.
 
How about they tell Apple to **** and just supply the hardware? Apple is being completely ridiculous about this. They do not listen to their customers and it WILL come back to haunt them when they get competition.
 
i don't think apple is trying to say that it is illegal here, but moreso that they don't want a precedent set that says it is legal. things are in a grey area right now and i think thats kinda where apple would prefer to be overall. that way everyone is happy. i am sure that they do want to curb the piracy of the app store apps though.
 
mkrishnan said:
^^ I think it would be wise, on the other hand, for the "legitimate" Jailbreaking community to take some steps to distance themselves from the pirates who have appeared on the scene after the App Store came out. Cydia and Installer should blacklist pirate sites and refuse to install applications from them.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, That's risky behavior that could bring the DMCA hammer down on them and rightly so.
 
bbplayer5 said:
How about they tell Apple to **** and just supply the hardware? Apple is being completely ridiculous about this. They do not listen to their customers and it WILL come back to haunt them when they get competition.
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No kidding. I think it's ridiculous for Apple to try to impose restrictions on hardware that I bought and paid for. It's not Apple's hardware anymore, it's mine.

Of course the DMCA has no effect outside the US. Does anyone know where the Dev Team is based?
 
The Dev Team is based in the US.

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT THIS WAS GOING TO BE AN ISSUE ALL ALONG.

and I got a bad feeling, Apple might win this, EFF is no match for Apple, in any way possible. If EFF wins, Apple is doomed!
 
I don't see why Apple would make a big deal out of jailbreaking. Besides the hacked apps (which I would bet only a very small minority of the jailbroken community uses) and unlocking (probably it), what could jailbreaking possibly do to Apple. Jailbreaking has the potential to boost sales, increase user satisfaction with the device (copy+paste, video recording, etc...), and doesn't have any adverse hardware effects. The extra support costs associated with uninformed people jailbreaking would hardly put a dent in the extra sales + App store revenue.
 
Apparantly people really love reading too much into things when it comes to apple.

Some of you apparantly think they went out and declared war on jailbreakers.....
 
PlaceofDis said:
i don't think apple is trying to say that it is illegal here, but moreso that they don't want a precedent set that says it is legal. things are in a grey area right now and i think thats kinda where apple would prefer to be overall. that way everyone is happy. i am sure that they do want to curb the piracy of the app store apps though.
Click to expand...

This.

Don't read too much into this, just let the joke of what used to be tech journalism do what it always does and blow this up until it actually becomes an issue.
 
Apple could easily stop 80% of the jailbreak community just by giving the normal firmware some app like Winterboard, implementing copy/paste, mms and background apps.

Money says they release 3.0 firmware that does everything anyones ever thought of and more, and its locked down tight as hell. Or they just make the app store refuse to load on jailbroken phones.

With Crackulous making developers mad, the jailbreaking community is in danger. I myself would be sad to see it go.
 
OrangeDog said:
Crackulous has stuffed it up imo.
Click to expand...

Nope. Doesn't have a damn thing to do with it.

Sigh. I kinda wish people would actually read the story before posting. I mean, yes, I know that sensational headlines get more pageviews and more ad money... but come on.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand. Apple isn't claiming jailbreaking is illegal. Instead, they're opposing the EFF's request for an explicit DMCA exemption for jailbreaking. As it stands, it's not not really clearly covered either way. Non-software precedent indicates that it's completely safe, and the EFF wants to ensure that. Apple, for obvious reasons, doesn't want part of their EULA explicitly contravened by a DMCA exemption, so they're filing an opposition to the EFF's proposed exemption.

Apple isn't claiming that it should be ruled to be illegal. They aren't claiming that it has been ruled to be illegal. What they don't want is for it to be made explicitly legal via the EFF's proposed DMCA exemption.

This is a lot less of a story than folks are making it out to be. 'course since everyone's out to have Apple's head, it was pretty obvious that this story would be spun this way. To be expected I guess.

This is completely, 100% unrelated to Crackulous. The deadline for exemption request filings was quite some time before Crackulous got its recent surge of popularity, and you can bet that Apple figured out their legal strategy regarding jailbreaking not long after the first jailbreak exploits surfaced. Crackulous has only got a mention because "tech journalists" seem to operate on little more than keyword matching anymore -- they saw that something ostensibly bad happened (keywords: Apple, iPhone, applications, jailbreaking, modification) and that some legal stuff went on (keywords: Apple, iPhone, applications, jailbreaking, modification). They noticed the similarity of the topics, saw that both were popular topics for discussion, and bashed out a quick post or two. That's pretty much it.
 
cualexander said:
Apple could easily stop 80% of the jailbreak community just by giving the normal firmware some app like Winterboard, implementing copy/paste, mms and background apps.

Money says they release 3.0 firmware that does everything anyones ever thought of and more, and its locked down tight as hell. Or they just make the app store refuse to load on jailbroken phones.

With Crackulous making developers mad, the jailbreaking community is in danger. I myself would be sad to see it go.
Click to expand...


why ppl keep blaming crackulous... ffs ppl that would've/could buy apps from app store still buy apps from app stores.... and ppl that want cracked apps will go for cracked apps... wow ppl act like apps werent getting cracked before crackulous came out...
 
Is this the point where I wet myself? :eek: What are we, a bunch of school girls? The Dev Team has helped us to go where Apple fears to tread. They'll get me to stop JB on my iPhone when they pry my cold dead fingers from my Incipio clad 3G iPhone...:p
 
SFStateStudent said:
Is this the point where I wet myself? :eek: What are we, a bunch of school girls? The Dev Team has helped us to go where Apple fears to tread. They'll get me to stop JB on my iPhone when they pry my cold dead fingers from my Incipio clad 3G iPhone...:p
Click to expand...

Where are you without the dev team though? What if they decide its not worth it anymore? What if Apple releases the next firmware and the dev team can't break it and Apple requires you to update to the new firmware to continue to use the App Store. It's certainly plausible. You can't use the itunes music store with old versions of itunes. I'd venture to say 98% of the Jailbreak community doesn't know the first thing how to jailbreak an iphone without the dev team's software. It seems we are really dependent on a small group of unpaid hackers. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely thankful, but still worried. There is a lot Apple could do to shut down the jailbreak community, they just haven't done it so far.
 
If the Jailbreak 'Community' takes a stand and blacklists the App Piracy applications and shoves Unlocking under the rug Apple will be under less pressure to subdue the cracks.

But let's face it, most of the 'community' is comprised of adolescents stealing AppStore Apps and making banners with their names on them.

Tough luck for those who use the useful 'legitimate' jailbreak apps available.
 
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