Apple Claims That Jail-Breaking Is Illegal

[bradl]

Graciously stealing this from /. Enjoy.

Apple Claims That Jail-Breaking Is Illegal
"Apple has finally made a statement about jail-breaking. They try to sell the idea that it is a copyright infringement and DMCA violation. This, despite the fact (as the linked article states) that courts have ruled that copying software while reverse engineering is a fair use when done for purposes of fostering interoperability with independently created software. I cannot help but think that the recent flood of iPhone cracked applications is responsible for this. Before that, Apple was quietly ignoring the jailbreak scene. Now, I suppose that in the future we may only install extra applications on our iPhones as ad hoc installs using the SDK, and if we want turn-by-turn directions, tethering, and the like, we have to compile these apps by ourselves? Maybe we should go and download the cydia source code and see what we can do with it."

Fair Use laws come into play with this. Apple says that it interferes with the functionality of the software, which could be a DMCA violation. EFF says that if you can JB and add more functionality to it, it's Fair Use.

Endgadget has another really good write-up about this.

BL.

 

[Small White Car]

This is a non issue.

What this means is, Apple doesn't want people buying iPhones, changing the software, and re-selling them at a profit. That's a perfectly reasonable desire for Apple to have. Doing this will help them if they decide to go after people like that.

I'll eat my iMac if we EVER see Apple do a single legal thing to people who buy an iPhone and then jailbrake it themselves. For everyone here who enjoys that, I seriously doubt this will change anything for them.

I think this quote says it best:

Apple isn't asking for jailbreaking to specifically be ruled illegal, it's just asking that it not be specifically ruled legal.

 

[Mr. Giver '94]

Maybe if Apple made any effort whatsoever to allow users to customize ANYTHING on the iPhone, fewer people would Jailbreak.

Like that will happen.

 

[kas23]

Oh, thanks for heads up Apple. Here I was thinking that I actually owned my iPhone. Guess not. That $299 I paid out must have been a bad dream.

 

[ppc750fx]

Duplicate thread. Older one is here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/651271/

 

[Michael CM1]

Oh, thanks for heads up Apple. Here I was thinking that I actually owned my iPhone. Guess not. That $299 I paid out must have been a bad dream.

Just because you own an iPod doesn't mean you're entitled to all the music you want.

I don't know the legality of all this, but ownership of a product doesn't mean you aren't breaking the law by doing something like jailbreaking. This is mostly true with software stuff since most illegal activites in technology are software-driven.

Still, I think what someone said about Apple just not wanting people to jailbreak and then sell at a profit is their main deal.

 

[ppc750fx]

Just because you own an iPod doesn't mean you're entitled to all the music you want.

I don't know the legality of all this, but ownership of a product doesn't mean you aren't breaking the law by doing something like jailbreaking. This is mostly true with software stuff since most illegal activites in technology are software-driven.

I think that the parallel that you're trying to draw doesn't really exist...

 

[Night Spring]

Still, I think what someone said about Apple just not wanting people to jailbreak and then sell at a profit is their main deal.

If you buy a car, you can soup it up with extras like bigger engine, better seats, add gps, etc, and sell it at a profit. In fact, there are places where you can buy souped up ipods/iphones with custom-painted cases. If you can do that with hardware, why should software be any different, really? It's not like Apple didn't get paid for their software, when we buy the iPhone, the price theoretically includes both hardware and software. So we bought it, we should be free to change it and resell it for profit, if we want. And yes, I know that's not what current copyright laws say, but I'm just thinking the laws might be wrong-headed about this.