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Could Apple Follow Sony - Detecting Jailbreaks?

Maverick1337

Maverick1337

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 4, 2008
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I just saw this in regards to Sony's Lawsuit with GeoHot and was wondering if Sony does obtain the personal information from YouTube, could Apple do the same thing in detecting to see if people jailbreak the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch?

Link: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/sony-v-geohot-litigation-heats-up-scea-demands-youtube-give-up/

Sony v. Geohot litigation heats up, SCEA demands YouTube give up Hotz and Fail0verflow's personal info

Now that Sony has started gathering the evidence it needs via discovery in the lawsuit over Hotz and friends' PS3 jailbreak, the company has dropped a hammer by moving to reduce the amount of time the hackers have to get Sony the information it wants. Sony filed the motion -- which will be heard by the court tomorrow -- to better arm itself with information to oppose Geohot's motion to dismiss, scheduled to be heard in early March. Casting its evidence-gathering net far and wide, SCEA has demanded that YouTube surrender not only information for Hotz's account where his jailbreak video was posted, but also how many users accessed the video, the usernames of those with access to the video, and all usernames and IP addresses of everyone who posted or published comments to the vid. In addition to hitting up YouTube for dirt, Wired reports that Sony has demanded Twitter hand over the personal info of fail0verflow's members -- we're waiting for Sony's lawyers to don TSA gear as the next step in their search. Geohot's attorney thinks the requests seem a bit much, but we think they make sense given Sony's strategy of going after the entire fail0verflow team. While these goings-on make for fairly standard legal tactics, they won't do much for Sony's public image.

Source: Wired

EDIT - Put article in post.
 
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If i remember correctly, Apple is doing just the opposite. In the iOS 4.2.1 update, they took out their jailbreak detection API.

Whether they're making a new one for 4.3 is another matter.
 
Hope they dont.
They would lose alot of people and anger many customers if they do.
They got the money and lawyer power to pull nonsense lawsuits like that but I doubt it would make any difference.
 
Maverick1337 said:
I just saw this in regards to Sony's Lawsuit with GeoHot and was wondering if Sony does obtain the personal information from YouTube, could Apple do the same thing in detecting to see if people jailbreak the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch?

Link: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/sony-v-geohot-litigation-heats-up-scea-demands-youtube-give-up/
Click to expand...

Yes they can...

Will they do it? doubt it.


besides, Most developers team on the iPhone side are smart enough not to get involve with copyrighted code (as "other" developer like to do and it is in trouble with Sony) just to avoid this type of matter. Apple would have to deep deeper and deeper that they have lot of more important stuff to do with all their marke grow and new plans (as contrary with Sony which it have losing some ground).
 
Link is down right now. However is this is where they are saying Sony added a jailbrake detection and posiblly ban people with the latest firmware. That was proved false. You can bet though Apple is rooting for Sony vs Geohot.
 
Jailbreaking Apple devices is legal. The only thing they can threaten us with is warranty loss, but that's fixed with a fresh restore (provided you don't take up the 6.15.00 bb). They could implement some sort of technique that would brick Apple devices upon jailbreak, but would they really want to? The fact that they took the code out in 4.2.1 that tracked it is a hint that they really just don't care anymore. Besides that, a very large amount of Apple portable users jailbreak/hack their devices, so if they did do something to prevent that, they'd feel a loss when we stop buying their stuff. They wouldn't cripple, by any means, but I don't think they care enough about the issue to cut away that many users. Just my two cents worth, I could be completely wrong.
 
Applejuiced said:
Hope they dont.
They would lose alot of people and anger many customers if they do.
They got the money and lawyer power to pull nonsense lawsuits like that but I doubt it would make any difference.
Click to expand...

I agree. I don't think it would be worth making millions of people angry and potentially losing several million customers.
 
Honestly, I think Apple could care less about JBing (if not secretly support it). It gains them more customers via both JB and unlocking. And the dev team "helps" them in finding exploits to fix. All the extra benefit without any accountability.
 
awadeee said:
Jailbreaking Apple devices is legal. The only thing they can threaten us with is warranty loss, but that's fixed with a fresh restore (provided you don't take up the 6.15.00 bb). They could implement some sort of technique that would brick Apple devices upon jailbreak, but would they really want to? The fact that they took the code out in 4.2.1 that tracked it is a hint that they really just don't care anymore. Besides that, a very large amount of Apple portable users jailbreak/hack their devices, so if they did do something to prevent that, they'd feel a loss when we stop buying their stuff. They wouldn't cripple, by any means, but I don't think they care enough about the issue to cut away that many users. Just my two cents worth, I could be completely wrong.
Click to expand...

If apple doesn't care anymore, then why are they making it harder to jailbreak each time a new firmware version comes out? Surely not to give the devteam a hard time....
 
palmerc2 said:
If apple doesn't care anymore, then why are they making it harder to jailbreak each time a new firmware version comes out? Surely not to give the devteam a hard time....
Click to expand...

Well I mean Apple isn't going to just sit there and let us rip apart their platform. But they could be screwing us a whole lot worse.
 
awadeee said:
Well I mean Apple isn't going to just sit there and let us rip apart their platform. But they could be screwing us a whole lot worse.
Click to expand...
If they were able to thwart any future JB, how many of us would switch to an Android OS?
 
I haven't found an Android phone I've liked, to be completely honest. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. The OS is beautiful but I just don't like the form factors of a lot of the current Android phones.

Plus, the dev teams are most likely always going to find away around stuff. Albeit, it may take them a while.
 
dgstan said:
If they were able to thwart any future JB, how many of us would switch to an Android OS?
Click to expand...

While I love many jailbreak apps and tweaks, I could live without them if I had to. Some things would just take a few more taps than they currently do with tweaks like LockInfo and SBSettings. If I were to switch, it would be to Windows Phone 7. I really like what Microsoft has done there.
 
rwilliams said:
If I were to switch, it would be to Windows Phone 7. I really like what Microsoft has done there.
Click to expand...

See, I wasn't really attracted to the WP7 either! If I had to jump Apple ship, I'd probably end up with a phone running Android that had a very similar (if not identical) form factor to the iPhone.
 
I extremely doubt that Apple would ever go after anyone for watching a YouTube video on how to jailbreak an iPhone.
 
Why would anyone ever buy an Apple product again if they made it illegal to jailbreak your own phone ? It's not like your renting or leasing it, and then will return it later. It is a device you paid for and own, they shouldn't tell you what you can or can't do to it.

I read on an Android site a good paraphrase. Once you buy a smartphone it is yours to take home and do whatever you want to it, root it, mod it, tweak it, etc...Apple makes it feel like your lucky they even had one left in stock to sell you, and then once you bring it home, better be careful what you do to it, they might be monitoring you, don't tamper with their baby too much. That's BS.
 
noiceT said:
Honestly, I think Apple could care less about JBing (if not secretly support it). It gains them more customers via both JB and unlocking. And the dev team "helps" them in finding exploits to fix. All the extra benefit without any accountability.
Click to expand...

Spot on.
 
Darthdingo said:
Why would anyone ever buy an Apple product again if they made it illegal to jailbreak your own phone ? It's not like your renting or leasing it, and then will return it later. It is a device you paid for and own, they shouldn't tell you what you can or can't do to it.

I read on an Android site a good paraphrase. Once you buy a smartphone it is yours to take home and do whatever you want to it, root it, mod it, tweak it, etc...Apple makes it feel like your lucky they even had one left in stock to sell you, and then once you bring it home, better be careful what you do to it, they might be monitoring you, don't tamper with their baby too much. That's BS.
Click to expand...

Well technically if you buy it with a 2 year contract you don't own it until the contract is up or you pay an ETF.....but I'll be JBing every model of the iPhone I get until Apple implements these features that I use.
 
Anyone who thinks Apple has given up on jailbreaking should read this:
****************
Apple, feds to put squeeze on jailbreaking
Posted: Jan 13, 2011 3:52 PM EST Updated: Jan 19, 2011 12:28 PM EST
(NBC) - Apple is asking the federal government to help crack down on hackers "jailbreaking" the iPhone....
****************
The rest at:
http://www.wect.com/Global/story.asp?S=13839395

EDIT: On further research, prompted by the response of the following poster (hype2k2), I now agree that this story apparently is a rehash of Apple's unsuccessful arguments last summer to the Copyright Office when jailbreaking and unlocking were declared legal; the unnamed reporter was probably trying to make his story about a kid selling jailbreaking services more interesting.
 
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