U.S. Government to Explicitly Allow iPhone Jailbreaking

[Becordial]

...you are a right-winged blind biggot. In this case, the Gov is actually protecting customer and personal freedom. it is not forcing Apple or AT&T to offer a service IN ANY WAY. It is only preventing them from suing people over a JB.


you sound like a racist, right-winged biggot that calls everything this administration does evil communism. While you are actually the enemy of both consumers worldwide and the world itself. People like you prevented the recent bill on CO2-restrictions and support the filibuster-craze that is killing democracy. You, sir, are destroying both society and the world because you have been raised to hate anything donkey. For that I both hate and pity you.

Though the other post had some issues too, it's completely out of line for you to label someone the way you have when the quotes you were responding to raised none of the labels that you've assigned them.

If you call someone a racist biggot with zero basis for that apparent in that persons post you deserve to be called on it. Being racist or unfairly calling someone racist is not what macrumors or it's readers should tolerate.

 

[goosnarrggh]

The SIM Unlocking part of the exemption is nothing new

Some observers have pointed out the the Library of Congress ruling today also addresses the issue of mobile phone unlocking, which involves moving a device to another wireless carrier for which support is not generally offered. Today's ruling only states, however, that copyright concerns can not be used to prohibit unlocking of mobile phones under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Carriers are still free to prevent unlocking in many circumstances and can pursue cases against individuals by citing breach of contract under the carriers' Terms of Service.

I'm not quite sure if anybody's mentioned this or not (20 pages of back-and-forth mudslinging is a heck of a lot to dig through) but the situation with unlocking (as opposed to jailbreaking on its own) is mostly unchanged from the exemption that already existed from the previous (2006) set.

The only thing that's changed with respect to SIM unlocking is that the new exemption:

1) Only applies to "used" phones. The commentary I've read has interpreted this to refer to off-contract phones.

2) Clarifies the phrasing "...lawfully use the equipment on a wireless network" into "(...so long as...) access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network". IMO the intention of the two wordings is identical, but the revised wording is much less ambiguous.

 

[Valmor]

Actually, this is the government un-meddling. The government is providing an exception to a law that otherwise restricts your rights to do things. In other words, you have more rights and freedoms than you did yesterday. This is the opposite of government meddling, unless your belief is that only corporations should have freedom.

Well said. As a libertarian, it bothers me when conservatives seem to be pro-business and not pro-free market.

This is a reduction of the size of government. Apple can still modify their code to make jailbreaking more difficult, but the individual is free to modify their property (in this case an iPhone) however they wish.

 

[cmaier]

Interesting how when someone is proven wrong they slink off, eh?

Well, now we need to get Congress to do something about software copyright in general - a full on interoperability/same device derivative work exception with no distribution rights would be good enough, I think.

 

[Avatar74]

Right... Distributing copyrighted films which belong to a production company is quite different from making a cell phone work on different services or downloading user made applications.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat this... I'm not referring to copyright infringement. I'm referring to the fact that the DMCA makes the very act of circumvention of copy protection SCHEMA illegal... whether or not piracy distribution accompanies it. If you reverse engineer a DRM, without infringing any copyrights to the actual work in question, you've still broken the law.

And the later article posted on Macrumors confirms that the premise under which Apple is barred from pursuing users is the DMCA's anti-circumvention, not anti-piracy, provisions.

All else aside, that logic seems perverse... doesn't it? If it's legal to reverse engineer or jailbreak the iPhone OS, then it should be legal to reverse engineer or "jailbreak" any copy protection schema.... FOR PRIVATE USE (in either case)... while still being illegal to publicly distribute or pirate the work being protected. But this isn't the case. It's illegal under 17 USC 12 to circumvent copy protection schema even if for personal use... the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act is effectively invalidated by this move.

EDIT: It now appears that the Librarian of Congress has made other specific circumventions of copy protection schema legal, so as to allow for unfettered Fair Use otherwise defined in Section 107 of Title 17.

 

[nsayer]

I'm glad the government got involved. It's about time they did something useful.

On the contrary, it's the DMCA that makes this whole declaration even necessary in the first place. If it weren't for the DMCA, there'd be no need to even have the conversation.

The reason this is even a question is that jailbreaking is a circumvention of an effective access control device for digital media. As such, trafficing in jailbreak software is a violation of the DMCA.... Or at least it was until this action was taken by the Librarian of Congress (or whoever the hell it was).

Make no mistake: This ruling represents something along the lines of the famous punchline, "Well, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

 

[nsayer]

Never mind that this is an example of government actually attempting to DE-regulate, and shift some of the power of the corporations to the people.

Not really.

The DMCA took away a thousandfold more than this ruling has given back.