As you read this, keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and do not give legal advice.
There has been a lot of news surrounding the legality of iPhone jailbreaking. It started when the EFF announced that it plans to add iPhone jailbreaking as a DMCA exception. (http://www.eff.org/action/free-your-phone). After this, Apple made an announcement that they consider jailbreaking to be a copyright infringement (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says-jailbreaking-illegal). So what’s really going on?
The DMCA has a set of exemptions that are reviewed every three years. This year is the year where these exemptions are reviewed and also when new exemptions are added. The EFF is pushing to have jailbreaking added to the exemption list. By adding this, it basically says “jailbreaking your iPhone is legal”. Remember, not having it in there does not say that jailbreaking is illegal. It simply doesn’t say. For example, there is no US Law that says “clothes shopping is legal”. But there is no reason to think it is not legal either. The EFF is pushing to add an exemption so that jailbreaking is actually called out as legal.
The original exemption requests can be found here:
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/comments/lohmann-fred.pdf
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/comments/lohmann-fred-summary.pdf
A month after the exemption requests were made, the responses were due. These can be found here:
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/responses/
There are responses from a number of people for 5A from a number of end users and small businesses the obvious players: EFF and Apple. A few people who are definitely interested in this problem for other reasons (VOIP): Virgin Mobile and Skype. Mozilla also chimed in with a rather short document.
Skylar wrote an interesting article on this here: http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147164
And the NYTimes has an interesting article on it here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0…our-iphone/?em
BigBoss Authors: Mark Bruce & Kory Lee
February 19th, 2009 at 5:44 am
I’m less an expert than BigBoss, and not American, but can I ask for a basic explanation of the very first thing: When you say “The DMCA has a set of exemptions”, I ask “exemptions to what”? If you need an exemption of that law to jailbreak, then apparently there is something in the DMCA that prohibits jailbreaking?
The EFF talks about a section 1201(a)(1) that prohibits “circumvention of copyright protection systems”. Are they now debating whether the iPhone’s lockdown is a copyright protection system? Or do they agree that it is but want to hear from the Librarian of Congress that the law wasn’t intended to protect this type of DRM?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
it’s right there
“Remember, not having it in there does not say that jailbreaking is illegal. It simply doesn’t say. For example, there is no US Law that says “clothes shopping is legal”. But there is no reason to think it is not legal either. The EFF is pushing to add an exemption so that jailbreaking is actually called out as legal.”
nothing right now says it’s illegal, this will simply say that it is, in fact, legal.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Right, so you’re saying it’s a very loose use of the word “exemption” — it could be an exemption from nothing in particular. I guess that’s another possibility, though I’m not entirely convinced.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
it’s an exemption from getting charged under the DMCA. i’m not American either, so i don’t think we’re affected, but it stops anyone from taking legal action against owners of jailbroken phones.
i haven’t read anything beyond this article… just my take on it.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
oops, this belongs in the first thread
February 19th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
No one will take actions against owners of jailbroken phones. There are about 2 million of us jailbreakers now. It would be more like taking action against those releasing jailbreaking tools.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Totally agree with BigBoss just said right there. It’s unfortunate if it really turns out that way, but that is the worst that can happen. End users shouldn’t have any legal worries. Just the pain of less developers :(
February 19th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I will pay money to have my phone jailbroke, and that in turn will defeat ANY entity preventing me from doing so. As long as there is demand for a service (of course with monetary rewards!), there will be a supplier. Apple should of learned with the itunes DRM ‘policing’ and subsequently providing DRM removal, that being the ‘police’ only makes YOU the villain! They should focus on one thing only…making better product AND improving their current product.
February 20th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Well said. Apple is a hypocrite!
February 20th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Definitely agree that they should look at there own restrictions and make the iPhone BETTER not worry about if jailbreaking is illegal
this is really dumb.. its like making Custom ROM’s on a Windows Mobile phone illegal or Custom Firmware on the PSP
February 21st, 2009 at 8:31 am
do u no wat happened to http://www.ispazio.net ?????????????????????
February 21st, 2009 at 8:32 am
why aren’t the iphone dev team writing any more posts?????????????????????????????????????????
February 27th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
The link to the NY Times article didn’t work for me.
Here is the current link:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/could-you-go-to-jail-for-jailbreaking-your-iphone/?scp=3&sq=iphone%20jailbreak&st=Search