iPhone Hacking No Longer Illegal
The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) at §§ 1201-1203 makes it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures in software or technology which protects underlying intellectual property. Today the Library of Congress has ruled that this prohibition does not apply to iPhone “jailbreaking.”
“Jailbreaking” is a term which describes the process of hacking a phone’s operating system in order to disable its security measures which otherwise prevent users from installing unauthorized applications. Prior to the FCC’s ruling, jailbreaking was a clear violation of the above statutes because it required the jailbreakers to hack the security measures of an operating system which necessarily contained underlying intellectual property (e.g., the operating system code).
This is likely to expand the market for 3rd party and user generated apps.
Steve Caccavo
One concern expressed by Apple (per a NY Times article on this subject) indicated that “jailbreaking” increases the workload of Apple’s support staff. If this is true — possibly due to unintended problems caused by “tinkering” — will Apple continue to provide support for “jailbroken” I-Phones, or will it take the position that jailbreaking invalidates whatever warranty they now offer. Hmmm….
tim
I think Apple is being a bit disingenuous with the support staff workload argument because it has already taken the position that jailbreaking invalidates all warranties (this language has been on the warranties all along). I think, in reality, the new workload on Apple’s support staff will take the form of figuring out ways to make the Operating Systems less hackable so that Apple could continue to maintain its app monopoly in lieu of the new government deregulation.
forex robot
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