Posted on 02/14/2009 2:04:28 PM PST by webschooner
After staying notably silent on the subject of jailbreaking for the first year and a half of the iPhone's existence, Apple has now submitted a document to the Library of Congress claiming that reverse engineering the iPhone's operating system is copyright infringemnt.
Their claim is in response to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's submission for the annual DMCA exemption review. Under the DMCA, the Library of Congress is allowed to allow selected activities which would normally be forbidden by the DMCA. Due to encryption used for various bits of software in it, the reverse engineering require to jailbreak the iPhone OS falls under that cateogory.
The EFF is requesting an exemption for "Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset."
Apple's response indicates that they consider such an exemption inappropriate because it would violate their copyrights. As the EFF points out,"Running lawfully obtained software on a smart phone does not infringe copyright, nor does the process of jailbreaking a smart phone in order to accomplish this goal."
Apple's argument against this is that the iTunes App Store provides plenty of choice. The problem with this position is that it's ultimately Apple who gets to decide what's available,not developers or consumers. They reserve the right to turn down programs, or even remove them at any time.
Apple ping
After going through 3 Palm Treos, this is a very fresh breath of air.
I've sent a number of requests to Apple to make this minor change, which would be welcomed by millions of subscribers as well. I've never received a response from Apple. So, I've been thinking about threatening Apple with an ADA class action suit. Normally I hate doing this sort of thing, but it seems that this is exactly the reason for ADA. Apple is not only resisting making the change, which is certainly their prerogative, however they're also trying to criminalize my making the change on my own system, and threatening to effectively destroy my property should I make that change.
Mark
I understand your quandry. I have a G1 phone, and I rooted/modded it, which gave me root access to it, which gives the opportunity for many modifications (such as you speak of), which would not be possible with an OEM phone.
As far as I am aware, up to this point anyway, T-Mobile and Google haven’t made any policy changes or expressed any problem with the fact that what would be a relatively small percentage of G1 owners are hacking their phones. As long as those owners are paying their bills, I’m not sure why they would have any problem with the practice, since as I said, I would imagine it is way under 1% of G1 owners who have rooted their phones. I frequent the relevant forums, and it appears that very very few who do this are doing it in order to switch carriers. Almost everyone who does it, does so to have more versatility with the usage of the device.
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