Jailbreaking and Unlocking is Legal – Thanks EFF!

Jul 26, 2010

Absolutely fantastic news for fans of jailbreaking Apple iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad.

 

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has  successfully established that jailbreaking your iPhone does not violate the DMCA copyright laws.

The first of EFF’s three successful requests clarifies the legality of cell phone “jailbreaking” — software modifications that liberate iPhones and other handsets to run applications from sources other than those approved by the phone maker. More than a million iPhone owners are said to have “jailbroken” their handsets in order to change wireless providers or use applications obtained from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes “App Store,” and many more have expressed a desire to do so. But the threat of DMCA liability had previously endangered these customers and alternate applications stores.

In its reasoning in favor of EFF’s jailbreaking exemption, the Copyright Office rejected Apple’s claim that copyright law prevents people from installing unapproved programs on iPhones: “When one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.”

EFF has also successfully renewed the existing DMCA exception for carrier unlocking for iPhone. You can read all about it here.

Although we can atleast not worry about the legality of jailbreaking our iPhones & iPads, Apple will still continue to thwart the attempts to jailbreak and unlock their iDevices.

There is a school of thought that Apple intentionally leaves some holes unpatched. What do you think?

{ via Dev team blog }