In Defense of Jailbreaking

Keith found a nice manifesto saying "There's a trend that's been disturbing me lately. When the topic of modding or jailbreaking comes up — say, in the wake of the iPad announcement, or Sony's restrictive PS3 update — there is an outcry. Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"

I bought it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"

It's mine. I bought it. Who are Ford or Honda to tell me what brand of gasoline to buy at the station?

Re:DMCA still makes it illegal

[elrous0]

From what I've heard of it, jailbreaking is not aimed at the device itself, but at its software. While you might have a point if jailbreaking involved completely wiping the Apple OS from the phone and putting your own OS on it, IIRC it's actually aimed at modding the existing Apple software, which would certainly be considered a copyrighted work. If I am wrong here, I welcome correction.

Re:Apple can kiss my shiny white ass

[RichiH]

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/home/index.htm [alwaysinnovating.com]

Re:When you buy it...

[flitty]

The Article clearly states that any modding you do should not affect anybody else. Jailbreaking your iPad/phone shouldn't negatively affect other users, and apple should be able to lock you out of their ecosystem when you jailbreak your device. It's a value proposition. You can keep your nice walled garden, or you can take it out into the wasteland with all the issues and freedoms.

Re:DMCA still makes it illegal

[elrous0]

The Apple OS would be considered a copyrighted work. And, from what I understand, jailbreaking involves breaking technological measures aimed at preventing users from modding this OS.

Re:DMCA still makes it illegal

[burris]

Seriously, do you think the word "effectively" means what you think it means in the context of the law that criminalizes bypassing the technological measure, if simply bypassing the technological measure would render the law moot?

That's not how it works. In this context "effectively" means than under normal operation the effect of the measure is to control access to a work.

How about a quote from the summary judgement Apple obtained against Psystar:

As to the second argument, Psystar contends that Apple’s anticircumvention technology was ineffective because the decryption key for circumvention is publicly available on the internet. This argument fails. “The fact that circumvention devices may be widely available does not mean that a technological measure is not, as the DMCA provides, effectively protecting the rights of copyright owners in the ordinary course of its operation.” Sony Computer Entm’t Am., Inc. v. Divineo, Inc., 457 F. Supp. 2d 957, 965 (N.D. Cal. 2006). Generally, measures based on encryption “effectively control” access to copyrighted works. Here, when the decryption key was not employed, the encryption effectively worked to prevent access to Mac OS X. And that is all that is required. See Universal City Studios v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 294, 318 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (noting that when a decryption program was not employed, the encryption worked to control access to the protected work).

Re:Apple can kiss my shiny white ass

[Dracker]

It's QT native. You can use Fanboy's list [fanboy.co.nz]. You can use greasemonkey scripts [opera.com].