[fowljr]

I came across this rather interesting article over at TheRegister, I wonder if it will have wider ramifications?

US citizens can legally jailbreak and unlock their smartphones — notably Apple's iPhone — and videographers circumvent copy protection to use short movie snippets for "criticism or comment".

This rulemaking decision by the US Copyright Office's Librarian of Congress to grant exceptions to the Digital Milleneium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a clear victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which submitted a request for the three exceptions in late 2008, and an equally clear defeat for Apple and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which opposed them.

"By granting all of EFF's applications, the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick in a statement. "We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law's overbroad reach."

You can read the rest of the article here...

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[The Guru]

Today, Cult of Mac reports that Apple has made the following statement on the matter:

"Apple's goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jail-breaking can severely degrade the experience. As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

[waveydavey]

I wonder at what point people are going to start seeing through Apple's crap. I notice they neglected to also say "however it does mean you'll open up a world of extra functionality that we have deemed you not worthy of experiencing".

[johnston411]

In the real world i can't really see how this makes much difference except the copyright bits.

I'm pretty sure jailbreaking your own phone was never illegal in the first place. Sure it might be in the T&C's of Apples eula but i think the worst that would happen would be a voided warranty.

Following that line of thought does this mean if you jailbreak your iPhone it will now still have to be warranty repaired by apple if needed?

[waveydavey]

Interestingly above it said "CAN violate the warranty" and not "WILL violate the warranty". Interesting.

[johnston411]

Id also guess it applies to rooting android devices too

[Bassey]

waveydavey, on 28 July 2010 - 08:17 AM, said:

Interestingly above it said "CAN violate the warranty" and not "WILL violate the warranty". Interesting.

I would very much think it would depend on the fault as to whether the warrant still applied or not. Hardware issues, yes. Software issues, no. And, knowing apple, anything dubious - No.