Latest From EFF vs. Apple on Jailbreaking

[Cody Overcash]

Late Friday Greg Joswiak from Apple, Fred von Lohmann from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and officials from the US Copyright Office, record labels, movie studios, and the software industry sat down together for a hearing concerning the EFF's requested DMCA exemption of Jailbreaking. This comes just a few months after the EFF originally filed for an exemption for Jailbreaking to which Apple responded with claims that Jailbreaking is illegal.

Apple is still opposing Jailbreaking and claims that copyright protection is why they have sold 30 million iPhones and 1 billion applications. The EFF's position continues to be that comsumers should be able to run any application including those that Apple doesn't approve of.

Apple is afraid of losing their control on the iPhone where they get to choose what applications are allowed to run for whatever reasons they have. If the exemption for Jailbreaking were approved Apple's Joswiak thinks that “This would severely limit our ability to continue what we are doing as well as innovate for the future.”

Competition breeds innovation. Shouldn't Apple have a little competition? Wouldn't that force them to do things better? It isn't too much of a stretch to think that firmware 3.0 including many basic features that Apple ignored for a couple of years is in response to the Jailbreaking community adding these features to the iPhone themselves.

Apple is concerned with protecting their contracts with carriers. When asked by the one of the Copyright Office's councils if Apple's contracts with AT&T “prohibits you from implementing certain applications?” Joswiak responded saying that “We [Apple] don’t allow any bandwidth hogs” (cough where is slingplayer cough).

Apple, The Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording industry Association of America, the Business Software Alliance and more are worried about piracy that could occur if the Jailbreaking exemption is approved. In Apple's case they are worried that Jailbreaking could cut into their revenue -- they currently get 30% from the sales made on the App Store. Steve Metalitz, a representative for the other groups said that “The impact will be to open up fast fields for the manufacturers and purveyors of pirated games.”

In response von Lohmann argued that the exemption which would apply to all mobile phone platforms including Google's Andriod is warented because by-itself it is a non-infringing activity that the DCMA authorizes. He went further to say that “This is a close ecosystem of a business model,” adding: “I don’t think Congress meant that when they passed the DMCA."

The decision on whether the Copyright Office will decide to grant this exemption is not expected until later this year. At the hearing on friday the Copyright Office representatives showed no sign of how they feel either way. We'll just have to wait and see how this all plays out. Go Jailbreaking!

[via wired]

[blkcadi]

Yup, was reading about this last night. Looks like we may have a chance here.

[Zwayne]

Thanks for the info!

[LastSonOfKrypton]

I don't think Jailbreaking should be illegal. I think Apple needs to go after the guys at H*****o. They're the ones ruining it for everybody.

[wolverinemarky]

if it wasnt for jailbreaking community and the palm pre coming out soon do you think apple would be releasing os 3.0 they have been blowing us off for a couple years now why do it all of a sudden now. there only doing it now because of the competition and without the competiting they have us by the balls and give us what they want us to have and that aint right

[Channan]

Wait...I thought jailbreaking was already legal and Apple was just fighting to make it illegal. Then I read this???

[cg_ai4]

I don't think Jailbreaking should be illegal. I think Apple needs to go after the guys at H*****o. They're the ones ruining it for everybody.

are you talking about the guys from hackintosh project?b-cuz we r not ruining nothing for everybody else i have an pwned iphone my self as well a dell d520 hackintosh. think of these this way if it wasn't for all the hard working dev's we wouldn't have our pwned iphones or ipods or our hackintosh's.all of this is cuz apple refuses to lay down their prices on their mac's and keep rejecting some amazing apps. for the iphone.so its up to us the consumers and the dev's to make jalbreaking and running mac on a regular pc possible as apple make most of their income selling us their hardware which we can get for less on the internet and then build our own mac's.

[wolverinemarky]

Wait...I thought jailbreaking was already legal and Apple was just fighting to make it illegal. Then I read this???

Jailbreaking isnt illegal, Apple is trying to make it Illegal so they can get cydia and other places shut down.

[CrooKid]

Shut down hahahaha are you kidding me, when a hack/pirate site goes down 5 more pop up! I do plenty of other illegal things in life. I could give crap less weather some paper pusher makes it a law or not. Not gonna hinder my pirating, cracking and jailbreaking by any means.

I don't think Jailbreaking should be illegal. I think Apple needs to go after the guys at H*****o. They're the ones ruining it for everybody.

HAHAHA little cry baby! Like they are the ONLY hack/pirate site around.

[MetallicaFan1991]

I don't think Jailbreaking should be illegal. I think Apple needs to go after the guys at H*****o. They're the ones ruining it for everybody.

He means Hackul*us, I think. Sooo many crappy apps on App Store so you need cracked apps to test them. Jailbreaking does cut into Apples profits because of cracked apps.

[confucious]

The EFF just wanted to explicitly make it legal to clear up any confusion - I can't believe anyone is taking Apple seriously on this.

It would be laughed out of court in Europe. I'm sure they will come to the right conclusion in the end over there.

[treble26]

i really hope that the jailbreaking community wins on this because i hate having other people controlling something that i purchased with my own money. if we purchased something with our own money doesnt that mean it belongs to us? and shouldnt we be able to do whatever we feel like doing to our products? i and i think just about every other person in the world would agree with me when i say that Apple just wants to control everything! they want to take control of the world. apple is probably the most hated company around. for god sakes! we need to use itunes to add music onto or ipods and iphones, we cant just plug them in and drag and drop our music into the devices like every other mp3 player. I HOPE JAILBREAKING WINS!!!!!

[exNavy]

I can't believe anyone is taking Apple seriously on this.

It would be laughed out of court in Europe. I'm sure they will come to the right conclusion in the end over there.

In the U.S. big business and legislation go hand in hand. The government is very serious about protecting profits for commercial entities versus the "rights" of its own citizens. They've been doing this for ages now.

[Cokeman]

Apple just wants to control everything & it's not going to happen.
By the way when did they hit 30 million iPhone sales? Last I knew it was at 17 million & counting.

They're worried they will loose money from apps, but could careless if they pay the dev's that make these apps...pathetic

[treble26]

the main reason why i jailbreak my iphone is because i like to customize my devices. i dont really care about the cracked apps. when i heard about jailbreaking and how you can customize the look of the iphone i was so happy! almost all my devices are modded to my liking. my xbox 360's case is completely customized. ( i customized and made my own case for my xbox 360 at school) my iphone is jailbroken with a theme that i made for mself, my ipod video is modded, my speakers are even customized for my entertainment room. i even did my brothers nokia n95 8g. jailbreaking is the best thing thats ever happened to the iphone and ipod touch. being able to get features that apple has denied us and being able to change the look of our iphones and ipod touch is kinda the reason why people are the iphone. atleast from all the people that i know and have met that just recently got an iphone or ipod touch.

[LastSonOfKrypton]

He means Hackul*us, I think. Sooo many crappy apps on App Store so you need cracked apps to test them. Jailbreaking does cut into Apples profits because of cracked apps.

Exactly what I meant. Repo is named Hackulo so that's why I worded it like I did.

HAHAHA little cry baby! Like they are the ONLY hack/pirate site around.

[greenstretracer]

It was Otto Von Bismarck who once said "Laws are like sausage. It is better not to see them made." I think the legal heads over at EFF are just doing this because if they can beat apple they will create a reputation for themselves in the legal community. For us people who enjoy jailbreaking and all the fun that goes along, it would have been MUCH better if the EFF just butted out.

After only two years of law school I can safely pronounce that NOTHING is as it seems when it goes to court. Murders become voluntary manslaughters and articulated wills go into intestacy for minor defeciencies.

lets see how this pans out.

[confucious]

Mine looks bog standard - Winterboard affects performance to much for my liking. I jailbrake for apps that Apple wont allow on the app store or support and to unlock my phone, which isn't illegal in most of the EU (apart from, aparently, Portugal). We all have different reasons but it would be a boring worls if we were all the same.

Which seems to be what Apple want

[ares07]

jailbreaking is not illegal in Portugal, it´s legal like in any EU country

[confucious]

Jailbraking isn't but I believe unlockingh phones to use on other networks is, or so I've heard.