Apple Says Jailbreaking iPhones Is Illegal, Dammit

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5153101/apple-says-jailbreaking-iphones-is-illegal-dammit

Apple Says Jailbreaking iPhones Is Illegal, Dammit
By matt buchanan, 11:50 AM on Fri Feb 13 2009, 7,716 views
For the first time ever, Apple has said publicly that jailbreaking  
iPhones is illegal. In comments filed with the US copyright office,  
Apple says that jailbreaking is copyright infringement and a violation  
of the DMCA.

Every three years, the US Copyright Office has a rulemaking session  
for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, where exemption requests can  
be filed. For the 2009 session, the Electronic Frontier Foundation  
filed an exemption request for jailbreaking iPhones for the purposes  
of interoperability with independent software—i.e., apps not in the  
App Store.

Apple filed these comments (warning, PDF) in opposition, which is the  
first time it's explicitly said that jailbreaking itself is illegal  
('cause copyright infringement is, well, not legal). It gets pretty  
nasty trashtalking the EFF in parts, and pretty masturbatory talking  
about how amazing the iPhone is in others (to show how it doesn't need  
to be opened to foster innovation). But the bottom line, according to  
Apple, is that the act of jailbreaking itself constitutes copyright  
infringement because it "involves infringing uses of the bootloader  
and OS, the copyrighted works that are protected by the TPMs being  
circumvented."

The EFF's counter-argument is that "courts have long recognized that  
copying software while reverse engineering is a fair use when done for  
purposes of fostering interoperability with independently created  
software." Apple says, whatever, it's not fair use, you suck.

We'll let the lawyers figure it out, but as a betting man, my money's  
on the Fruit. [EFF]

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