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Did you jailbreak your phone? Apple says you’re a criminal

Posted February 13, 2009 1:24 PM by Chris Seibold
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You intuitively know Apple doesn’t want you jailbreaking the iPhone and, since every update seems to break the previous jailbreak your intuition isn’t wrong. There’s nothing unusual about that, BMW would much rather have you bring your car to the BMW dealership than to get jiffy lube to change the oil. But here’s the difference: If you change your own oil on a BMW you’re a do it yourself type guy. If you jailbreak your iPhone Apple doesn’t think you’re a do it yourself type, Apple maintains you’re a crimninal.

The go to place for news and info about this stuff is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And it isn’t a surprise that EFF is all over the issue. From the article:

Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking

It is hard not to get outraged by Apple’s stance on this issue. If you’ve spent any amount of time hacking (white hat stuff) you know that there is a lot of fun to be had and a lot of information to be learned from the process. You also know that telling someone that they are breaking the law when they take steps to expand the functionality of a device they paid for (a jailbroken phone can record video for example) seems inherently wrong. The best way to stop people from jailbreaking an iPhone isn’t by criminalizing the act, it’s by taking away the motivation. So, where’s that cut and paste Apple?

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Comments

  1. Sorry Chris, but you are breaking the law for jailbreaking your iphone…a law is a law despite the fact you dont think it is so you moron.
    Apple may not be able to enforce the legality of this, but because you jailbreakers broke the law, bad Karma will get you…There are many thing we own that we cannot alter, just use your very small brain and you will see that. You jb because you are all so lazy and impatient, you gotta have it yesterday, never satisfied…what a bunch of mind numb robots you asses are…unless you have a techno gadget in your hands you get the shakes and withdrawals, skulls full of mush, and lazy pathetic couch potatoes. Try exercises your bodies for once and explore nature…it might benefit you more.

    Posted by Stephen DeStefano on February 15, 2009 5:30 AM

  2. Hahahaha…thats too funny there steve, but if i choose to jb my own phone it should be upto me. But you do have a valid point about many things we own that we cannot change or alter…like if i buy a scapel, its my scapel, and i cannot do with it what ever i want, like perform surgery on someone..and suicide is illegale too even though its MY body lol.

    Posted by Jimmy on February 15, 2009 5:37 AM

  3. I guess it’s official, the Dev team are now criminals, cheap hackers who will be shut down faster then you can say “geeks who never married and have no life outside of the binary world”. Good ridance to a team of hackers who for some reason are praised for breaking the law… hey, I hear chucky cheese is hiring pinball machine cleaners.
    And any one who is jailbroken, you will be hunted down like dogs for your crimes and strung up in your local town,.. we will watch you beg for mercy and wroth in agony as you gasp for air, and we will snap pics of you in your final moments with our STOCK iPhones.
    Hehe

    Posted by Jack on February 15, 2009 1:48 PM

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