Apple has publicly saying that “jailbreaking” (and seems it’s involving “unlocking” as well) an iPhone is breaking the law and voiding the warranty. What?!
Arik Hesseldahl of Business Week wrote:
The statement was Apple’s first official comment on the practice of jailbreaking, which first emerged within days of the iPhone’s initial release in mid 2007. It came in response an effort by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to make the procedure exempt from prosecution under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The EFF had argued that jailbreaking the iPhone should be protected under the principal of fair use. “There is no copyright-related rationale for preventing iPhone owners from decrypting and modifying the device’s firmware in order to enable their phones to interoperate with applications lawfully obtained from a source of their own choosing,” the EFF’s Fed von Lohman and Jennifer Granick wrote in their filing with the Copyright Office.
Apple argued otherwise in a response filing opposing any exemption. Jailbreaking an iPhone, it argues, destroys “the technological protection of Apple’s key copyrighted computer programs in the iPhone device itself and copyrighted content owned by Apple that plays on the iPhone resulting in copyright infringement, potential damage to the device and other potential harmful physical effects.” It also constitutes a breach of contract, Apple attorney David Hayes of Fenwick and West wrote.
If Apple really does decide to crack down on the jailbreaking developers and their works, it would be really weird. The idea of jailbreaking comes out due to some iPhone’s limitation, meaning that it’s a part of the creativity, innovation…
So what do you think?
[via CNET]
I think that Apple needs to look beyond the app theft aspect of jailbreaking and look at some of the innovation that is going on there. There are some lessons to be learned there, such as not forcing users out of their apps to turn on wifi, or to answer SMS. I’ve seen where someone can swipe across the top status bar to make a control panel drop down in front of their running app, to make a preference change or change Wifi settings, and then close that pane revealing their still-running app.
If some coder can afford to do this in his spare time, what the hell is Apple doing to move this forward? Because they sure don’t seem to be working on getting that push notification out the door, now late since September. Something is horribly wrong in the house of Steve.
This whole rebuttal from Apple is all about protecting the monopoly they so conveniently set up for themselves with the app store… where they control the content, collect the commissions and censor to their heart’s content. While this may work with iTunes in dealing with artists who don’t know how to program, I can’t see this lasting with software developers who will naturally develop endless workarounds to this kind of draconian bullsh*t.
We can develop anything we want for the Mac… why not the iPhone?
Apple have brought it all on themselves by restricting sooooooo many of the basic function that weve become so accustom to, such as….. choosing a mp3 for a ringtone, who does that hurt, especially if u already bought the bludy CD!!!!
Im getting very sick of see Apps coming out for what should be BASIC FUNCTIONS, now costing me £5-£10, or like MMS costing a fortune everytime we have to send through a 3rd party!!!!
TOP 10 ways Apple have abused us FOR NO REASON!!!!
1) sms forward/MMS
2) bluetooth transfer
3) ringtone
4) easy sim card swapping
5) battery replacing
6) video recording
7) flash
8) music speaker too low
9) camera focus/no camera button for one photo taking
10) battery replacing
Personally, I think Apple have went so far that they deserve all those people taking advantage of them….
Apple is being incredibly ignorant about this sort of thing, as are most huge companies today. It’s getting tougher and tougher to invent independently.
“Conrad added that Apple had given Pandora something of a head start, suggesting that they begin by developing apps for a jail-broken version of the phone, before the SDK had been released to developers. Once the SDK was available, Conrad insisted that it was every bit as intuitive as the company had hoped.”
COME ON
via: http://bit.ly/F6YSG
Whereas I agree wholeheartedly with the EFF over the fair use argument, Apple certainly has a point about voiding the warranty. Customers are in exactly the same position they would be if they hack their DVD firmware, and that is absolutely their choice to make. Apple may also have a valid legal point about the copyright infringement. From a moral standpoint it’s a different matter though
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