So, there I am enjoying a nice Gilmore Girls episode after a long day’s work, and Engadget’s iPhone application brings the good news: the US Library of Congress has added a DMCA exemption for jailbreaking or rooting mobile phones! This is a major blow to Apple, who actively tried to keep jailbreaking a criminal offence, and a major win for everyone who believes that the phone you buy is actually yours, and not the manufacturer’s.
Every three years, the Library of Congress allows people to complain about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so that possibly, exemptions can be added to the law. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent technological protections measures on stuff DVDs, music, software, electronic devices like mobile phones, and so on.
As Ars Technica notes, the Library of Congress has been very slow when it comes to allowing these exemptions – up until now. This time around, they’ve approved a whole boatload of important exemptions to the much-hated DMCA, returning ownership of some of your DVDs, music, and electronic devices back to you.
The most important and far-reaching exemption is the one on jailbreaking (or rooting, in Android language). In case you didn’t know: this represents the conclusion in a tug of war between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Apple. The EFF asked for the exemption, while Apple fought hard to keep jailbreaking illegal.
Well, Apple lost.
Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.
In other words, you are not breaking the DMCA if you jailbreak your iPhone in order to run applications not approved by the device’s maker, which in this case is Apple. The Library of Congress specifically addresses Apple’s complaints, which mostly centre around the idea that jailbreaking would harm Apple’s controlled ecosystem.
First of all, the Library argues that jailbreaking cannot be seen as copyright infringement, since a jailbroken iPhone used “fewer than 50 bytes of code out of more than 8 million bytes, or approximately 1/160,000 of the copyrighted work as a whole. Where the alleged infringement consists of the making of an unauthorized derivative work, and the only modifications are so de minimis, the fact that iPhone users are using almost the entire iPhone firmware for the purpose for which it was provided to them by Apple undermines the significance” of Apple’s argument.
Furthermore, “on balance, the Register concludes that when one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses”.
That one surely isn’t going to sit well in Cupertino.
The EFF, who did all the hard work on our behalf, is obviously pleased with the outcome. “Copyright law has long held that making programs interoperable is fair use,” said Corynne McSherry, EFF’s Senior Staff Attorney, “It’s gratifying that the Copyright Office acknowledges this right and agrees that the anticircumvention laws should not interfere with interoperability.”
Several other exemptions were added as well, but they are more specific and less useful than the jailbreaking one. All in all, this is great news for American consumers, and a rightful blow to the face of Apple and other companies aspiring to be like Apple.
Thank you Thom for getting out of your “OSNews hibernation”. 馃檪
And obviously thanks go to the EFF, but maybe people shouldn’t buy phones that need this (N900 anyone ?). 馃檪
Edited 2010-07-26 18:14 UTC
I too was going to give Thom a little good natured ribbing for this being his first post in a while but you beat me to the punch.
It’s no surprise that Thom jumped at the opportunity to “blast” Apple for their desire to control the hardware that runs their software and celebrate the Library of Congress’ ruling.
Like others here, I don’t think the Library of Congress’ decision will make much difference in the real world.
I don’t know of a single case where Apple ever “broke down the doors” of a hacker who hacked their phone and its certainly within Apple’s right to continue to make the process difficult, something the LOC didn’t say Apple or another company couldn’t continue to do.
But despite the impression others have regarding Apple’s “evil intentions” I’ve always thought the license agreements, the efforts to make it difficult to hack their phones, hardware, operating system, etc. had more to do with product liability.
For example if they didn’t have these EULAs and systems in place what’s to stop a hacker from seeking compensation for “bricking” their netbook for example, or a company who installed OS X on non-Apple hardware and as a result lost millions of dollars in valuable data, or a techie claiming “lost productivity” because he’d hacked his iPhone and lost a big contract. Or imagine a hacker bringing AT&T’s network to a halt due to a poorly written application or hack.
With all that said, I’m actually pleased with the LOC’s ruling as it always feels a little “dirty” when bending the rules of an EULA and I’ve done so, self admittedly. At least hackers now can risk “bricking” their iPhone legally!
But be careful my fellow hackers…if you bring down the “network”, brick your phone, lose data, or cause irreparable harm to your hardware, software, data or your body or that of someone else’s, YOU will be held liable, criminally or civilly, not our friends at Apple or our other favorite technology companies.
I agree that although this is big news, cause for celebration, and a blow to Apple’s hegemony, it’s not going to have much real-world impact, because the geniuses who are out these figuring out the jailbreaks would do it whether it was illegal in the US or not. This doesn’t compel Apple to make jaibreaking easy, nor does it particularly clarify the awkward instance where you take your jailbroken and broken iPhone into the Apple store to be fixed under warranty.
Really the main thing that this does is give people in the US with jailbroken iPhones a little more moral high ground because they’re not actually taking part in a semi-legal activity anymore.
I don’t disagree, but one point to consider is that with the DMCA exemption, it opens the door for mainstream media sites to publish info regarding the jailbreaking process (ie. step-by-step guides), which could help “legitimize” jailbreaking for the general public and encourage more users to try it. Even CNN was discussing it today, for instance.
DMCA would otherwise prevent them from providing or even linking to the information (US-based at least).
What about companies that do jail-breaking for profit, would this new law affect them. Would a company like Pystar be able to start again due the jail-breaking exemption?
Two more weeks, and my internship is over. After that, I’ll at least have a couple of weeks where I can go back to the old days.
Until possibly the future arrives and my time at OSNews is really over. We’ll see.
Well I for one have both enjoyed the slow pace here in your absence, and missed your unique perspective on all things tech. I hope you’re able to stay with the site for a while yet, and still pursue your college life and career.
I’ll miss your posts, Thom.
The site has been darn near dead the last few weeks.
So true… OSNews without Thom’s articles kind of sucks, really. It went from a daily visit to “eh, I don’t really care…” and a half a week passes before I bother coming back. And when I do, there’s maybe two articles of interest… and even those are lacking.
Yeah, great he’s got out to make another anti Apple story.
When I saw this news on the web, my first thought was: great, I will be able to crack DRM from video / music / DVD / video games now legally, it’s so great.
When Thom read this one he’s first thought was: aha, let’s make a new that f**k Apple …
A neutral news should be the whole story and a section about Apple. Not a whole thing against Apple then a sentence about DVD and music …
So what happens now when your new jailbroken Iphone has an hardware failure? Will Apple repair it or not?(in the US)
They’ll probably void your warranty and refuse to repair it.
Yes, but then ‘warranty laws’ are pretty clear…
If the modification didn’t cause the problem, the problem is still covered under warranty.
So, unless jail-breaking in and of itself caused the issue, the warranty must be honored.
–The loon
Nope.
Let’s hope this will actually render the whole approach of “jailing” irrelevant in the future.
Great! Now, about those DVDs I bought…
You’ll require jail breaking if you copy those… :p
Honestly, who cares? The people that would have done it “illegally” would have done so anyway, and it’s unlikely Apple would have ever gone after them.
The people that never would have done it before likely still won’t. I don’t really see this as a “big blow to Apple”.
I personally don’t see people saying “wow, I was not going to jailbreak my iPhone because I was afraid Apple would be knocking at my door, but now I can!!”
I’ve got a rooted Droid that Motorola obviously doesn’t like that way, but I’ve yet to hear anyone knocking at my door.
Don’t forget that someone should also care for the people who publish the information and software to actually do a jailbreak.
you’re right-this decision *still* hasn’t influenced me to buy an iPhone :p
Apple has gone after them though, http://www.techspot.com/news/33855-apple-wants-to-squelch-rogue-iph… and I remember another one where the target was a wiki or something with jailbreak instructions.
This moves the jailbreak community from a legal grey area where they have to keep a low profile to avoid apples wrath, to a legal community that can operate without risk and even lets people try to make money off products around the jailbreak ecosystem (though I doubt we would ever be talking about a lot of money here).
Excellent point; I didn’t think about it from the standpoint of those that were sharing the information. I stand corrected.
One should care, since in general companies build their policies around the legal climate. The more relevant and fare laws are, the less room is there for Apple and the like to pressure users with their power hungry policies.
Edited 2010-07-26 18:56 UTC
I do. It’s a step in the rarely seen “sane” direction for US IP law.
…or all companies that actively block firmware modifications?
I would assume the Android OS and any others are included as well.
Apple flat out called it illegal. Motorola limits what you can do using the technology, not the law. The LOC only said it wasn’t legal, not that it was a right to do. Motorola will still continue locking and encrypting the boot loader and making life generally difficult for 3rd party ROM users on their phones.
Again, how is this a “Loss” for Apple?? Or will you continue to cloud what’s really happened here vs blog banter?
Apple loses control over the iOS platform and can’t lean on people using the law. This means that it is a potential loss of sales through the iTunes store due to the alternative stores such as Cydia and Iphonexe.
There, no clouding.
Possibly, but Apple’s the only one who said it is illegal. Other companies settle for voiding your warranty, which is the sane option. It’s not like it’s illegal to modify your Ford or B&O stereo or Yamaha motorcycle etc (as long as it’s within the applicable law). There’s no reason IT has to be different in this regard.
Rubbish. Software is software. Changing the software doesn芒鈧劉t void the warranty. At most they can ask you to reformat the device before they will repair it.
I’m guessing you’re blissfully unaware of the reality that there are hardware designs where bugs in software can cause things to self-destruct by accident, as it only takes a little access in the wrong memory addresses to cause hardware-fatal issues. Look it up: there’s a lot of devices that have that issue, and have in the past. I’m not aware of any currently being sold, but… perhaps that’s because they’re not talked about, or people don’t often hack things enough to have that become well-known. I distinctly remember having to have my hand at the ready to turn my CRT monitor off very quickly when I was testing various resolutions for X Windows installations, or Windows resolution tests (before XP). Yup, I could have destroyed my monitor via software, and my monitor wasn’t remotely unique in that.
If hardware came in for repair and it was something along the lines of fatal hardware death somehow that’s brought about by software, they’d be fully in their right to tell you to go jump in a lake, it’s not their fault, it’s yours!
And even without fatal hardware issues like that, without the developer having full control over software, if modified software is running, it may make the device not work as designed, and make someone think the hardware has failed, when it’s really just buggy software: why should a manufacturer have to warrant against that?
Not if that can cause damage to product. Overclocking with software can cause hardware problems that aren’t covered by warranty and never will. Perfect example is car “chipping”, basicly what you do is rewrite engine parameters that will allow better performance. However if you blow engine or something good luck getting that on warranty.
Agreed. Apple *obviously* has no obligation *whatsoever* to service jailbroken phones.
And this is likely to be their response, which we should be able to see quite soon. The EULA, or whatever their agreement is called, would be easily changed with a few of those law-related 100 lines sentences written from the company’s lawyers. So it will be up to the users.
I’m going a little offtopic now, but I’m not really much into Apple’s stuff, so let me ask : is it true that some interoperability is broken in Apple -> other OSes direction ? For example, I want to send you a picture from my Nokia/SE/Motorola/otherPhone via Bluetooth, but Apple won’t accept that ? I heard that, but I can’t confirm if this is true. So, if yes, would jailing into the device can enable users to connect to each other, or there are hardware limitations ?
My question was how is it a “Big Loss for Apple” [specifically]? The explicit terms of this [law] doesn’t single one company out. It will affect any phone maker.
I somehow doubt that Apple will suddenly put “jailbreaking” as a feature. Another words, if Apple wanted to they can have an option buried somewhere in the settings to allow 3rd party apps outside of the Apple App Store to be installed onto the iPhone and iPod touch. That would pretty much put an end to current jailbreaking community by legitimizing it completely. Of course this highly unlikely to ever happen so don’t hold your breath. At very best they’ll stop trying to claim that jailbreaking as it currently stands is illegal, criminal, and unethical but even that’s a stretch. More than likely they’ll simply continue their current position of spreading misinformation despite this new DMCA exemption. As usual Apple fanboys will be out in full force in support of Apple whatever Apple does and demonize those who dare to criticize Apple. It is what they do.
What a huge blow, should they just stop selling the iPhone or maybe close up shop for good? What a dumb headline.
Wait maybe Apple should do what Motorola did and just kill their iPhone when it detects any firmware tampering. Because Apple is the ultimate evil here, how could a Google or Linux product ever be so evil?
Since when does a Library have anything to do with the law?
Haven’t you heard the expression, “Book ’em, Danno”?
They play a pretty major role in determining what constitutes fair use
Since when does a Ministry have anything to do with Justice? Different countries call their government units different things.
Since when does a library have anything to do with sharing of code located on disk by unrelated programs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_library#Shared_libraries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress
Seriously, next time, look up what the subject actually is before making a post like this. It only makes you look bad when you post questions like that in an environment such as this.
That’s a good point.
Sure, the wikipedia link says the LOC serves “as the base for the United States Copyright Office.” But this is essentially a legal decision.
I can’t remember hearing of the Library of Congress handing down a legal decision before. It at least stands out as not being ordinary.
But still, won’t this mean Apple will look for another way to circumvent this decision?
The decision didn’t necessarily make jailbreaking legal, the Library just said that Apple’s attempt to frame jailbreaking as a DMCA-based copyright infringement is incorrect and not in the spirit of what copyright is trying to protect.
Right now this amounts to the same thing as there aren’t any laws forbidding jailbreaking a phone, but I think its an important distinction to make.
See, this is an example of the big evil government getting into our lives, making us less free! Now that the government has stepped in, we’re all REQUIRED to be able to jailbreak our phones from the good corporate saviors, who have PROVIDED for us this wonderful new frontier, the closed smart phone platform.
(heh, oh man, I love satire)
The heartbreak is that the idiots that you’re lampooning won’t “get” your satire even if you explained it to them for a million years.
Umm… the “big evil government” made the DMCA in the first place. Now they’ve reduced its scope. It’s unusual for laws to be relaxed and civil liberties expanded, but completely consistent with a deregulatory approach.
Good to see some common sense on this front for a change.
I still won’t buy an iPhone even with legal gaol-breaking.
Are you just watching them over and over again? 馃槈
It repeats every month u know =)
I have the entire series digitally on my media centre. I’m watching it for the third time. In like 6 months.
With the allowing of Jailbreaking does that set a precedence for other devices a well? iPad? recent said mobile phone who said they’ll lock down the OS? I wonder whether the scope will be a lot wider than anticipated. Regarding ‘demn apps will crash our towas!” as spoken by Steve Jobs, what will they do in response? keep chasing the and locking down the techniques used by jail break? unlock the phone but come up with a more useful way of balancing security and freedom?
Whether this happened or not wouldn’t have matter in the long term. Any pressures Apple made against people would have simply pushed the efforts off shore (or to where they appear to be happening off shore) where the DMCA “doesn’t exist”.
None of this prevents Apple from doing efforts to frustrate and prevent jailbreaking of their phones. It may now be legal to circumvent those efforts, but that doesn’t make the efforts themselves illegals. Whatever drive Apple has to frustrate jailbreakers, that drive remains.
If anything, the FUD of jailbreaking being in a “shadowy underworld” being lifted with potential to make jailbreaking even more mainstream, may push Apples efforts even harder to keep them out.
Just another shot in the war, but the war continues.
Well, it prevents them from going after people simply for jailbreaking, which is what they can currently threaten.
I’m sure Apple won’t stop, but they’ll have to change their song from ‘jailbreaking is illegal’ to ‘these people are obviously downloading illegal content/hacking wireless base towers/the mafia’. And probably continue to throw up as many hurdles as they can to make jailbreaking unpalatable.
I suspect this only puts jailbreaking in the same category as bittorrent. The concept itself is not illegal, but what people do with it, might be. Think of the children!
I’m pretty sure that they’ve got an argument to make. The Library of Congress ruled that it’s not a crime to steal code for the purposes of modifying a device – as long as the usage is “de minimis”. If Apple can successfully argue that no matter the size of the code, regardless of if it’s one byte or one gigabyte, that the impact of its use is more than de minimis, then we’re back to square one.
People don’t seem to realize that these “phones” are really powerful little computers. Imagine how people would react if Microsoft (or Apple) dictated what software people could install on their PCs? Furthermore, what if they dictated which ISPs people could purchase Internet access from? Obviously, most people wouldn’t stand for that and so they shouldn’t when it comes to their smartphones either. I recently purchased an unlocked Nexus One (one of the last from Google’s store before it shut down.) I LOVE it! While the Android platform still hasn’t matured, it’s getting there fast. The fact that the OS is Linux and that I can install my own custom ROMs or gain root access easily is satisfying, even if I never plan to do these things myself. Thanks to the thriving hacking community, owners of the original G1 (and similar vintage Android phones) can run the latest ‘Froyo’ OS update! If Apple were in charge, they’s say “sorry Charlie…”
and your free to break it the way you want, but that shouldn’t be covered by the warranty.
So it won’t affect me …
The day I pay ~ 500-600 $ for a mobile phone it better be open and upgradable ..
If you don’t like it / “the license” so to speak don’t buy it.
Vote with your wallet.
Perhaps the biggest implication of this decision is that it is now legal to sell, publish and advertise tools for jailbreaking and software that incorporates some jailbreaking techniques in order to install itself on the restricted device. Now it is even legal to operate third-party application stores for jail-broken devices.
With some serious money behind we can expect jailbreaking to be quite effective. Of course manufacturers of such restricted devices will fight back piling technical limitations. In a longer term, however, such practices will only piss off the users and make themselves less competitive.
DVD ripping? It’s limited to portions, you still aren’t allowed to rip the whole thing. Want to rip that DVD movie so you can put it in your smartphone? Still no can do.
Jailbreaking/Rooting? Eveen if Apple/Google/HTC/NameYourManufacturerHere can’t sue you for jailbreaking their devices, they are still allow to re-lock their devices or stop providing you support for your jailbroken device.
Phone unlocking? Manufacturers and carriers aren’t still required to provide you with the unlocking. You still have to go through (sometimes sleezy) methods to unlock your handset.
So really, how much have things changed?
Seems like my donation via the Humble Indie Bundle went to the right place
I were going to buy recently , now hesitate脗路脗路脗路脗路
Edited 2010-07-28 02:11 UTC
they should make illegal to sell hardware without documentation on how to use it at the hardware level regardless of the Operating system.
How original of you, Thom, this is the 3rd ARS Technica article you’ve reposted in a row, why even bother posting when you only have one source to post from, and I’m sure a majority of OSnews visitors already read ARS.