afterdawn
Apple battles EFF, calls iPhone jailbreaking piracy
Written by Rich "vurbal" Fiscus @ 14 Feb 2009 12:41 User comments (24)
Apple battles EFF, calls iPhone jailbreaking piracy After staying notably silent on the subject of jailbreaking for the first year and a half of the iPhone's existence, Apple has now submitted a document to the Library of Congress claiming that reverse engineering the iPhone's operating system is copyright infringemnt.
Their claim is in response to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's submission for the annual DMCA exemption review. Under the DMCA, the Library of Congress is allowed to allow selected activities which would normally be forbidden by the DMCA. Due to encryption used for various bits of software in it, the reverse engineering require to jailbreak the iPhone OS falls under that cateogory.
The EFF is requesting an exemption for "Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset."
Apple's response indicates that they consider such an exemption inappropriate because it would violate their copyrights. As the EFF points out,"Running lawfully obtained software on a smart phone does not infringe copyright, nor does the process of jailbreaking a smart phone in order to accomplish this goal."
Apple's argument against this is that the iTunes App Store provides plenty of choice. The problem with this position is that it's ultimately Apple who gets to decide what's available,not developers or consumers. They reserve the right to turn down programs, or even remove them at any time.
original article
For those of you who don't understand this issue:
the apps that you buy for your ipod touch or iphone through the app store all have a little electronic stamp of approval by Apple. The operating system (iphone OS) will not run any program that lacks this stamp. Apple controls the entire process of who get the stamp and who does not. Some people want to run their own programs or those that third party developers have written but lack approval from Apple. Well, this third party software is perfectly legal to have and use, it only lacks approval from Apple as they would obviously not wish to compete with every basement programmer who can whip up an app that does the same thing as the one in the app store but cheaper. Apple does not like it but its not illegal or anything right?
The Controversy: In order to run third party apps that lack Apple's digital signature, somebody had to reverse engineer the iphone OS just a little bit to take out the part that stops you from running unsigned code. (this is called Jailbreaking). Apple holds the copyright on the iphone OS and reverse engineering their code violates that copyright.
The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) does allow the Library of Congress to make exceptions to the rules though. Even though 'Jailbreaking' requires the reverse engineering of the iphone OS, and would normally be considered an infringement of copyright, the Library of Congress can make it an exception.
Should they?
I, for one, agree with the EFF. The Library of Congress should make Jailbreaking an exception to the DMCA. To me, an ipod/iphone is no different than a computer. Once I purchase a computer, it is mine. I can install whatever legally obtained software that I want on it. If there are any pre-installed softwares that attempt to prevent or restrict what I wish to install on my computer, I am free to get rid of them.
