Jailbreaking can be illegal Again, to Keep it Legal Help EFF Now !

By On · 1 Comment · In iPhone, Jailbreak, News

The legality of jailbreaking and unlocking is again under consideration by Federal regulators, which could this time make it illegal. Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking the U.S. Copyright Office to declare that jailbreaking does not violate the DMCA, so that users can jailbreak their iPhone or root Android smartphones to video game consoles.
 Back in year 2010, the US government made the act of jailbreaking smartphones legal by Fedreal law. You might be thinking, then why again the legality is in question? The reason is, every three years the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress holds a meeting to consider granting exemptions to the DMCA in an effort help prevent harm from being caused to legitimate non-infringing uses of copyrighted materials.

In the last meeting held in 2009, EFF managed to win the exemption for jailbreakers and remix artists. But if this year the exemption is not renewed then jailbreaking will not be remain legal.

According to the EFF this is how you can help:

The Copyright Office needs to hear from people who depend on the ability to jailbreak to write, use, and/or tinker with independent software (from useful apps to essential security fixes) for smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. You can submit comments online at this link.
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Here are some questions you might want to address in your comments:

  • Which jailbreaking exemption are you supporting—smartphones/tablets, video game consoles, or both?
  • What’s your background (i.e., are you a developer, hobbyist, academic, independent researcher, user, etc.)?
  • What device do you want to ensure you have the legal to jailbreak?
  • Please explain why you want to jailbreak this device. What limitations do you face if you aren’t able to jailbreak it? Is there software you couldn’t run, computing capabilities you wouldn’t have, cool things you couldn’t do, etc.?
  • If you’re a developer, did an online application store or console manufacturer reject your app or game? If so, what reasons did they give?
  • Is there anything else you want to tell the Copyright Office?

Concrete examples will help show the Copyright Office why they should renew and expand the exemptions for jailbreaking. Send your comments to the Copyright Office athttp://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment-forms/. Where the form says “Comment number(s) of proposed classes of works to which you are responding,” enter a “3” if you’re writing about game consoles or a “5” if you’re writing about smartphones or tablets.

Comments are due by February 10 at 5 PM Eastern Time. Please send a copy of your comments to dmca-comments@eff.org so that we can see what people are saying. We’ll keep your comments confidential.

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  • Am855906

    Which jailbreaking exemption are you supporting—smartphones/tablets, video game consoles, or both?
    -Both! If you buy a car, you are allowed to take it apart and put it back together as many times as you want – even if you are dismantling parts that companies hold patents for. As long as you don’t build and sell something directly breaking the patent’s claims, you can figure out how it works. Many companies have entire research divisions designed to take apart the competition’s products and figure out how to reproduce them!!
    Jailbreaking or rooting a phone is much less drastic than this. People should have access to the full functionality of the phone. The fact that we need permission for this is ABSURD!!