Jailbreaking leagalities

Ever have a doubt whether it is legal to jail break your phone?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/2..._wguy_tc3236_2

I just love it when the community wins:

"Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules." - quoted from link.

LOL! The FCC seems to be imitating our ACCC (Aussie Consumer &... whatever).
They ruled years ago that DVD region coding was anti-competitive (hence our DVD players etc are unlocked else have hacks available).
Similarly, eBay was not allowed to limit transactions to PayPal.

I guess that's a form of communism when the community wins, or the gov't rallies for the community. It should be "user pays" and "user fights" instead! (That's a dig....)

It has nothing to do with communism and in fact, is the opposite. The job of government in a free-market system is to pass laws to ensure competition and to protect consumers. This usually means regulation against monopolistic behavior by companies.

Apple's anti-jailbreaking tone come from their desire to lock you into only using their app store to get apps and only using the carrier they have deals with. When you jailbreak your phone, you are able to circumvent these desires and thus can take away money from their revenue stream.

If the fcc was taking advice from the Aussie government, they'd probably mandate some sort of universal Internet filter to block out people from pages that tell users how to jailbreak their phone.

Agreed! Nice to have a ruling in print, though. Apple should be forced to make the store better and more desirable than competitor's, not waste their time trying to get rulings against jailbreak sites.

In other product categories, this would be laughable. It's a little like Ford arguing that you can have their cars serviced only at Ford dealerships or use it to shop at Ford approved grocery stores.

I don't see how they can argue that this is a copyright violation, any more than you can alternately argue that using an Apple iPhone to take pictures for the purposes of planning and executing a crime makes the company an accessory to the act.

Yeah, I've heard about this, good news indeed. I guess rooting an Android should be included? What about tales of bricking the Android X?

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Originally Posted by Bugbyte

It's a little like Ford arguing that you can have their cars serviced only at Ford dealerships or use it to shop at Ford approved grocery stores.

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You mean 7-Eleven?

hehe.

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Originally Posted by tripzero

It has nothing to do with communism and in fact, is the opposite.

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Sorry trip - but that's what I meant by That's a dig.... )I'm having a go at healthcare is communism (but subsidies aren't) etc.

Though you have totally lost me on mandating "some sort of universal Internet filter to block out people from pages that tell users how to jailbreak their phone" unless that is your joke...? As I said, we made regionalisation illegal. We also removed subsidies and tariffs from out local producers and manufacturers.
Or maybe you confuse us with an ally or someone else??

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What about tales of bricking the Android X?

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The tale started by one guy posting on one forum who happened to "brick" his device by messing with the boot stuff? The same guy that thinks "JTAG" is a programming language?

Turned out to be a total non-event, and the guy was wrong. Which I predicted based on the fact that he didn't know what JTAG was. If you don't know what that is, then you aren't allowed an opinion on whether or not something is "bricked"

Gary (-;

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Originally Posted by OldSpark

Sorry trip - but that's what I meant by That's a dig.... )I'm having a go at healthcare is communism (but subsidies aren't) etc.

Though you have totally lost me on mandating "some sort of universal Internet filter to block out people from pages that tell users how to jailbreak their phone" unless that is your joke...? As I said, we made regionalisation illegal. We also removed subsidies and tariffs from out local producers and manufacturers.
Or maybe you confuse us with an ally or someone else??

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I'm probably confusing you with new zealand. Didn't they outlaw sheep or something like that?

j/k. I'm following what you originally said much better now. ;)

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Originally Posted by Bugbyte

Agreed! Nice to have a ruling in print, though. Apple should be forced to make the store better and more desirable than competitor's, not waste their time trying to get rulings against jailbreak sites.

In other product categories, this would be laughable. It's a little like Ford arguing that you can have their cars serviced only at Ford dealerships or use it to shop at Ford approved grocery stores.

I don't see how they can argue that this is a copyright violation, any more than you can alternately argue that using an Apple iPhone to take pictures for the purposes of planning and executing a crime makes the company an accessory to the act.

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i can kind of see how apple argued it-- it is similar to the law for cars about aftermarket equipment affecting the factory warranty(Magnuson-Moss Act)-- dealerships used to use aftermarket equipment--no matter if it affected the defective factory part--as leverage to voiding the factory warranty on the car... now they are supposed to prove that installing a aftermarket supercharger really did mess up the factory motor...

i think that the whole jb=bad thing would also be more understandable if they rented the devices... but people paid to purchase the device, so there is no reason that any provider should have locked-in, sole rights to the device...

it would be really nice if apple learned from this experience, and allowed some of the jailbroken apps in, but, after how long it took them to just offer free cases for the iphone 4, i highly doubt it will ever happen..


but, back to topic, it is nice to finally see government on our side.