Now legal in the U.S.: Jailbreaking your iPhone, ripping a DVD for education
crunchgear.com
crunchgear.com
But, no, the wording really is zeroed in on handsets:
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 fact, it sounds like it's legal to jailbreak an iPhone but not an iPod touch...
Perhaps one could extend the scope of this to the iPod touch by considering the case of one with a bluetooth headset and VoIP software running. The iPod touch may be much less well known as a telephone, but like the iPhone it is a product with many possible uses. Talk on it and have someone try to prove it isn't a phone.
If anyone wants to check it out, it's at the corner of 74th and Broadway in Jackson Heights.
I read on Fred Wilson's blog that it works in the UK (and presumably the rest of Western Europe). I am specifically wondering about Australia and Japan.
Can I buy an iPhone 4 in the USA, get it unlocked in Queens, and use it in Australia with a sim?
Edit - I'm mostly wondering if the radio in the US version of the phone supports the networks in .au and .jp.
In fact, that's true for the rest of Africa too, where you're pretty much guaranteed to find at least one GSM 900/1800 network wherever you go and in many cases a UMTS/HSDPA 2100 3G network as well, though the coverage might not be as comprehensive as it is in South Africa.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
In the US, AT&T uses the 850 and 1900 Mhz bands. (There's no other network in the US that has iPhone-compatible 3G service.)
In Australia, Telstra uses the 850 Mhz band, others use the 2100 Mhz band.
In Japan, 1700 and 2100 Mhz bands are used.
All of these frequencies, except for the 1700 Mhz band, are supported by the iPhone 4.
T-Mobile USA is the odd one out, though. It was a preexisting network (VoiceStream) which after being purchased by Deutsche Telekom was given the T-Mobile name for the sake of international brand unity.
https://secure.eff.org/site/Ecommerce/267350841?VIEW_PRODUCT...
So no, the fear was not only of a voided warranty.
I don't recall Apple ever mentioning jailbreaking, let alone threatening that it was a criminal act. During the initial iPhone announcement there was talk about the supposed dangers of letting any particular app free on AT&Ts mobile network, but since then I can't recall a time when either a phone manufacturer or a service provider has said anything about the legality of jailbreaking, SEEM editing, etc.
I had misunderstood the concern being the distribution of modified, Apple owned software (similar to the Psystar case), but this appears to be a system which patches the software in place, without requiring redistribution of Apple IP.
It'd simply be the digital equivalent of the stickers that indicate if a unit has been opened or exposed to moisture.
Apple's "it's a crime" talk is to scare casual users away from jailbreaking to get pirated software. But they know that experienced users, the ones that write the apps that draw the inexperienced users to the platform, want to jailbreak. And, those users want a warranty. And, they don't want to piss off those users, many of whom have hardware-review blogs.
So my guess is that Apple is not going to void warranties for jailbreaking. If they start doing that, it's going to be really good for Android and really bad for Apple.
If so, the Google Voice angle gives me a horrible idea: imagine if Google snatched up those iPhone jailbreak devs. Google could distribute a jailbreak program to get a true Google Voice app on the iPhone. The downside being that their war with Apple would immediately go nuclear.
As Google has already made a Google Voice app for the iPhone, I'd say their business model is closer to the second scenario. However, given that the percentage of jailbroken iPhones is quite low, I doubt that they'll bother.
The second problem is that lawyers will be trying to find a way to create the old result, and are likely to succeed. For instance Apple's restrictions against jailbreaking are almost certainly in their shrinkwrap license contract. Therefore the fact that they can't throw the copyright book at you, doesn't mean that you're necessarily legally in the clear to do it.
Given this, I see nothing to suggest that they won't do it again. And any company who suggests otherwise is taking a definite risk.
Have they?
The famous case of "bricking" back in 2007 was not related to a jailbreak, but was a botched unlock tool[1] that corrupted data in the baseband firmware. The corruption then led to problems with an update. Apple issued a warning when the update was released saying it would affect unlocked phones, and I can't imagine this is out of malice so much as it is out of Apple's pre-release testing activities revealing problems.
If it were an intentional attack against people who had jailbroken phones, why did it only affect those who used that particular flavor of unlock software?
With a jailbreak being simply a software modification, when has strictly a jailbreak (not an unlock) led to a bricked phone? At worst, a software update from Apple will just lead to the phone being restored back to non-jailbroken state.
Are you sure? That sounds like trespass to chattels to me, or if they hadn't tested their update on jailbroken phones, then reckless, possibly criminal negligence.
Seriously, "lawfully obtained" should be the only qualifier needed.
I'm serious. I just sat through 10 minutes of previews the other night for movies like "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel." If I don't have a legal right to skip that, music execs shouldn't have the legal right to stop me from playing high-decibel polka music on their front lawns.
Of course, this could have changed in newer DVDs or DVD players; though I haven't encountered any disk which has absolutely no way of getting out of the previews, but I tend not to watch many movies.
Also, I think that I have to point out that you are entirely free to mute the DVD and go off somewhere else until the previews are done, if you're unable to find any other way out of them; "FORCES" is a bit of a strong word, given that you were not (I assume) physically prevented from leaving. This is, of course, not an acceptable solution, but it does eliminate the discomfort of sitting through previews.
It's just too easy for original DVDs to get destroyed. Also, this person has a car DVD player that this person doesn't really trust not to destroy the DVD on a particularly hard bump. (Ironically, this person's DVD player finds it easier to play the burned DVD copies; the player refuses to play about 10% of the original DVDs this person has put in it.)
That said, I consider this an acceptable workaround given the lack of a real solution.
It is an abuse of the spec to mark what are basically "advertisements" as such in order to prevent people skipping them.
>>>
(4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:
(i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and
(ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law.
Actually, ArsTechnica has a good article up about this too: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/apple-loses-...
They specifically mention this clause:
It turns out that the real target here is the DRM itself, specifically two controversial systems called SecuROM and SafeDisc. Professor Alex Halderman, a longtime security researcher in this area, begged the Library to let him investigate these kinds of invasive DRM without legal worries.
Wanting to unlock/mod your phone is not only for an IT crowd ... I see normal people wanting to do that all the time.
On the other hand check your phone contract; there could be something in there about denying you network access. (or they could try to introduce it). Similar to what Microsoft (was is MS or Sony? I forget) did with cracked consoles.
There's more general interoperability language in the DMCA though, so it's possible that if the creator of a Linux DVD player were prosecuted, they'd be acquitted. Falling under one of the Copyright Office's explicit exceptions is safer but I don't believe exhaustive.
Looks like it's more than just education and criticism:
> (i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students; > (ii) Documentary filmmaking; > (iii) Noncommercial videos.
Looks like so long as you're looking to use a clip, and your use would qualify as fair use, you can rip a DVD. That can't be what the librarian meant to write though, that would actually encourage people to make backups and then further copy a fair use bit into a different work.
Either way, this is great.