"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- IPhone users can now legally hack their phones to download applications that aren't in Apple's App Store.

The U.S. Copyright Office, a division of the Library of Congress, has authorized several new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), one of which will allow mobile phone users to "jailbreak" -- or hack into -- their devices to use apps not authorized by the phone's manufacturer. The new rules will be published on Tuesday in the Federal Register. "

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/26/tech...king/index.htm

To quote Scooby Doo: Ruh-Roh!

Well, let me tell you this:

There is no clause in the Constitution that defines copyright law. There only is acts, and acts are completely capable of being overturned as unconstitutional.

Here's why I think copyright law is unconstitutional: It permits the commission of unconstitutional acts by private businesses against customers and other businesses. Therefore, it is unconstitutional because it permits unconstitutionality.

However, jailbreaking your iphone renders your warranty null and void.. Even if the jailbreak has nothing to do with your problem, you're screwed.

Yes - but because the court ruled it legal, the court will probably also rule against the use of a warranty or forced breakage of jailbroken phones to restrict users.

I dunno, perhaps the forced breakage thing would be seen as illegal but I can understand the company's right to void your warranty if you do something the device wasn't intended to do since it would be wrong of us to expect them to pay for our screw ups. Just as installing a bigger hard drive in a DVR also voids the warranty since the process could theoretically damage the hardware if done improperly.

I'm not taking sides on this one, I don't even own one.. My employer supplies everyone with windows mobile smartphones (puke..) Anyway, I'm reading conflicting regarding iphones on different sites - Some says it WILL void the warranty, some say it CAN (but not necessarily) void it. I think if you did a full restore, it should look factory-fresh, so they couldn't tell if it was jailbroken in the first place. One guy said his USB port was broken, so he couldn't restore, and the apple employees laughed him out of the store... I'm even seeing rumors that Apple is developing, or has already developed firmware that will brick your phone if it detects a jailbreak - and that's considered legal?!

Apple's June 2009 TOS states: "Use constitutes acceptance of Apple's software license agreement and third-party terms located in the iPhone box. Unauthorized modification of your iPhone software violates the software license agreement."

Apple is operating under the position that while you may 'own' the hardware, you're technically licensing the software. Big ol' messy can of worms the courts are gonna have to deal with (if their recent proceedings haven't already covered it?)

well i've said it before but it applies here, the original apple II was such a success because ANYONE could develop software for it, and anyone could install any software they wanted on it not just what apple said was acceptable, this allowed a huge market for third party software like appleworks and other business software, a host of games, mod/midi players etc..., some commercial some home brew free/shareware
even OSX on mac desktop/laptops have fink and the developer kit (which is now essentially gcc packaged for OSX) and if you know what you are doing you can install the same libraries, X11, gnome/kde/windowmaker etc... and use a mac almost the same as a bsd machine and all it takes is a reformat of the machine so personally
*edit* note i didn't mention the apple I because that was more of a hobbyist type thing then the apple II
in short don't see how apple can argue that third party software will mess things up that bad, its just about control which is contrary to their original business strategy that attracted people to apple in the first place

I would pick Android instead of iPhone any day. Why? Because Android is FOSS. Who cares if 0rac£e is trying to sue Google over it -- 0rac£e is simply evil for using a merger to take control of FOSS and suing others for using something they didn't originally own.