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Those of you who have opted to shake off the shackles of one sole carrier and one sole app store oppression may want to consider stepping out of the shadows. The jailbreaking witchhunt is over, at least in America. The United States Government has legalized jalibreaking.
You heard that right. Now, take a moment to collect yourselves. We understand; it's a time for emotion.
According to a story from the Associated Press this morning, it's game-on for anyone wanting to install an app not listed in the App Store, or to take their handset on over to the carrier of their choosing:
"The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized uses. The Library of Congress, which oversees the copyright the reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing uses of copyright-protected material."
A choice of carriers and the right to use any software you want on your handset--the world just got a little bit brighter. No doubt, there'll be a lot of guff being thrown around by Apple in response to the announcement. You can be sure that we'll be following this one closely.
ilikeimac
July 26, 2010 at 2:27pm
I didn't realize the Library of Congress had that kind of power. Maybe Psystar should have talked to them about legalizing Mac clones; that basically amounts to a copyright issue as well I think.
ilikeimac
July 26, 2010 at 2:22pm
The AP article says:
The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing uses of copyright-protected works.
