What was once a grey area is now clear, as the US Copyright Office (part of the Library of Congress) has granted an exemption to the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) requested by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) regarding "Jailbreaking" mobile phones. Jailbreaking a mobile phone for the purpose of installing unapproved software is now a "fair use" and is not prohibited by the DMCA.

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/8621...f-jail-is-free

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100726/...ital_copyright

I should think so, what you do with your own property is bugger all to do with anyone else.

But won't it still void your warranty?

The law calls that into question.

Although, legal experts are saying that Apple can use the terms and use of iTunes to remove warranty coverage for "Jailbroken" devices.

I can't see how hacking something you have bought was ever illegal. As for the warranty Apple can refuse to let you claim under the warranty if you brick your phone doing something to it that to was never designed to do.

Just like a car manufacturer would not honour a warranty if you had a third party alarm fitted and then the car developed an electrical fault.

If you need to claim on the warrenty just restore it back to official firmware.

I'm not sure it was ever clearly illegal, but it wasn't clearly legal, either.

Jailbreaking involves "circumventing technical measures" (or however they phrase it) to protect copyright... and that is something which is prohibited by the DMCA.

The new rule, however, grants a specific exemption, allowing that type of "circumvention" so that you can install whatever software you want (so long as it's legal software).

I'm surprised the EU hasn't done something similar. They came down on Microsoft a few times for their anti-competitive measures with Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer to the point that European releases of Windows give users the option to install Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc...

It's not really anything to do with that.

The DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) made it illegal to circumvent copy protection mechanisms. Some exceptions existed (for "fair use"), but they have now explicitly stated that it is legal to get around those protection methods to:

a) Install third party software not otherwise available (i.e. jailbreaking)

b) Remove a SIM lock.

It's not targeted at any specific Phone manufacturer or carrier.

Yes, they can still void your warranty. But that's the extent of what they can do. In practice, that was all they could really do anyway, but now it's official.

One result of this might be more mainstream services to help people do this. When it was legally ambiguous, mainstream companies might have been less willing to get involved.

Although the exemption applies to all, it was pretty much aimed at Apple & the iPhone (as the main example whenever anyone talks about Jailbreaking), as was the EFF's request which prompted it.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...e-fair-use.ars

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26

EFF's original request:

https://www.eff.org/cases/2009-dmca-rulemaking

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/d...Bproposals.pdf

As I understood it, apple can't use a copyright law to enforce the closeness of their devices. So they will probably try to find some other way.

I have a feeling sooner or later the E.U will get involved, Apple make Microsoft look like angels.