Too many paste-eaters are out there crowing that the Library of Congress ruling on DMCA exemptions is somehow the death-blow for Apple, and that you’ll be able to buy jailbreaks on the corner and then sue the pants off Steve Jobs when iOS 4.1 breaks them. Setting aside the foolishness of anyone thinking jailbreaking is remotely on the mind of 99% of iPhone owners, I will refute this with two simple points:
1) The ruling says that jailbreaking does not constitute a breach of the DMCA. From a black-letter law standpoint, all this means is that you can break your own phone and not be legally liable – in no way does it imply that Apple is obligated to facilitate or support this. Think of it like a car – you can rip out the engine and put in some wacky hydrogen fuel-cell drivetrain if you like, and you’re completely within your rights to do so, but you shouldn’t balk when the mechanic at the dealership says “we can’t really fix that for you.” In other words, as with so much of life – buy the ticket, take the ride. All this ruling means is that it’s legal to buy the ticket.
2) The last round of DMCA exemption rulings in November 2006 said that unlocking your phone to use with another provider is not a breach of the DMCA. That was reaffirmed in this round. For almost four years, it’s been completely legal to unlock your phone in the United States. How many carriers are selling phones unlocked? For that matter, how many carriers will unlock your phone if you ask them to? You can do it yourself, if you can figure out how, but if you call up AT&T and ask them to unlock your iPhone, they’ll tell you to go shit in a hat, irrespective of your contract status. Hell, even if you could “unlock” a phone from Verizon or Sprint and move from one to the other, you’d still need them to accept your ESN and put on their network.
Apple caved on the carrier-subsidy model after a year. Google folded in only seven months. Like it or not, if you want to tinker with your phone, you’re going to deal with the fact that the carriers have the whip hand. That’s the American way – which is why our cellular system is the most cocked-up on Earth.
Meanwhile, what you wind up with is this: you’re legally free to do whatever you want to your phone. However, nobody is obligated to help you out, and if you somehow make it non-functional, well, now you’ve climbed up there it’s a hell of a lot higher than it looks, ain’t it? And for all those who want to loop this into the Apple-is-the-new-Osama-bin-Laden meme that seems to be sweeping the Internet in 2010, two points: 1) show me a case yet of Apple going after jailbreakers in the law or courts, and 2) it wasn’t Apple who’s out there remotely removing software from their phones…