The US Copyright Office has rejected Apple’s call for a ban on jailbreaking — hacking iOS in order to install unapproved software and use unsupported networks on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Apple had objected to an application by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asking the Copyright Office to allow jailbreaking under US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The company claimed that jailbreaking results in “copyright infringement, potential damage to the device and other potential harmful physical effects, adverse effects on the functioning of the device, and breach of contract.”
But the Copyright Office was unimpressed.
“Apple’s objections to the installation and use of ‘unapproved’ applications appears to have nothing to do with its interests as the owner of copyrights in the computer programs embodied in the iPhone, and running the unapproved applications has no adverse effect on those interests,” it wrote in a 250-page report. “Rather, its objections relate to its interests as a manufacturer and distributor of a device, the iPhone.”
Consequently jailbreaking is one of six exemptions “from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works” permitted by the Copyright Office and the US Library of Congress.
To be precise, the ruling permits, the use of software that enables jailbreaking for “the purpose of enabling interoperability of applications” and “in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network”.
Jailbroken iPhone
Apple would not comment on the legal implications of the ruling — saying only that it has never taken any action against anyone offering jailbreaking software — but continues to warn iPhone users against hacking their handsets.
“Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience,” the company said in a statement. “As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.”
The ruling also permits four other exemptions to the DMCA, permitting the circumvention of DRM in the following circumstances: in order to extract movie clips from DVDs for educational, documentary and non-commercial purposes; for security testing of video games; where dongles to prevent software copying are damaged or malfunctioning and a replacement or repair is no longer available; and in order to enable screen readers or read-aloud tools to access “literary works distributed in ebook format”.
The EFF’s civil liberties director Jennifer Grannick said that the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA.
“We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law’s overbroad reach,” she said.
“The Copyright Office recognizes that the primary purpose of the locks on cell phones is to bind customers to their existing networks, rather than to protect copyrights. The Copyright Office agrees with EFF that the DMCA shouldn’t be used as a barrier to prevent people who purchase phones from keeping those phones when they change carriers. The DMCA also shouldn’t be used to interfere with recyclers who want to extend the useful life of a handset.”
[photo: iPhone Home screen, redux by Matthew Fern; some rights reserved]
