Iphone jailbreaking(and all smartphones) now LEGAL!!!

[Marlne]

The FCC declared that jailbreaking phones is now not illegal, (ouch haha, sucks to be AT&T), so now you can legally unlock(jailbreak) smartphones... This is good for me because I am going to do it with my droid tormorrow:)

 

Heres the Link:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/ytech_wguy_tc3236

 

heres what it says:

 

Owners of iPhones and other smartphones are one step closer towards taking complete control of their gadgets, thanks to a new government ruling Monday on the practice of "jailbreaking."

 

This weekend has seen a flurry of activity about digital rights, but the biggest news dropped Monday morning, when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking†your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.

 

Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are used on the U.S. T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers, or are used to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone's SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

 

While technically illegal, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice. (Apple does seriously frown on the practice, and jailbreaking your phone will still void your warranty.) It’s estimated that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their handsets.

 

Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules.

Click image to view more photos

 

 

 

Reuters

 

 

The upshot is that now anyone can jailbreak or otherwise unlock any cell phone without fear of legal penalties, whether you want to install unsupported applications or switch to another cellular carrier. Cell phone companies are of course still free to make it difficult for you to do this — and your warranty will probably still be voided if you do — but at least you won’t be fined or imprisoned if you jailbreak a handset.

 

In addition to the jailbreaking exemption, the FCC announced a few oth er rules that have less sweeping applicability but are still significant:

 

• Professors, students and documentary filmmakers are now allowed, for “noncommercial†purposes, to break the copy protection measures on DVDs to be used in classroom or other not-for-profit environments. This doesn’t quite go so far as to grant you and me the right to copy a DVD so we can watch it in two rooms of the house, but it’s now only one step away.

 

• As was the topic in the GE ruling I wrote about, the FCC allows computer owners to bypass dongles (hardware devices used in conjunction with software to guarantee the correct owner is behind the keyboard) if they are no longer in operation and can’t be replaced. Dongles are rarities in consumer technology products now, but industrial users are probably thrilled about this, as many go missing and are now impossible to obtain.

 

• Finally, people are now free to circumvent protection measures on video games — but, strangely, only to investigate and correct security flaws in those games. (Another oddity: Other computer software is not part of this ruling, just video games.)

 

— Christopher Null is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

 

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[X_-GHOST-_X]

yes legal but will void your warrenty ....

[Marlne]

X_-GHOST-_X;814303']yes legal but will void your warrenty ....

 

true, but that never did stop most people.....But now it will open us for more roms and stuff... I know I will be installing a rom on my droid tormorrow after flashing it, that is supposadly better than Froyo...

[X_-GHOST-_X]

and also the new X cant be rooted .....

[Neoblackhound]

Yea I used to Jailbreak my iphone, it really just messes up your phone, you can't update a lot of the time and if ya skip over updates(I missed 3 of them) it may mess up your signal somehow, it was dropping my calls and just not working right. I updated and it worked. Also unless you you completely erase everything and format your phone you wont be able to erase all of the data from the jailbreak(I tried don't me you can by simply syncing). Its just a waste to do it.

[[-VR-] Tool_Minion]

I guess the only REAL advantage I see here is to put your phone on another network....but couldn't those networks simply disallow that model?

 

I may be completely ignorant to the process/meaning of 'jailbreaking' a phone, but how do you get it activated on your account?

 

Whats to stop people from stealing phones and re-selling them if this is made legal?

[Marlne]

Tool_Minion;814351']I guess the only REAL advantage I see here is to put your phone on another network....but couldn't those networks simply disallow that model?

 

I may be completely ignorant to the process/meaning of 'jailbreaking' a phone' date=' but how do you get it activated on your account?

 

Whats to stop people from stealing phones and re-selling them if this is made legal?[/quote']

 

Well according to all the sites, it is now Legal.....It wont stop anyone from selling the phones, since you could take a Iphone, jailbreak it for another carrier, then sell it and not take chances or being arrested for it.

 

Wrath, you point is half truth though, If you Jailbreak the phone, you wont miss updates, as long as you have a site that will allow you to update through another flash, which only takes a few mins, not to mention the custom roms are better. I had a jailbroke Iphone for 2 years, did my own updates. as long as you wipe the phone(I always do it 3 times) you weont have a problem going back to the origionally version

 

For instance, My droid is on 2.1, but now I can root it, install Bugless Beast 4.0 and have flash,droid x startup, and wifi-tethering...

They are currently fighting to where a company cannot drop your line if rooted, but honestly the only company wanting to do this is AT&T, some of the others seem fine with it.

 

the new droid x can be rotted by using a 1 click program that can be found I believe at alldroid or androidworld or droidforums.

 

Wrath, I dont think rooting(jailbreaking) is a waste, there is so much more you can do with a rooted phone. The Moto Droid for example runs at 500mhz, but with the custom roms it can be overclocked to 800 or up to 1.2 right now:) which is awesome...

 

I will be flashing my droid in a few mins:)

[Neoblackhound]

Well according to all the sites, it is now Legal.....It wont stop anyone from selling the phones, since you could take a Iphone, jailbreak it for another carrier, then sell it and not take chances or being arrested for it.

 

Wrath, you point is half truth though, If you Jailbreak the phone, you wont miss updates, as long as you have a site that will allow you to update through another flash, which only takes a few mins, not to mention the custom roms are better. I had a jailbroke Iphone for 2 years, did my own updates. as long as you wipe the phone(I always do it 3 times) you weont have a problem going back to the origionally version

 

For instance, My droid is on 2.1, but now I can root it, install Bugless Beast 4.0 and have flash,droid x startup, and wifi-tethering...

They are currently fighting to where a company cannot drop your line if rooted, but honestly the only company wanting to do this is AT&T, some of the others seem fine with it.

 

the new droid x can be rotted by using a 1 click program that can be found I believe at alldroid or androidworld or droidforums.

 

Wrath, I dont think rooting(jailbreaking) is a waste, there is so much more you can do with a rooted phone. The Moto Droid for example runs at 500mhz, but with the custom roms it can be overclocked to 800 or up to 1.2 right now:) which is awesome...

 

I will be flashing my droid in a few mins:)

Yea but by doing that you run the risk of hurting your device you run it on a systems its not suppose to run on and it gets buggy.

[godpower]

The FCC declared that jailbreaking phones is now not illegal, (ouch haha, sucks to be AT&T), so now you can legally unlock(jailbreak) smartphones... This is good for me because I am going to do it with my droid tormorrow:)

 

Heres the Link:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/ytech_wguy_tc3236

 

heres what it says:

 

Owners of iPhones and other smartphones are one step closer towards taking complete control of their gadgets, thanks to a new government ruling Monday on the practice of "jailbreaking."

 

This weekend has seen a flurry of activity about digital rights, but the biggest news dropped Monday morning, when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking” your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.

 

Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are used on the U.S. T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers, or are used to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone's SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

 

While technically illegal, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice. (Apple does seriously frown on the practice, and jailbreaking your phone will still void your warranty.) It’s estimated that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their handsets.

 

Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules.

Click image to view more photos

 

 

 

Reuters

 

 

The upshot is that now anyone can jailbreak or otherwise unlock any cell phone without fear of legal penalties, whether you want to install unsupported applications or switch to another cellular carrier. Cell phone companies are of course still free to make it difficult for you to do this — and your warranty will probably still be voided if you do — but at least you won’t be fined or imprisoned if you jailbreak a handset.

 

In addition to the jailbreaking exemption, the FCC announced a few oth er rules that have less sweeping applicability but are still significant:

 

• Professors, students and documentary filmmakers are now allowed, for “noncommercial” purposes, to break the copy protection measures on DVDs to be used in classroom or other not-for-profit environments. This doesn’t quite go so far as to grant you and me the right to copy a DVD so we can watch it in two rooms of the house, but it’s now only one step away.

 

• As was the topic in the GE ruling I wrote about, the FCC allows computer owners to bypass dongles (hardware devices used in conjunction with software to guarantee the correct owner is behind the keyboard) if they are no longer in operation and can’t be replaced. Dongles are rarities in consumer technology products now, but industrial users are probably thrilled about this, as many go missing and are now impossible to obtain.

 

• Finally, people are now free to circumvent protection measures on video games — but, strangely, only to investigate and correct security flaws in those games. (Another oddity: Other computer software is not part of this ruling, just video games.)

 

— Christopher Null is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

 

Follow me on Twitter and join me on Facebook!

 

 

I agree with you . Now, unlocking phones are legal . US break the petition "unlocking phones becomes illegal" . For what purpose people wants to unlock their cell phones? Only to use with other carriers . Its not a crime . If anyone wants to switch over to one country to other, they requires unlocking process . Some of them directly did it through their carriers or they bought unlocking servcie from any of the online sites like Prounlocking.com . Their only intention is to swap from one network to other . Anyway, i'm going to unlock my phone soon to use with Canadian carriers .

Edited September 27, 2013 by godpower

[Awtrace]

Not necessarily accurate. I know that with an iPhone, if you jailbreak it, you have the ability to get all the apps on the App Store for free. I know this because my brother has done it and jail broken many iPhones before.

 

 

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[FacelessButcher]

Be careful it's the wild west out there.