Thursday, October 28, 2010

Is Jailbreaking Legal?

Now you’re probably wondering if it’s legal. Um… yes and no! The fact of the matter is that Apple has verbally announced that they believed jailbreaking to be illegal and an infringement on their copyrights by way of complaint to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF last January.

But, the EFF sided with the consumer and stated that the “reverse engineering is a fair use when done for purposes of fostering interoperability with independently created software,” saying that yes, even though jailbreakers are using Apple’s copyrighted code, they are doing so in a way that allows them functionality that Apple doesn’t provide access to on their own.

On top of that, Apple’s legal team is probably too busy dealing with Nokia, Fujitsu, and Psystar to chase after people who are trying to customize their home screens.

To be honest with you I’m sure Steve Jobs and company have sat down and gone over the risk/threat of jailbreakers and have discovered how much it really fuels iPhone/iPod touch sales. Don’t believe me? Run a 24 hour poll on your blog and ask if users would still purchase iPhones if they couldn’t be jailbroken in any way.

What to Keep in Mind


But the cat and mouse game with Apple shows no sign of stopping as the Dev Team is furiously at work to break into the latest iPhone software to release to the public. Jailbreaking gives you complete control over your iPhone from customizing to 3rd party apps that didn’t for one reason or another end up on Apple’s App Store.

In fact the Cydia store is home to a lot of misfit apps that fell victim to Apple’s ever popular App screening process. Well, now that you’ve heard some background on jailbreaking, you’ve learned some of the benefits and risks, you may now make the choice, to jailbreak or not to jailbreak, that is the question.
If you decide to jailbreak, generally any app by the Dev Team such as PwnageTool or RedSnow is a safe bet, as long as the versions are compatible with your iPhone or iPod Touch firmware.

Lately BlackRa1n has been working well for me. It was literally a plug into usb port, launch program, click the button. I know Sebastien’s got some great tutorials on how to jailbreak as well as BlackRa1n and other downloads that will get you started.

Still completely lost? Drop a comment or a tweet and myself or Sebastien can lend a hand.

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