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Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

jailbreakingisnotacrime.org

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Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#41

Post by ordinary »

Confusion wrote: post #39
nitrogen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent, geeks' choice of terminology is a deliberate statement of rebellion against the manipulation of language often seen in politics. In that context, the goal of using names and terms like "jailbreaking," "hacker," "pois0n," etc. is to deflate the knee-jerk emotional reaction people have to the trigger words used by the media.

Well, it doesn't work. These 'people' that they are trying to convince still have the same knee-jerk emotional reactions to the words, only now to our disadvantage. As the parent says: for a bunch of smart guys, we keep doing stupid things. Stubbornly, with the excuse that it 'should work'. It doesn't. It's preaching to the quire.

The saying is "preaching to the choir"[0]. :)

_____

[0] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/choir#Noun

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#42

Post by hrktb »

jdietrich wrote: post #16

This is why geeks should be required to run things past an English major before talking to normal human beings. If we call a thing "jailbreaking", we're going to be battling negative perceptions forever. We're trying to explain to people who really don't care that they should take time out of their day to help legalize something called "jailbreaking". The RIAA, MPAA and ESA would struggle to dream up a more dubious n…

"rooting" would be the better word, as used for android phones.

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#43

Post by fpgeek »

ignoreme wrote: post #33
maeon3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your freedom to own your smart phone will disappear eventually when Hollywood figures out you didn't actually buy your phone, you are paying a monthly service which pays down your phone, an unspecified price. A percentage of which should go straight to Hollywood.

Where I live you can walk into a shop, buy a smart phone, then pop in a sim card and be off. Can you not do this in the US? You don't pay any monthly service and I don't see how the carrier you have chosen to buy a sim card from has any basis for claiming that the phone I'm using is somehow not owned by me. Since I purchased my first mobile phone around ~11 years ago this is how I have always done it.

You can do that in the US, but it isn't common because of carrier subsidies. Even worse, sometimes when you pay full price for a phone you still wind up with something that is carrier-locked anyway. Plus there are all sorts of technical incompatibilities (e.g. AT&T vs T-Mobile 3G bands) even if your phone is otherwise unlocked. And so on...

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#44

Post by rmc »

hrktb wrote: post #42
jdietrich wrote: post #16

This is why geeks should be required to run things past an English major before talking to normal human beings. If we call a thing "jailbreaking", we're going to be battling negative perceptions forever. We're trying to explain to people who really don't care that they should take time out of their day to help legalize something called "jailbreaking". The RIAA, MPAA and ESA would struggle to dream up a more dubious n…

"rooting" would be the better word, as used for android phones.

Rooting is devoid of any positive connotations, and sounds like a root canal or some sort of nefarious "root/rumaging around"

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#45

Post by rmc »

jdietrich wrote: post #16

This is why geeks should be required to run things past an English major before talking to normal human beings. If we call a thing "jailbreaking", we're going to be battling negative perceptions forever. We're trying to explain to people who really don't care that they should take time out of their day to help legalize something called "jailbreaking". The RIAA, MPAA and ESA would struggle to dream up a more dubious n…

Good point. I suggest "unlocking". It's a common term when it comes to switching networks "Oh my contract is up, I want to move to another phone network, but my phone that I paid for is locked!"

Situations like that (moving phone networks) are commonly understood, and you can easily explain how locking is designed not to protect you, but to try to force you to buy a new phone.

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#46

Post by fpgeek »

marcomonteiro wrote: post #32
grannyg00se wrote: post #29

I prefer buying devices that don't come with the proverbial handcuffs.

Like Android devices? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or snide either. I just get a little tired of these arguments when it comes to smartphones and tablets. Every modern smartphone and tablet that I know of comes with some form of "proverbial handcuffs" to varying degrees. Whether it's jailbreaking or rooting, there's no difference.

Official bootloader unlocks [1] are different and this is exactly why. If the devices you care about have official unlocks, you're not personally affected by this DMCA exception (no matter what you want to do to your device software). If they don't, there's some DMCA-defined circumvention along the way to some things you might want to do and you should pay close attention to this particular rulemaking...

[1] Nexus devices, most Sony Ericsson phones, many HTC phones, soon to include the ASUS Transformer Prime, ...

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#47

Post by fpgeek »

wavephorm wrote: post #25
orangecat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own an Android, but afaik it's underlying Linux system is not as robust as Darwin. What are you basing that on? You can easily install Unix tools on Android devices. Here's a complete development environment that doesn't even require rooting: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spart...

I've had an impression that because of Android's abstractions you didn't have the same "bare metal" access, such that scripting languages have to be run inside a container app: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

It depends on what you want to do. Scripting Layer for Android is about letting scripting languages access Android APIs and services. In that case, you need some sort of container / runtime to talk to the rest of the Android/Dalvik world, but there's nothing that prevents you from getting at the bare metal, if that's what you want to do.

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#48

Post by hrktb »

rmc wrote: post #44
hrktb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rooting" would be the better word, as used for android phones.

Rooting is devoid of any positive connotations, and sounds like a root canal or some sort of nefarious "root/rumaging around"

I would have bet on an association with vegetal roots, or more like rooting for something, but yes, it might be overly optimistic expectations.

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#49

Post by Confusion »

ordinary wrote: post #41
Confusion wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it doesn't work. These 'people' that they are trying to convince still have the same knee-jerk emotional reactions to the words, only now to our disadvantage. As the parent says: for a bunch of smart guys, we keep doing stupid things. Stubbornly, with the excuse that it 'should work'. It doesn't. It's preaching to the quire.

The saying is "preaching to the choir"[0]. :) _____ [0] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/choir#Noun

Ah, thanks. For the longest time I used 'maby' instead of 'maybe' in Usenet posts, before someone pointed out it was wrong.

Re: Jailbreaking Is Not A Crime

#50

Post by jiggy2011 »

fpgeek wrote: post #43
ignoreme wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live you can walk into a shop, buy a smart phone, then pop in a sim card and be off. Can you not do this in the US? You don't pay any monthly service and I don't see how the carrier you have chosen to buy a sim card from has any basis for claiming that the phone I'm using is somehow not owned by me. Since I purchased my first mobile phone around ~11 years ago this is how I have always done it.

You can do that in the US, but it isn't common because of carrier subsidies. Even worse, sometimes when you pay full price for a phone you still wind up with something that is carrier-locked anyway. Plus there are all sorts of technical incompatibilities (e.g. AT&T vs T-Mobile 3G bands) even if your phone is otherwise unlocked. And so on...

Surely when you get a contract for your phone & service you pay X for Y months and this should cover the cost of the phone anyway. So even if you switch the phone to a different carrier you're going to be paying the contract amount anyway.

I could unlock my phone and use a different carrier (considered doing this after the o2 fiasco yesterday) but it wouldn't make economic sense to me.

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