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Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

arstechnica.com

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Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#41

Post by beagle3 »

britta wrote: post #28
giftedmunchkin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that isn't strictly true, since the exemption for smartphones only applies to phones purchased before January 2013.

I think you are conflating the jailbreaking/rooting exemption and the carrier unlocking exemption. The exemption for jailbreaking phones will apply for the next three years (until it comes up for renewal again), while the exemption for unofficially carrier unlocking phones will only apply to phones purchased before January 2013.

How does carrier unlocking figure out into DMCA? Is it in any way related to copyrights?

I'm sure the librarian has an opinion, but how can they have jurisdiction?

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#42

Post by mweinbergPK »

seacond wrote: post #18
mweinbergPK wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: 1. I work at Public Knowledge, the group that requested the general DVD ripping exception. We did organize a campaign around our exemption request and included the response in our reply comments. Going forward, our plan is to push Congress to pass laws that make it explicitly clear that "space shifting" is fair use. Of course, for that we will need the help of a broad coalition of people, including here at HN.

When I was typing out 1. I was thinking of the response that SOPA got. It seemed like it mobilised people to make phone calls and send emails. I think that had an impact. I'm just guessing here. In any case, it would be very interesting to see how LOC would respond to a surge in constituent participation in the DMCA exception process.

The key is to mobilize people in a way that makes an impact without going to the well too often. In the case of this proceeding, we knew that the Copyright Office does not necessarily respond to numbers of people simply saying "do this do this." When we put out a call, we asked for (and received) specific stories from people explaining why they themselves wanted this exemption. That is very different from the kind of action you want to take when Congress is considering something. As I mentioned before, the next step in this process is to push Congress to make it absolutely crystal clear to everyone - including the Copyright Office - that non-commercial personal copies of media are well within the bounds of fair use. We need to wait until after the election and the new Congress is in session next year, but once that happens we are going to be making a big push to get just that type of legislation. At that point I hope that you will rally around the push. Unlike the Copyright Office, Congress tends to be much more responsive to numbers of people simply telling them to act.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#43

Post by polymatter »

tambourine_man wrote: post #24

If it's legal to jailbreak it, shouldn't the company be oblige to provide an official way to do so? Why is it expected that the users come up with the means? What if it's next to impossible due to hardware encryption and whatnot. It's already not trivial on most devices.

jbbeats had an interesting point before he fell into personal attacks so I will express it here with less vitriol.

Jailbreaking is explicitly not an intended use of the product, and a manufacturer shouldn't be expected to provide any support whatsoever to something which the explicitly do not intend as a use. There may be all sorts of unintended consequences to jailbreaking and its unfair to expect a manufacturer to have the resources to think of every possible use case.

To take a ridiculous example (without copying jbbeats) if you choose to cut your hair with a lawnmower, you should not be able to complain that the lawnmower manufacturer didn't make it easier for you to swap out the blades for ones that barbers use instead of the cutting grass variety. That I think would be an unreasonable burden to put on the manufacturer.

There also may be unintended consequences in the basic operations of the machine if it is used in a different use case. For example, maybe hair grease could acccumulate overtime to make the lawnmower dangerous overtime. Perhaps a rubber guard would prevent this. Now the lawnmower manufacturer is having to support optional rubber guards for each range of lawnmowers for those few people intending to cut their hair with it.

While I share your desire to make jailbreaking easier, I don't think a law is the right way to do this.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#44

Post by jlgreco »

eigenvector wrote: post #31
jlgreco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do other things, like having an internet connect, owning a usb cable, possessing a rudimentary knowledge of technology, etc. There are already laws against piracy. Additional laws covering things merely leading up to that act should not be necessary nor desired.

To play the devil's advocate here, since there are already laws against assault and homicide, would you say that there should be no regulation of weapons? And before you argue that weapons have no purpose except to break other laws, like jailbreaking there are many lawful or sporting uses of swords, firearms, explosives, etc.

Yeah, I would be okay with saying that.

We have laws against murder/assault, and we also have laws against making threats and reckless endangerment which I think should cover the other cases of bad things done with guns.

I'll go further and say that DUI laws are also redundant. Of course we don't want people driving drunk, but all we really need is some case law that establishes drunk driving as endangerment.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#45

Post by hfsktr »

tambourine_man wrote: post #37
jbbeats wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's legal for me to carve a smiley face onto my garden gnome shouldn't the garden-gnome seller be oblige[sic] to provide an official way to do it? Why should I need to figure out how to use a chisel? What if the gnome is very fragile so I can't do it without breaking it? Just as carving a garden-gnome is not intended, manufactured, or expected behavior, there's absolutely NO reason for a phone manufacturer to go…

Nice. Back on the subject, companies go out of their way to prevent certain usage scenarios. If that's suddenly against the law, it's only reasonable for them to provide a way out. Actively preventing you from using a product to the fullest is very different from supporting unintended usage.

I don't know an incredible deal about law or anything but I was under the impression that the law was that: jailbreaking = legal, as opposed to not jailbreaking = illegal. Unfortunately I am not as good with analogies as others are on here. I think polymatter's comment summed it up the best.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#46

Post by tambourine_man »

polymatter wrote: post #43
tambourine_man wrote: post #24

If it's legal to jailbreak it, shouldn't the company be oblige to provide an official way to do so? Why is it expected that the users come up with the means? What if it's next to impossible due to hardware encryption and whatnot. It's already not trivial on most devices.

jbbeats had an interesting point before he fell into personal attacks so I will express it here with less vitriol. Jailbreaking is explicitly not an intended use of the product, and a manufacturer shouldn't be expected to provide any support whatsoever to something which the explicitly do not intend as a use. There may be all sorts of unintended consequences to jailbreaking and its unfair to expect a manufacturer to…

a manufacturer shouldn't be expected to provide any support whatsoever to something which the explicitly do not intend as a use.

Right, but no support is completely different from doing everything in your power to prevent it. If Jailbreaking is legal, there should be a “run arbitrary code & full access to file system” checkbox along with a “you are on your own, we won't support it” warning.

Since we are playing with crazy analogies here, the lawnmower manufacturer won't release a new model that makes it intentionally and artificially harder for you to switch the blades just so you don't cannibalize the sales of their hair trimmer.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#47

Post by gizmo686 »

cageface wrote: post #39
Natsu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes exactly one smart person to break the DRM for everyone.

Sure but consider Kindle ebooks, for example. Finding a pirated copy of a book, dealing with the hassles of torrenting or some kind of download site, manually loading the book over, risking all kinds of phishing scams or viruses on the sites that serve this stuff - this is all way too much hassle. I'm happy to pay the $10 for the book even though I know I don't have to. Making money selling digital goods is all about…

Your not describing a DRM system, you are describing taking down distributors.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#48

Post by saurik »

saurik wrote: post #20
seacond wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was typing out 1. I was thinking of the response that SOPA got. It seemed like it mobilised people to make phone calls and send emails. I think that had an impact. I'm just guessing here. In any case, it would be very interesting to see how LOC would respond to a surge in constituent participation in the DMCA exception process.

So, you make that sound hypothetical, but if you look, the EFF actually did something like that for the tablet and video game console exemptions: the number of comments filed this year was thereby staggering (sufficiently many that they missed their deadline on publishing them and had to simply put up an apology for a few days as they continued to go through it all). I have no idea whether many or even any of these i…

"that they missed their deadline" <- For the belated record, when I said "they" in this phrase I meant "the copyright office" (not the EFF, for example).

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#49

Post by cageface »

gizmo686 wrote: post #47
cageface wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but consider Kindle ebooks, for example. Finding a pirated copy of a book, dealing with the hassles of torrenting or some kind of download site, manually loading the book over, risking all kinds of phishing scams or viruses on the sites that serve this stuff - this is all way too much hassle. I'm happy to pay the $10 for the book even though I know I don't have to. Making money selling digital goods is all about…

Your not describing a DRM system, you are describing taking down distributors.

The point is that even a weak DRM system like Kindle's is sufficient to keep most people on the right side of the line. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Re: Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

#50

Post by britta »

beagle3 wrote: post #41
britta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are conflating the jailbreaking/rooting exemption and the carrier unlocking exemption. The exemption for jailbreaking phones will apply for the next three years (until it comes up for renewal again), while the exemption for unofficially carrier unlocking phones will only apply to phones purchased before January 2013.

How does carrier unlocking figure out into DMCA? Is it in any way related to copyrights? I'm sure the librarian has an opinion, but how can they have jurisdiction?

Looking at the official statement about the unlocking exemption (pages 16-20 of https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g...), it sounds like the software on the phone controlling its access to the carrier is a copyrighted work. So if you want to circumvent protections against modifying it, you have to wrangle with the DMCA.
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