We’ve discussed extensively the controversy that recently erupted when Apple rejected Google Voice applications from the iPhone App Store. With the FCC sniffing around and tech pundits around the blogosphere weighing in on the merits of possible government intervention, it’s important to remember that jailbreaking an iPhone may be illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). In other words, if you use a hack or workaround that enables you to run banned apps like Google Voice on your iPhone, you could be violating federal law.
The DMCA hasn’t stopped millions of iPhone owners from jailbreaking their phones and installing Cydia, an unofficial alternative to the official iPhone App Store. Cydia, which lets users download banned iPhone apps like Google Voice, has been installed on a whopping one in ten iPhones, according to its developers.
But jailbreaking programs and applications like Cydia are in risky legal territory. Developers who circumvent the iPhone’s copy protection systems are at risk of being sued by Apple, as are users who run jailbreaking software. Apple maintains that jailbreaking software is illegal under federal law, though it has not taken legal action against any unauthorized iPhone developers to date.
To clear up the muddy legal waters surrounding iPhone jailbreaking, Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked the U.S. Copyright Office to grant a legal exemption to iPhone jailbreaking on the grounds that users should be able to install apps of their choice on the phone without risking civil or criminal sanctions. In a recent DeepLinks post, von Lohmann argues that the FCC should throw its weight behind EFF’s call for exempting jailbreaking from anti-circumvention rules.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.