Thoughts on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) for phone jailbreaking

[r5murphy]

Any thoughts on the exemption expiring later this year?

 

[BLiNK]

i think people better speak up by February 10th or we're f*cked

well, then again it wasn't that big of a deal when it was illegal

sign this petition

 

[Timhewitt]

The biggest risk jail breakers face if it's deemed illegal is likely blocked access to iTunes and iCloudc servces. Apple knows if your device is jail broken or not already, and could choose to deny access by UDID for any device found to be illegally modified.

I don't believe anyone will be prosecuted for breaking the law, just have their warranty voided and denied access to the Apple infrastructure.

 

[BLiNK]

The biggest risk jail breakers face if it's deemed illegal is likely blocked access to iTunes and iCloudc servces. Apple knows if your device is jail broken or not already, and could choose to deny access by UDID for any device found to be illegally modified.

I don't believe anyone will be prosecuted for breaking the law, just have their warranty voided and denied access to the Apple infrastructure.

IF this becomes a reality i do not see myself staying jailbroken. i do not "need" to jailbreak

 

[Timhewitt]

I don't have a sense for how Cook feels about jail brokers, but with Jobs this would have been a near certainty. He saw the entire jail break phenomenon as simply a security exploit in iOS and was going to stop it at almost any cost.

How does Cook feel bout it? Only time will tell.

 

[mgregg99]

He saw the entire jail break phenomenon as simply a security exploit in iOS...

I'd argue that Jobs wasn't concerned with security. He just didn't want to lose control over what people did with his creations. Read his book if you haven't. The guy simply couldn't consider giving anyone an opportunity to change anything that he didn't approve of. He had Apple design it's products so they couldn't be opened easily, or he changed screw types (iPhone 4) when he found out people were tinkering with "his" product. It didn't matter if someone else's idea was better. If it wasn't his idea it was nixed. On rare occassions he would tell someone they had a bad idea, and then later announce the idea as his later on. Jailbreaking meant he didn't have control anymore and that was not acceptable. It's all about control.

I doubt Cook shares the same obsessiveness, but I do think he cares enough about Jobs' legacy that he may try to continue forward with the same control.

 

[Timhewitt]

I've read it. I worked at Apple in the 1980s and experienced Steve in real time... You are correct that he did not want people mucking around in his creations, but his stance on jail breaking was pretty clear. Every exploit that could be used for jail breaking was a hole in his operating system that was intolerable. Making iOS impossible to jail break was going to be difficult. Punishing jail breakers to make it less attractive was always an option, however to date they have not taken any action other than refusing to service any devices that show up in the store - and possibly disabling iBooks intentionally on jail broken devices...

He lauded the Mac's security over Windows at every opportunity, and was thrilled that iOS was closed and secure where Android was easily rooted and had hundreds of exploits in the first 6 months... If jail broken devices ever become a large community, and jail breaking opened up exploits, iOS would lose some of its shine as a virus proof OS, and he hated the thought of that happening.

Cook will clearly honor Steve's vision for a while, but whether or not he shares his obsession is to be seen.