Rotten Apple
Submitted by J Boogie [TLL] on Sunday, 15 February 2009Comments
In a move sure to draw the ire of many an iPhone owner, Apple has recently made the bold claim that Jailbreaking is illegal. The full claim can be found here, but the short of it is that Apple claims the jailbreaking process, which requires hackers to utilize modified versions of Apple’s bootloader and iPhone O.S. software (which in turn is a modified version of its OS X software), constitutes copyright infringement and also violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The article byElectronic Frontier Foundation does a good job of explaining why Apple’s claims are baseless, so I won’t go into it.
What is interesting is that many believed that Apple would merely claim that the jailbreaking process is not legal, rather than label the process as being illegal. It is a rather nuanced legal distinction, but the move is probably more symbolic than anything. Even if Apple were to win the suit, nothing would change. Ultimately, the hacking community will always outsmart apple, and ingenious hackers will find ways to get around any security measures implemented by Apple. Thus far, no firmware released by Apple has been safe from the crafty hands of the highly talented hacker community. Though there have been setbacks and delays, even the mighty 2.2 firmware has been successfully unlocked, not just jailbroken.
Apple has grown increasingly protective in the past year of its intellectual property. With a current suit against Pystar, which is currently in mediation, and a major potential lawsuit against Palm for its WebOS, Apple has become that company. It is a real shame that Jobs is targeting the small hacking community. Each and every one of the hackers responsible for bringing jailbreak and unlocking tools to the public is an avid fan of the iPhone. Apple has always stood for innovation in the face of the stale blandness that technology companies are known for. And for those who wish to further that innovation by bringing to the public the functionality they cry out for, Apple spits in their faces. Apple is content to sit on its success rather than deliver the ultimate smartphone that they (and we) know they are capable of making. Perhaps having the number one selling smartphone in the U.S. has gone to the Cupertino crew’s heads. I hope that the upcoming losses to the Palm case and the Jailbreaking case snap some sense into them. (Yes that’s right, I made a prediction). It makes no sense to go after such a small community, especially when that community purchases their products. Apple would be better served putting its resources into releasing full-on flash support, finally releasing copy and paste (is it really that much to ask?), adding better GPS integration with turn by turn directions, and making iTunes run smoother in Vista (because honestly, Apple’s software and Vista rather hate each other). On the flipside, at least some Fenwick & West lawyers out there will be plenty busy in the months ahead.
-TLL (sent from my iPhone)
