Apple Inc.’s control over its iPhone and other devices via its iTunes store was undercut Monday by a federal ruling legalizing jailbreaking, or altering the devices to install unapproved software, a practice used now by a small number of customers.
The Library of Congress, which helps oversee copyright law, removed a legal cloud over altering of iPhones, iPads and iPods, to install and run software not purchased from Apple.
Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at Electronic Freedom Foundation, the digital-rights organization that pushed for the change, said the ruling could open the door for third-party app stores. “Innovators now know that there will be customers for them,” she says.
It’s unclear how many companies will take advantage of the ruling, which affects a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. By one estimate just 8% of iPhones have been altered to allow such downloads.
“I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “The mainstream iPhone customer isn’t complaining about apps they can’t get because of Apple’s restrictive policies.”
Apple has reviewed and maintained veto power over apps for the iPhone since it opened the device to outside developers in 2008. These apps can only be downloaded from Apple’s App Store. Monday’s ruling applies to other smartphone makers but only Apple now restricts what apps can run on its devices.
Computer experts have found ways to get around the code that tethers iPhones to the App Store, however, allowing device owners to download and run programs that haven’t been approved by Apple. The legality of the practice was not clear, so it hasn’t caught on widely.
Mario Ciabarra, president of Rock Your Phone Inc., which sells apps for jailbroken iPhones, says close to $2 million worth of about apps for about four million iPhones have been downloaded from his store. He said the company felt that what it was doing was legal, but was not eager to argue that point in court. What this ruling does “is make it very clear that it is okay,” he said.
Apple, which says it has sold about 50 million iPhones worldwide, has discouraged jailbreaking. A spokeswoman did not address the ruling directly, but explained the company’s policy.
“Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone,” she said, adding that “jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience” of the iPhone and that it “can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably,” she said.
In 2008 the EFF, asked the Library of Congress to authorize jailbreaking, arguing that the rights of Apple and other smartphone makers wouldn’t be infringed because any changes to the devices are for the personal use of the phone owner. Apple disagreed, arguing that jailbreaking its iPhone would open up consumers and Apple to harm and that the practice was a violation of the law.
The U.S. Copyright Office, a unit of the Library of Congress, on Monday said that Apple’s objections appeared to be rooted partly in the potential “harm to its reputation” which isn’t protected by copyright law.
It said that phone owners have the right to run whatever legal programs they want on their devices and that “modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.”
The action was in the form of a final rule, which would require a legal challenge to overturn.
The Library of Congress also ruled that it was legal to modify software on a used phone so that it can run on a different carrier’s network, although other technical barriers make it difficult to use an iPhone with networks other than that of AT&T Inc., the sole carrier authorized by Apple in the United States.
The government said the use of snippets of DVDs and other videos for use in universities and schools have fair use protections under the law. However, it rejected other applications for fair-use protections, including a request that consumers be allowed to use their own software to access streaming online video from Netflix Inc. or other providers.
Source: Wall Street Journal
“It wasn’t difficult to build,” said Nicholas Percoco, head of Spider Labs, who along with a colleague, released the tool at the Defcon hacker’s conference in Las Vegas on Friday.
