What a topper for a great week. This really made me smile.
A Slate.com article turned me on to hacking Apple’s iPhone last night, wherein the legalities and technicalities were discussed. Why would you? See the third paragraph below. Here are some highlights, but the real point of this post is further down.
Part of the copyright code, Section 1201 of the famous Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, makes it illegal to break digital locks to get at copyrighted works. But that doesn’t make unlockers criminals. The reason is an explicit exemption for personal unlocking issued by the librarian of Congress in 2006. As the librarian wrote, the locks “are used by wireless carriers to limit the ability of subscribers to switch to other carriers, a business decision that has nothing whatsoever to do with the interests protected by copyright.”
…
Even with good instructions, activating and unlocking your iPhone isn’t very easy. It’s a cinch for a supergeek, but for regular humans without technical superpowers, the experience is more like, say, scuba diving: If you do everything right, you’ll be fine, but you really don’t want to make a mistake. … During the “jailbreak” phase of the activation process, you stare at an image of prison bars for two minutes. This is not reassuring. At the penultimate stage, you need to trust your iPhone to an entity named “Cyberduck.”
…
The good news is that my iPhone works flawlessly. With my existing T-Mobile account, I get 1,300 more minutes of talk time than I would have received from AT&T [the only option in the iPhone factory set-up] for a comparably priced plan; I also now have a phone that I can take to Asia and Europe. I avoided a $200 termination fee, AT&T’s activation fee, and having to wait for AT&T to port my existing number.
What made my week was reading the documented chronology of the insurgent engineering assault on the restrictive aspects of the iPhone following its release. This is really brilliant, and you must read it:
The Complete iPhone Unlock Star Wars Timeline.
Q: Isn’t that illegal?
A: No, we don’t live within the US, there are a lot free countries that allow you to break or modify stuff on your own.
You’re welcome.
B
About the Author
U.S. Legal Blog is maintained by Bryan Lieb.
