Jailbreaking an iPhone Is Now Officially Legal (in the US)

• Peter James
14 years ago
Categories: Apple, Security & Privacy
Tags: iPhone, Jailbreak

The Library of Congress has issued a statement that allows the breaking of copyright protection in certain cases, as part of the fair use doctrine of copyright law. This statement covers the protection applied to a smartphone to limit access to the file system and prevent users from installing software, among others. It is this latter protection that prevented users from having the right to jailbreak iPhones.

As the Librarian of Congress says,

Persons who circumvent access controls in order to engage in noninfringing uses of works in these six classes will not be subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention.

There are six “classes of works” where such circumvention is now allowed:

1. Movies (or TV shows) on DVDs, protected by CSS.
2. Computer software used on wireless telephone handsets, for questions of interoperability.
3. Computer software circumvented to access a specific type of wireless network.
4. Video games, if such circumvention is performed for testing, security audits, etc.
5. Computer software protected by dongles which are damaged or obsolete (i.e., no longer compatible with current hardware).
6. Ebooks that prohibit text-to-speech features on hardware. (Note: there is a discrepancy between the six classes presented in the Library of Congress’s statement and the full document from the Federal Register linked to in the next paragraph. In the latter document, this specific case, the text-to-speech issue, is listed as being refused.)

It’s the second class that affects the iPhone, and other smart phones, as well as the third case. (A complete text of the ruling from the Federal Register is here in PDF form. It more specifically addresses the issue of jailbreaking and the iPhone.)

Apple has issued a statement regarding this decision:

Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.

We have often stressed that jailbreaking is a risky procedure, irrespective of any warranty issues; it can open up an iPhone or other device to security threats. While it is now considered legal in the US, it still carries a broad number of risks, and we still recommend that users do not jailbreak their iPhones.