It does not matter what you or I feel. I would like to know if it is illegal as the question states.

I find it strange that ATT can have an exclusive deal with Apple to lock the phone. But if ATT does not live up to their contract and you leave, you are breaking the contract. In any contract deal when a party breaks it you can not transfer blame to the other side (meaning Me, the customer).

Also, I have bought the phone, in my case I did not have to pay the early termination fee (that part is to ATT's credit) most do have to pay an early termination fee. Once you have paid these you are no longer obligated to keep the phone locked to ATT. You have paid them for the phone and an agreement has been made between you and ATT for leaving.

Once that has been done you as a customer have every right to put that phone on another carrier.

Now, the reality. It does not matter our feelings. It does not matter the facts in my or your case. What matters is the law. What is it?

The first post explains that it is legal for us to jailbreak, unlock our phone. So, is ATT and Apple creating a product for our best interest? Are they going over and above their right or customary due in protecting their product?

It has been long noted that proprietary software is not the best way to go. It pisses customers off. The only advantage to it is when you have a captured market. It allows you to keep them longer and make more profits. It stops the do-it-yourselfers from doing it themselves and saving them money. It stops those that would build on their product to make a buck. Yet, smaller companies have a burst of popularity when they open their product, source code, etc and/or make it easy to use to the masses.

How did MS become so big. It was somewhere around word 2.0 they decided to open up other types of word processing and spreadsheet documents so you could modify that document. The catch was you could not save it back to the other kind of document. Most notably Word Perfect and lotus. That put word perfect and lotus out of business as a real competitor. Only when Microsoft began loosing customers again did they now allow you to save in other formats.

When a company cares more about jailing you into their product, are they truly out for your best interest as a customer? No!

One thing I will say about Apple. They have good products.

Originally Posted by abit

It does not matter what you or I feel. I would like to know if it is illegal as the question states.

I find it strange that ATT can have an exclusive deal with Apple to lock the phone. .......

Most of your post is not about jailbreaking but about SIM-unlocking. Whether that is illegal depends on different laws than the question about jailbreaking.

I think the jailbreak matter is still undecided in the US: the debate between Apple and the EFF has not been resolved yet. In most other places in the world, it is legal.

IS Jailbreaking legal? The real answer is that no one knows right now.


Let's start with one thing: Jailbreaking is certainly a breach of your contract with Apple. When you "purchased" the phone you are also purchasing a license to the software, which includes language that prevents you from modifying the software. If you do, you are in breach of contract. This certainly not a "criminal" act but a civil issue and is between you and Apple and thus would not fall into the category of "illegal" because you have not violated any criminal statute. (hang on there for a minute on that one)

The interesting thing to ask is that if this is a breach, what is the remedy for breach? Most contracts will specify the remedies for breach between one party and another. For example, Apple could state in the contract that if you breach that they have the right to brick your phone. (I have not read it, so who knows) But if there is no remedy, and they take you to civil court, then just what does the court award Apple? Nothing unless you signed up to it.

Now back to the criminal statutes. This is where it gets a bit slippery. In order to jailbreak, one has to circumvent some kind of encryption technology that allows Apple to protect its stuff. It's unclear if this falls under the domain of the laws that were designed to prevent theft of copyrighted materials (DMCA) and thus would expose you to criminal penalties since that's how the laws were set up. (a debate if criminal laws set up to enforce a license agreement would be interesting. Certainly people who think that the DMCA is over-reaching would say that it has no place) I think that the jury is still way out on this one.


that said, I've never quite figured out Apple's strict adherence to the Jailbreaking hatred. In reality, they want a platform that works and they can guarantee that people are not abusing. However, if the things in the App store work on a non-jailbroken phone and a customer goes out of their way to circumvent those safeguards by jailbreaking, what is Apple's liability if things don't work just right? (in my mind, it's restore the phone to its "rightful" state and then tell me if it doesn't work, otherwise shut up) Are they REALLY that focused on revenue from teh app store? If so, then there really would be no freebies in the app store, and there are. Having a jailbreak tool is clearly their out to let things happen in iphone land, so what's the aversion?

Same goes for subsidy locks. I know why AT&T wants me to be locked to them for the life of a subsidy. Makes perfect sense. But once I'm done and free to go, then the lock should be able to be removed. I know that T-Mobile will do this for many of their phones, you can get the subsidy lock by calling and asking (no more than one every 6 months, and only after the subsidy has been removed)

It will be interesting to see what happens when the AT&T exclusivity ends and Apple starts to sell phones on other networks in the US. I know why they did that in the first place, they needed a launch partner for the phone. Got it. Now they are a force in the marketplace, so they should act like one. Sell unlocked phones in the Apple store for full price, sell them on line. Let AT&T sell subsidized locked phones, but provide a mechanism to unlock just like every other handset vendor does.


But I fear that the "control freak" in Apple will prevent this from happening. Sad really. I'd love to use my iPhone 2G whose subsidy has long expired elsewhere and not have to worry about every time an update comes out if I'll lose my jailbreak/unlock.

-bill

Jail breaking is illegal.. how can you say it isn't?

Originally Posted by lanaposey88

Jail breaking is illegal.. how can you say it isn't?

Why should it be illegal? It might void your guarantee, but this does not break a law. Apple would love it to be i guess.

Originally Posted by lanaposey88

Jail breaking is illegal.. how can you say it isn't?

if you believe it is, what criminal statute do you believe that it violates?

Originally Posted by lanaposey88

Jail breaking is illegal.. how can you say it isn't?

Jailbreaking is not illegal, how can you say it is?
Just because Apple say it is does not make it so. If they thought for one minute that it was do you think they would not have prosecuted? They know that they would not stand a chance of winning a case in a court of law.

Originally Posted by unclemiltie

IS Jailbreaking legal? The real answer is that no one knows right now.

..snip....

Now back to the criminal statutes. This is where it gets a bit slippery. In order to jailbreak, one has to circumvent some kind of encryption technology that allows Apple to protect its stuff. It's unclear if this falls under the domain of the laws that were designed to prevent theft of copyrighted materials (DMCA) and thus would expose you to criminal penalties since that's how the laws were set up. (a debate if criminal laws set up to enforce a license agreement would be interesting. Certainly people who think that the DMCA is over-reaching would say that it has no place) I think that the jury is still way out on this one.


-bill

Well, the jury is back. This morning the Feds ruled that Jailbreaking is not a violation of the DMCA or copyright laws so for all involved, there is no lawbreaking here.

that said, this doesn't mean that Apple will make it any easier. They're going to continue to try to lock things down, but if people can figure out ways around it there is now nothing that Apple can do.

Originally Posted by unclemiltie

Well, the jury is back. This morning the Feds ruled that Jailbreaking is not a violation of the DMCA or copyright laws so for all involved, there is no lawbreaking here.

that said, this doesn't mean that Apple will make it any easier. They're going to continue to try to lock things down, but if people can figure out ways around it there is now nothing that Apple can do.

It's only legal so you can load legally obtained non-app store programs. This includes loading an unlock.

Still not legal if your intent is to pirate AppStore apps.

No clear answer yet on whether this means that Apple cannot deny warranty due to the device being jailbroken.

Agreed

Jailbreaking to load legitimately acquired apps and unlock programs that you have the rights to load is now legal

installing anything that you don't have rights to is still theft