Library of Congress rules in favor of jailbreaking

VICTORY! Score another ruling for the O Admin. I'll smoke to that as well....

A very important point has been overlooked in all of the discussions about this topic.

Copyright infringement is not the only legally-questionable part of jailbreaking.

The EULA for iTunes AND the iOS both specifically prohibit use of those softwares with a modified iPhone or iPod Touch. The DCMA exemption is an exemption to copyright infringement, not contract law.

So using iTunes or the iOS with a modified (i.e. jailbroken) phone is still breach of contract, and Apple's EULAs don't have any of the issues which have seen some other EULAs thrown out of court, so I don't think the word "legal" is the best one to use alongside "jailbreaking".

Now I don't have to be all hush hush about it.
Ooops I live in Canada ;-(

@Gazoobee: I disagree completely. I jailbroke (jailbreaked?) both my 3G and my 3GS to add functionality that Apple refused to. Not once did I use "stolen" software. I've paid for many apps on the App store, and I've paid for two already within a month of buying an Android phone. I would argue that the majority of jailbreakers are looking for those things that Steve stubbornly refuses to give them. Just my $.02

Interesting that they were never pursued...

That's not entirely true Mark. Many of the things that go into a jailbreak/unlock would be DCMA violations which were in fact crimes in the United States.

It would be in Apple's best interest to offer "official" carrier unlocks on ALL iPhones purchased at full price. Especially with the AT&T exclusivity agreement coming to an end. If I bought it, I own it, and should be able to choose AT&T or T-mobile (even if it's only on Edge for now).

Living in Seattle, I was thinking of driving to Vancouver BC to buy an unlocked iPhone 4 on Friday. This way I didn't have to wait for an unlock. After so many years of waiting for the talented developers to hack code to do these things ... it's getting tiring. At least with an officially unlocked iPhone from Canada, half the battle is over.

The thing I dislike the most, are all the iPhone apps that have been updated and only usable on iOS 4. I have several that I can't download to my 3.1.3 iPhone until Spirit & Ultras0w are released. I understand that jailbreaking was my choice and this is a direct result.

Just hope Apple sees this more as a way to GROW iPhone adoption, rather than a threat to their "closed loop" system. Only time will tell.

So it is not jail breaking per se, just circumventing DMC restrictions. So if this is now so, what use is the DMC law?

Now if we could get the FTC (or FCC?) to require phone companies to unlock our phone at the end of the contract we would be much better off.

Okay, so I've never jailbroken any iPhone I've owned, but I'm tempted to because I can't have a custom sound for text messages. Am I missing something or do I need to jailbreak to have this? There's more than just sounds that I want, but I don't understand why Apple locked something as basic as that down.