The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: SSG Snuggle Bunny on July 27, 2010, 10:25:09 AM
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...[T]he FCC has made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking†your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.
Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. However, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice. (Apple does seriously frown on the practice, and jailbreaking your phone will still void your warranty.) It’s estimated that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their handsets.
Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules.
I'm ambivalent about the actual change in policy.
On one hand Apple has a right to proprietary protections. Without those protections producers are handed a serious disincentive to develop new technologies if the return on thier investment is diluted by handing over their product to those who never contributed to the R&D cost.
On the other hand this opening of the accessibility forces competitiveness and in the end the consumer wins.
On the other, other hand there is something of a snicker-giggle here as Apple begins to feel a bit of what it tried to impose on Microsoft. Apple decidedly wanted the government to punish MS so Apple could gain by fiat what its general commitment to quality was unable to secure. But now Apple sees what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Ordinarily I would oppose this FCC ruling as one more Obama power groab but right now I just see this as yet one thing we will have to undo. Just add it to the list; the important thing is big companies like Apple are taught a stern, hard lesson that if you try to use the government to punish a competitor don't act surprised when that same government tries to regulate you as well.
And that brings me to the crux of my OP. Whether this ruling is good for consumers, just plain bad for Apple or a delicious taste of scadenfreude (heh!), the point remains: congress not the FCC should be deciding what is or is not enforceable law.
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Link?
ETA:
Was it the FCC that did this or The Library of Congress?
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of-Congress-1201-Statement.html
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Link?
My bad: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/20100726/tc_ytech_wguy/ytech_wguy_tc3236_2
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Reardon Metal comes to mind quickly
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Rabbitoid, regarding your point that Congress, not agencies, should do this, the courts have long supported the opposite conclusion, for the stated reason that executive agencies pool subject matter expertise from industry, academia, and the concerned population at large in a way impossible for Congress to match, and with the ability to write detailed regulations and hold administrative hearings to resolve problems of a volume that would bury both Congress and the Article III courts without those mechanisms.
While it is a valid point as far as it goes, my somewhat-more-cynical point of view is that the best point in favor of the agencies is that Congress is usually dominated by a bunch of corrupt weasel bastards with little or no technical education on anything useful, and big money talks big there, much bigger than mere facts, or law, or right. Which is why copyright law coverage has been extended and extended again to effectively multiples of what it was at the start of the Twentieth Century, and has produced incredible travesties like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
At least with respect to the phones, this decision is actually a victory for the traditional interpretation of copyright law over the present convenience of mega-corporate money interests.
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Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry unlocking and jailbreaking are two different things...Yup they are not related to each other .Jailbreaking - which can be accomplished using various tools allows you to remove Apple's restrictions on what software you can install on your iPhone, thus allowing you access not only to the App Store, but all the other compatible apps as well (many of these can be purchased via Cydia, the leading alternative app store).
Another way that Apple controls the iPhone is by limiting the phone carriers that it works with. In the U.S., for instance, the iPhone is only officially sold and supported on AT&T. Unlocking allows you to change the carrier that the phone works on.Any how this can be done using remote unlocking service that is avail at many commercial vendors online like http://www.***********.com ..Both jailbreaking and unlocking has been legalized now...
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Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry unlocking and jailbreaking are two different things...Yup they are not related to each other .Jailbreaking - which can be accomplished using various tools allows you to remove Apple's restrictions on what software you can install on your iPhone, thus allowing you access not only to the App Store, but all the other compatible apps as well (many of these can be purchased via Cydia, the leading alternative app store).
Another way that Apple controls the iPhone is by limiting the phone carriers that it works with. In the U.S., for instance, the iPhone is only officially sold and supported on AT&T. Unlocking allows you to change the carrier that the phone works on.Any how this can be done using remote unlocking service that is avail at many commercial vendors online like http://www.************.com ..Both jailbreaking and unlocking has been legalized now...
gnads, is that you? :panic:
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gnads, is that you? :panic:
I thought we sprayed for gnads.
Yup.