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iPhone Freed From AT&T, Twice
A very large number of readers sent in stories about one or the other of the two new claims to have unlocked the iPhone for use on other GSM carriers. A New Jersey teenager, George Hotz, posted instructions for unlocking the iPhone using a soldering gun and a lot of patience. This is from coverage in a local NJ paper: "If someone handed him an iPhone new out of the box, he could modify it in 'about an hour,' he said. A person following his directions might take 'a good 12 hours,' the teen estimated." Hotz has put up a YouTube video substantiating his claim, and is conducting an eBay auction for one of his two hacked phones. The other hack is by a commercial outfit called iPhoneSIMfree.com, whose claim Engadget has verified. The company will be selling licenses to the hack, minimum quantity 500, at a price not yet announced. These hacks are much bigger news for those outside America. Expect to see an industry spring up to meet European (and Asian?) demand for freed iPhones.
While this is a cool hack, I'm certainly not ready to plunk down my hard earned cash on one just to unleash it from AT&T, which I am sure would void the warranty should anything bad happen.
Count me among those individuals not willing to shell out for an iPhone. I can't bring myself to lock in to AT&T for the next two years (at least), and I'm not willing to assume the risk of freeing it and subsequently breaking it (or worse, bricking it WHILE clumsily fumbling around the inside of it).
Besides, EDGE is so totally yuck!Everybody in this thread with a law degree, raise their hand. Anyone? No? Then go argue about something relatively simple, like quantum mechanics.
I want to reiterate that this was not just one person doing the entire hack, but many many people from all over the world contributing to this project. This was not a one man show. Congrats to the kid for soldering a wire to the pcb trace, but seriously there are people who did more important things like reverse-engineer iPhone's Firmware. He wouldn't know what to change on the logic board if not for all that work. Those are the unsung heroes of this event.
Maybe I will buy one yet. This goes to show all those lies about "special modifications" to the AT&T network were total bullshit.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
I am from his school. He is smart, but really shortsighted in his decisionmaking. He has a 2.0 GPA, and all of his grades were A's or F's. Needless to say he did not graduate. But he is really, really, talented.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Dear brainwashed fuckwad,
Here in the United States, everything is legal unless otherwise specified.
The DMCA, like most other laws, is not so much a list of permissible actions, but a list of restrictions on freedom.
The mere absense of legal verbiage forbidding an action is, in fact, a statement that such action is legal, by simple virtue of it not being made illegal.
But whatever the case: Making an iPhone talk to a non-AT&T network does not raise a copyright issue, so therefore copyright law does not apply, and no exception in the DMCA is required. It could have been a contract issue if Apple had made such a contract a condition of sale, but they do not.
So, as one's own property, one should do whatever one wishes with it in the absense of prior restraint.
In case you're still fucking brainwashed, I offer the following rhetorical question: Earlier today I used a 16" pry bar as a cold chisel to break up concrete. This is obviously not the tool's intended use, and I really should have used a cold chisel instead. Since the DMCA doesn't explicitly exclude gross repurposing of pry bars, does this make such usage illegal? (No, of course not.)
Rights cannot be granted, they can only be taken away.
Kid-proof tablet..