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In Defense of Jailbreaking
Keith found a nice manifesto saying "There's a trend that's been disturbing me lately. When the topic of modding or jailbreaking comes up — say, in the wake of the iPad announcement, or Sony's restrictive PS3 update — there is an outcry. Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"
OK, since the author of the article seems to be totally ignorant of the actual issue, let me help you. This is nothing to do with "customer rights" and everything to do with stealing.
Your iPad/PlayStation/XBOX costs MORE than you are currently paying for it. Apple/Sony/Microsoft is selling it to you more cheaply because they want to make up the difference by selling you software.
So the companies have a few choices. 1) charge much more for the hardware and worry that people will not buy it. 2) undercharge for the hardware and lock people in to a closed app store. 3) sell two different versions - locked and unlocked - and let people choose which one they want.
Some open systems like PCs do #1 while some smartphones do #3. But most content-based products do model #2. When you "jailbreak" your product and use that to exit the app store ecosystem, that is basically saying "I know you want $800 for this, but I only want to pay you $400". We have a word for that. It is called "stealing". If you want to buy a toaster and it costs $20, but you only want to pay $10, you can't just tell WalMart that it is your "customer right".
And all of this talk about companies "forcing" you to do this or that. Wake up! You DO NOT HAVE TO BUY AN IPAD. If you don't like being locked in, don't engage in criminal behavior - just buy something else that is open. Geez people.
- davevr
It's a awful and ill-conceived law, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, many laws are like that. This law was pushed through a Congress with way more concern about the media companies that supported it than with whether or not it made for good law.
Not at all. It means that once a company used some technology to keep you from copying their stuff, they then don't have to enter an arms race with hackers to keep the legal protection. Which is good for the customer. For example, Apple has this copy protection that stops you from installing MacOS X on a non-Apple computer. And even though lots of people know how to get around it, Apple will forever have the legal protection that comes with the copy protection. They will never change to some more complicated copy protection that could then affect legitimate customers.
And of course it protects companies who are not smart enough to create copy protection that keeps the worlds smartest hackers out.