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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?"
"Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"
Who are Apple to tell me what I can and can't run? Precicely why I'll be buying a Lenovo Ideapad U1 (have been waiting for a device "like" the iPad for almost as long as my flying car, FINALLY somebody listened to the idea of simply having a detachable screen).
Certainly a worthy moral argument, but thanks to the WIPO copyright Treaty (which everyone, except for a few of us crazies who were warning about it, completely ignored back when it was being debated), such circumvention of technology (specifically if it's designed to access protect copyrighted content) is nonetheless illegal in many WIPO countries, including the U.S.
From the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
And notice the language there. It doesn't say "no company may do this for profit" or "no one can do this for anyone else" (as many mistakenly believe), it says "No person." That means you sitting at home jailbreaking your own cellphone. Now, maybe you could make the case that an iPhone and its OS is not a "work protected under this title" but I think that would be a hard sell.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
that means it's YOURS now. end of story.
Putting aside the whole "You should", "You shouldn't" be able to Jailbreak the thing, I think it's interesting that we finally have a whitelisted platform. For years and years, whenever we have a security discussion on Slashdot, someone inevitablely says
"You can never succeed trying to filter out all the bad stuff. You need a whitelist of the good stuff."
But then someone else always says
"But who creates the whitelist?"
And both get modded +5 insightful. In this case, Apple created the Whitelist that all the security people say we need. And applied it to a whole platform. They apparently do code reviews, and enforce proper usage of the API.
Personally, if I had an iPhone, I'd jailbreak it. But I like the idea that I can give one to my Mom, let her get apps off the app store, and not have to de-gunk the malware every 3 months like I do with her PC.
A couple of my coworkers were talking recently about Kindles and iPads. I told them about the DRM. Neither of them knew what DRM stood for, so I had to explain. Neither of them had heard of the infamous incident involving Orwell's 1984. Neither of them knew about the history of DRM'd media becoming unplayable within 5 years after people buy it, because the company running the DRM dies or abandons the project.
Once people are educated about the issues, then it's up to them. If they buy a locked-down device, that's their decision. They know what they're getting into. We all buy coffee pots and wristwatches without any expectation that we'll be allowed to load arbitrary software into their CPUs. Everybody just has to draw their own individual line between the devices where they care about lockdown and the devices where they don't.
The crunchgear article has some major logical flaws. The author states, "Lastly, I would like to humbly thank Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and all the others, for creating wonderful devices which I plan to enjoy to the fullest extent." In other words, he's bought these locked-down devices, and now he has to find some way to justify buying them, even though he's unhappy with the EULAs. "A popular objection is that one doesn't have to buy the devices that happen to be wrapped up in restrictive systems or deliberately limited. Vote with your wallet, right? [***] Sure, and even when you jailbreak or mod, you are doing just that. You bought the device most suited to your needs." At the point where I inserted the [***] there is a major gap in his logic. He's paid money to these companies. He has voted with his wallet. He's cast his vote in favor of locked-down devices. He didn't buy the device most suited to his needs. He bought a device that was unsuited to his needs, and then modified it in order to suit his needs. He also ignores the very real practical consequences of modding and jailbreaking. The manufacturer is almost certainly never going to give him warranty service, and some of them may actually intentionally or unintentionally brick his device when it phones home for software updates.
Here are a couple of proposals that I'd consider more realistic. Both of these really do involve voting with your wallet. (1) If there are no options that avoid DRM and lockdowns, don't buy. This is my current attitude about the Kindle and iPod. I'll buy one when there is a non-DRM'd library of books available for it that is roughly the same size as Amazon's current catalog. (2) Buy the lesser of two evils. E.g., I believe Android is significantly less locked down than iPhone, so if I were choosing between the two, I'd buy an Android.
Find free books.
I don't see why it's so hard to grasp the iPhone is not, and was never intended to be, a general-purpose computing device. The development model, OS and user experience are designed to bring console-style simplicity and reliability to a smartphone. It works, and everyone is really happy with it, other than a few geeks who just can't grasp that it's not designed to be a really really small laptop.
Agreed. If you buy an iPhone when you really wanted an Android phone, or an XBox 360 when you wanted a PC, or any number of other closed-platform solutions when what you wanted was an open-platform you have only yourself to blame.
After you have bought the device that doesn't fit your requirements is the wrong time to complain about it. Either don't buy it, or deal with the limitations. Simply buying the closed device and then complaining that it's closed continues to funnel money towards that closed platform, and away from the open platform you should have purchased instead. Suddenly, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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