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Xbox 360 Jailbreaker May Need Real Jailbreak
An anonymous reader writes "Back in July, the Librarian of Congress officially made it legal to jailbreak your iPhone (or any phone). So why is it that the government is trying to prosecute Matthew Crippen for jailbreaking Xbox 360s? If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison, and lawyers are trying to prevent the author of a book about jailbreaking the original Xbox from testifying in Crippen's defense. What kind of law says it's okay to jailbreak the phone in your pocket, but not your gaming console?"
"As far as I'm considered, when I buy something (phone, game console, computer, whatever) it's mine to do with as I please."
People with money and an interest in these devices appear to disagree. No matter how wrong they are, I wonder who will be the one who is listened to...
"That's not to say it excuses piracy"
Not that reason alone, no. Logic does that.
"I really don't care what the lobbyist-bought-and-paid-for law says on the matter."
Really? Well, that won't stop these corporate tools from caring about you and attempting to doom you to the same fate as this guy.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The prison system in the US is heavily privatised, is it not? I wonder how much of a difference that makes, when there's a strong commercial incentive to have more criminals (assuming that private jails get paid more from the government to house more inmates)?
Note that as far as I'm aware, that's only the case in the US.
In Europe, you are given explicit rights to circumvent DRM for fair use. In France, there even was a proposal to force the manufacturer to provide information on how to circumvent it for that purpose, but of course it was scrapped.