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Jailtime For Jailbreaking
An anonymous reader writes "Remember how the Librarian of Congress announced that jailbreaking your phone was legal and not a violation of the DMCA? Yeah, well, tell that to Mohamad Majed, who has already spent over a year in jail and has now been pressured into pleading guilty to criminal DMCA violations for jailbreaking phones for use on other carriers."
I know this is a semantic issue but jailbreaking usually refers to installing apps on phones and not usually unlocking a phone from a particular carrier. Anyway, carry on with the discussion.
The convictions were all from people breaking phones (as in hundreds or thousands of phones) to use on different carriers. The iPhone jailbreaking (which the story summary was meant to make you think of even though no iPhones were involved in this story) does not unlock the phone for use by other carriers.
You may proceed jailbreaking as normally despite this FUD, just as many millions have already done...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's legal to jailbreak your own "used" phone. This guy was jailbreaking phones by the thousands and selling them. It's still legal to jailbreak the phone you own and use, it's just illegal to unlock and sell in bulk.
I'm using all of my mod points to mod ancient memes down. Please join me.
If they controlled the Internet you'd buy your computer from your ISP and it wouldn't work with any other ISP, your Internet bill would list every website you went to, out-of-state websites would be billed at a higher rate (except for nights and weekends). The current model for phone networks is an overpriced relic of the last century.
I read the article and some of the comments below the article and I was amazed that there are people that equate unlocking or jailbreaking a phone to stealing intellectual property. I'm not very familiar with the wording of the DMCA exlusion that allows you to carrier unlock a phone but I did believe that it applied to a phone that you own. I somebody is charging a fee to unlock phones that clearly this doesn't fall under the DMCA exclusion as I understand it. However, if somebody were to purchase a phone for X dollars, carrer unlock it and then re-sell it for X+Y dollars then that SHOULD fall under the DMCA exlusion although it would be exploiting a loophole.
I'm still not sure how this guy ended up doing jail time and what kind of precedent that sets.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Except that what he was doing does not fall under the exemption. The exemption was that you can jailbreak YOUR OWN phone. This is the same reason why it's legal to break CSS encyption on DVD to use copyrighted clips in fair use works but it is not legal for someone to run a business where by they are stripping CSS off of ripped DVDs and then selling those unencrypted discs.
Both Techdirt and the submitter seem to have reading comprehension problems.
Is it illegal to jailbreak a phone if you haven't used it? Illegal to jailbreak more than one phone? Illegal to sell a phone after you jailbreak it? Illegal only if two or more of the above?
I think you have a case of the ole "illegal to profit from someone else's work" mindset.
>>>this idiot pleaded guilty, so you can't really blame anyone but him.
The Supreme Court has ruled that your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent is still a protected right, if it can be demonstrated that the person was never informed of that right. They also stated that oftentimes completely-innocent people will plead guilty to a crime they never committed, so that alone is not enough evidence to convict.
Bottom Line:
Keep your mouth shut. I've had people tell me, "Oh well if you were innocent why wouldn't you cooperate with the police and let them see inside your trunk, or home?" Answer: Because innocent people have been sent to prison. Better to not volunteer anything.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Following the links in the article, "Majed... was arrested by FBI agents on November 22, 2009." If one goes back to the determination in effect at that time, from 2006 (These exemptions went into effect upon publication in the Federal Register on November 27, 2006, the 3 year term was later extended), one finds this exemption:
5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.
That sure sounds like exactly what he was doing.
Here's the section of the DMCA which grants authority to the LoC:
The Librarian shall publish any class of copyrighted works for which the Librarian has determined, pursuant to the rulemaking conducted under subparagraph (C), that noninfringing uses by persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be, adversely affected, and the prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to such users with respect to such class of works for the ensuing 3-year period.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
He was running his business to the letter of the law. Tracfone was running theirs on a gamble that the subsidised phones would pay for themselves. Majed owned the phones and was well within his rights to do what he liked with them - dump them in the ocean, if he wanted - with no regard to repaying Tracfone's subsidy; if they'd wanted the terms to be different, a simple contract at the time of sale would've solved all their problems (and made Majed's business immediately untenable by virtue of breaching that contract).
Yes, and you can read the original filing. The guy and his buddy bought thousands of stolen phones, and playstations, and laptops, that he knew were stolen from an undercover FBI guy over the course of few years. He and his pals are no angels. No heros. But then again, they could have posted a link to it. http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1136.pdf
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Exactly. This wasn't some poor cell user trying to get his phone working on another network which is the specific use case allowed under the exception, but rather he was specifically prosecuted for breaking DMCA for the explicit purposes of trafficking that same hardware for a profit.
Hardly innocent.
Sorry but I gotta call bullshit. You think the average Joe is gonna have the skills to jailbreak? Nope, they'd have to bring it to someone like me, just like they bring their desktops and laptops, and I ain't doing jack for free.
This is just an end run around the "jailbreaking is okay" exception, by making sure those that have the skills have no reason to share those skills. Imagine what a shitfit everyone would have if they said only yourself or authorized licensed laptop centers were allowed to work on your laptop? The average Joe is scared to go into Windows Control Panel, he sure as hell ain't doing root hacking. This is just a way to make sure nobody can actually use that exception, and considering how "corporation yay!" our government has become this really doesn't surprise me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.