EFF Asks To Make Jailbreaking Legal For All Devices

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 7, 2011 @09:07AM from the making-it-free dept.

Diggester writes "Jailbreaking is a way to break off from the limitations imposed by the mobile vendor to download additional applications and themes etc. which aren't available otherwise. It provides root access to the device by use of custom kernels. It is common with the iDevices and has been rendered legal by the efforts of EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) in July 2010. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is now determined to make Jailbreaking legal for all the consumer electric goods. They have asked the US copyright office to declare it legal to jailbreak all the devices like smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles etc. no matter who the vendor is. The aim behind this plead is to change the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits such an access to the user."

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Re:PC analogy by Moryath · 2011-12-07 09:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

I don't give a crap about the warranty.
At the same time, I bought *HARDWARE*. Sony shouldn't be able to tell me that I can't load custom firmware on it with the ability to run Linux, for example. The PS3 would make a GREAT media center to stream from my TV recording box, save that I can't load a custom firmware package for Linux AND keep the ability to run current games.
I only wish we could get it a step further and actually make it illegal for companies like the phone companies to do what they've done - sure it's "legal" to root your phone, but they keep trying to make it *impossible* by fucking with the shipped/official firmware.