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Companies Can't Legally Void the Warranty For Jailbreaking Or Rooting Your Phone (vice.com)
Reader Jason Koebler writes: Manufacturers that threaten to void the warranties of consumers who jailbreak or root their phones are violating federal law.
Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, manufacturers cannot legally void your hardware warranty simply because you altered the software of an electronic device. In order to void the warranty without violating federal law, the manufacturer must prove that the modifications you made directly led to a hardware malfunction.
"They have to show that the jailbreak caused the failure. If yes, they can void your claim (not your whole warranty—just the things which flowed from your mod)," Steve Lehto, a lemon law attorney in Michigan, wrote in an email. "If not, then they can't."
Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, manufacturers cannot legally void your hardware warranty simply because you altered the software of an electronic device. In order to void the warranty without violating federal law, the manufacturer must prove that the modifications you made directly led to a hardware malfunction.
"They have to show that the jailbreak caused the failure. If yes, they can void your claim (not your whole warranty—just the things which flowed from your mod)," Steve Lehto, a lemon law attorney in Michigan, wrote in an email. "If not, then they can't."
These days, try to flash new firmware w/o a new boot loader... Good luck, most of this stuff is now starting to require the firmware image to be signed, which is enforced by the boot loader. Unless you happen to know the private signing key that the boot loader's public validation key matches so you can sign the new firmware, it will brick your device.
It is not on all devices yet, but you can bet it won't be long..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The issue with efuses is like welding the hood shut, so you cannot service the engine.
It forces "physical damage" to become necessary to gain the access you should have been able to get anyway. In the case of the welded hood: you have to cut through the welds. In the case of efuses protected boot loaders: the boot loader enforces strong crypto against custom kernels, preventing boot of devices without the magic number baked into them, and if you flash a new boot loader, bam, efuses blown.
When the hardware that gets damaged is little more than a "warranty void" sticker, just in digital form, the oems are stretching things pretty thin.
I would love to see them be told that they cannot do these kinds of things. Sadly, that is not how the world works today.
If the blown fuse allows the device to still work, then why would the warranty be void for when the device stops working. Voiding the warranty about the security OK since by your actions you compromised it.
If the blown fuse bricks the device, wouldn't that be ground for suing in the first place? I hope this wouldn't be legal to brick a device just because the manufacturer doesn't like what you are doing with it. Otherwise, do we draw the line? What if computers start blowing their fuse because you visited a website about homosexuality or a religion the manufacturer didn't approve of...
That's there so Hoover can't force you to buy their expensive name brand vacuum cleaner bags to maintain the warranty. It doesn't prevent a manufacturer from setting quality specifications ("use 5W-30 API SM certified oil"). It doesn't prevent a manufacturer from saying you can't do modifications. It just says they can't demand you buy stuff from them to maintain warranty. There's a big difference. Your firmware got corrupted? The manufacturer will flash it again, free, under warranty. If a car maker wants to say they won't warranty the engine if you hang fuzzy dice on the mirror, they can - as long as that's clearly spelled out in the warranty terms - they're not in violation of the MMWA. There's nothing in the MMWA which even remotely says they must prove the modification caused anything. The most obvious place where it would apply to phones is with replacement batteries, if the manufacturer didn't replace them free during the warranty.
If you break the phone (say, by blowing a security fuse while trying to load alternate firmware), it would be hard to argue that the alternate firmware wasn't the cause of the failure.
I sympathize with wanting the ability to modify phones. I've rooted mine, but run stock firmware with bloatware removed, the tethering block removed, and no other mods. Some firmware plays with processor overclocking, which can cause hardware failure. I've seen lots of forum posts where someone "bricked" their phone by modifying the bootloader/firmware, who then go on to describe acting ignorant as to how it happened and getting it replaced under warranty. That's fraud, plain and simple, so I can also sympathize with manufacturer's who don't want to pay for phones broken by users actions.
Finally, from a pragmatic perspective, they'll do what they want, it's going to end up costing much more than a new phone to even bring the issue to court. In Michigan, where the author is from, you can sue a company in small claims if you can find where they have a physical presence in the state, but they then have the right to get it moved to district court, where you'll end up needing to pay for a lawyer. Guess which of the parties has lawyers on retainer? So, in practice, if they don't want to honor the warranty for any reason, they won't.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Actually, no they won't. Unlike most consumer protection laws, Magnuson-Moss actually has teeth. You don't HAVE to sue them in court and prevail. All you have to do is file a claim with the Federal Trade Commission, and THEY'LL do the grunt work for you. After reviewing your claim, they'll forward it to the manufacturer, who has a limited amount of time to respond and either 1) agree to cover the repair, or 2) file a rebuttal that explains the legal basis for their refusal.
As a practical matter, manufacturers almost NEVER do anything besides meekly grunt an apology at the FTC & agree to cover the repair, because challenging the FTC and losing is WAY more expensive than grudgingly eating the cost of a warranty repair they would have otherwise refused.
With Magnuson-Moss, the deck is stacked VERY heavily against manufacturers in favor of consumers. It's probably one of the best consumer protection laws ever passed, because the members of Congress who wrote the law weren't just going through the motions to appease voters... they were as personally pissed off at the automakers as the general public was, and they wanted the automakers' blood to metaphorically flood the streets of Detroit.