Earlier this week, iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners were treated to the new Absinthe jailbreak tool which finally freed their iOS devices and gave them access to new tweaks courtesy of Cydia. While there were nearly 1 million downloads of the jailbreak tool recorded in the first 24 hours of its release, the ability to jailbreak your iOS device may soon become illegal again.
Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad may be illegal once again
After a court ruled some odd 18 months ago that jailbreaking your iPhone was legal, Apple made the following statement:
“Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.”
While that sounded like the end of this jailbreak legal fiasco, new details have surfaced suggesting that jailbreaking may become illegal once again. Famed iOS developer, Charlie Miller, recently alerted his Twitter followers to sign an electronic petition petition which would allow jailbreaking to remain legal by making sure it was added into the DMCA: “Want to keep jailbreaking your phone legal? Want to make jailbreaking your iPad legal? Help add exceptions to DMCA,” said Miller’s tweet.
He directed users to an EFF petition which is neccessary to keep jailbreaking from becoming illegal once again. According to RedmondPie, “the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) [is] lobbying for users to add their electronic voice to a petition which aims to ask the United States government to declare once again that jailbreaking an iPhone does not violate the DMCA. The EFF are also asking for this initial exemption, which is set to expire, to be extended to cover tablet devices as the Apple’s iPad is not currently covered in the original ruling.”
So if you want to protect your rights to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, we suggest heading over to the EFF website and making your electronic voice heard. You have until February 10.
