EFF Wins Renewal of Smartphone Jailbreaking Rights

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-renewal-smartphone-jailbreaking-rights-plus-new-legal-protections-video

by enobrev • 14 years ago

62 23 14 years ago

If you bought your gadget, you own it, and you should be able to install whatever software you please without facing potential legal threat

Such a simple thing but the folks who bought DMCA would never get it. Sigh!

lukifer7• 14 years ago

Devil's advocate: what if locked-down devices can open up new businesses that would not exist otherwise? Say, free cell phones in the developing world which are forcibly tied to a particular carrier and ecosystem to make up the cost?

Ownership is a fuzzy concept, especially in the days of intellectual property. It's a mish-mash of natural law, social contract, precedent, and state violence. If I "own" an MP3, why can't I remix and share it? If I "own" a piece of software, how come I don't get its source code to alter as I wish?

We have a historical bias that customers own the atoms, but creators own the ideas. But this is an arbitrary line that culture invented as an economic compromise, not an intrinsic law of the universe.

Having said all that, I'd prefer our culture side more with consumer rights, even at the cost of closing business opportunities. I'd love it if Apple-style vendor lock-in was illegal, fair use was more rigorously defended, copyrights were shortened, etc. But in any case, we should take ownership of our cultural trade-offs, instead of assuming that our animal instincts regarding "property" are inherently correct.

jrockway• 14 years ago

Selling humans as food would "open up new business that would not exist otherwise", but we're not going to do that, are we? So we might as well have phones that can run free software too. Not everything is about "business opportunities"; human rights come first.

Dylan168073• 14 years ago

There are no ideas involved in the fact that something is locked down.

denzil_correa5• 14 years ago

Thanks for the comment and an appropriate precursor.

what if locked-down devices can open up new businesses that would not exist otherwise?

My personal opinion is that business should be based on needs not the other way around. I understand it's a very fine line but more often than I follow a thumb rule - if it is simple to explain I'm doing it right.

krickle• 14 years ago

Don't be ridiculous. If the premise is whatever creates business opportunity is good, why on Earth should we legally protect selling below cost and trying to make up on service charges, but not a business unlocking those devices and selling software for them? In fact, businesses can already accomplish the former through contract law. The only purpose that is served by creating laws against jailbreaking a device (in addition to laws against distributing others' copyrighted work) is vendor lock-in and monopolism.

indrax2• 14 years ago

The traditional market solution to that is to lease or rent phones to people. That's openly admitting that you're retaining ownership of the device, and would also bring to bear [overly] powerful laws to prevent running unauthorized software.

Simple financing is also a potentially honest method.

britta• 14 years ago

Here's another discussion from a couple days ago about these DMCA exemption rulings: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4700010

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

Wow,

The whole "rights renewal" celebration just reinforces to me how sinister the DMCA actually is - all these "rights" depend on Library of Congress administrative rulings and thus are inherently revocable, in contrast to how they ought to be; inalienable and all that.

Mythbusters• 14 years ago

DMCA is ineffective anyways in doing what it was designed to do. Don't know why they have kept it around. Just search for NFL on youtube and you'd know what I mean

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

Except tablets, because herp derp DRM

EFF Wins Renewal of Smartphone Jailbreaking Rights

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