Jailbreaking: taboo?

schweb said:

I'm failing to see the contradiction? If the post is referencing blatant illegal activity, it's not permitted. If the post is describing behavior that is merely a potential violation of a EULA, that we will not actively enforce.

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There is no contradiction. They are both the same from the "difficult to enforce" aspect you mentioned. As noted I noted, I see now that it has been explained that the distinction is now not based on difficulty of enforcement, but on whether it is a topic has implications related to civil or criminal law.

dtravis7 said:

Jailbreaking is not to use the iphone with a different carrier. That is Unlocking. Unlocking is to make it work with carriers other than AT&T.

Jailbreaking is to basically hack the OS to run applications that Apple will not allow to run on the OS. That is against the rules at Mac Forums.

That URL Clay provided explains it quite clearly.

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I read both threads (the linked one as well) and didn't see a distinction made on my next point: One can not unlock their phone without first Jailbreaking it, so naturally I suppose, we can not talk about unlocking to use your phone on another carrier as well.

But get this: It's "illegal" to jailbreak yet someone whom paid 'x' amount of dollars for a perfectly good phone which has the capability to be used internationally, is not allowed to do it ? I moved here, to Hungary last September. There was no way I was going to not use my perfectly capable iPhone which I had pretty much just gotten, so I jailbroke it in order to unlock it. Now I've got a Vodafon SIM card in it and all is right in my world.

I'm returning home to NYC in August and will likely keep the iPhone the way it is for when I travel internationally again. Apple really should allow users to at least unlock the phone for such instances. After all, the only other carrier near me is T-Mobile, and you can't even use their 3G network on the older iPhones, so I'm not sure of what their point is on this issue, and why we iPhone users are deemed so "special" ?

Doug

Doug b said:

One can not unlock their phone without first Jailbreaking it, so naturally I suppose, we can not talk about unlocking to use your phone on another carrier as well.

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That is not universally true. But yes, if you're route to unlocking would involve needing to jailbreak the phone, it would not be allowed.

Remember: in many countries you can legally unlock your phone by paying an additional fee to your carrier. In some countries you're entitled to this right by law and in other countries the law requires phone makers to offer an unlocked version.

In those cases, discussing the "unlock" would be alright. It's only cases where you're performing an unlock by jailbreaking your phone that things get legally tricky for mac-forums. Those discussions are prohibited.

schweb said:

That is not universally true. But yes, if you're route to unlocking would involve needing to jailbreak the phone, it would not be allowed.

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My assumption is that we are still following US law here, correct?

baggss said:

My assumption is that we are still following US law here, correct?

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Yes, and there is nothing inherently illegal under US law in unlocking a phone.

1991-C4 said:

That would require additional circuitry. It is not something the can be added through additional software. The good news is that there are several apps that provide streaming audio like Pandora and Last.fm. As far as actual radio stations, I like Pocket Tunes. They carry many of my local FM stations, including many HD stations. (This is really cool because I live in the Central time zone and I can listen to "Car Talk" an hour earlier than I normally do by listening to an NPR station on the East coast!)

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+1 for Pocket Tunes. The sound quality is excellent and it has a large library of stations for most metropolitan areas in the US.

What about installing OS X on non-Apple hardware. Can we discuss hardware compatibility?

Installing OS X on non-Apple hardware involves both a breach of the EULA and the DMCA since it requires software hacks, which means hackintosh discussions are not allowed here at M-F.

Kash said:

Installing OS X on non-Apple hardware involves both a breach of the EULA and the DMCA since it requires software hacks, which means hackintosh discussions are not allowed here at M-F.

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Not all methods require hacks. And, actually most of the better methods have nothing to with hacked OS images. Some of the best methods specifically require actual unaltered retail OS X DVD's and simply use a boot loader for initial installation on Intel systems. That is a EULA violation all the way for sure, but NOT criminal matter. The police will not arrest you for it, though Apple might sue you. Let's be realistic, were splitting hairs between tolerating what is civilly pursuable and what is criminally pursuable in court. Using a boot loader from a USB drive to get a non-hacked OS image onto a hard disk is not a criminal offense, though it is pursuable by civil remedies in the USA. Do some research beyond Wikipedia folks.

Except creation of those tools required the breaking of encryption and reverse engineering.

So will I appreciate the attempt to defend the process, we do not allow the discussion of hacintosh at Mac-Forums.

schweb said:

Except creation of those tools required the breaking of encryption and reverse engineering.

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so then we won't discuss the tools?

Isn't that Sir, the same essence of methodology in jailbreaking an iPhone? The creation of those tools (iPhone jailbreaking tools included), without getting too specific, does indeed involve some reverse engineering - totally legal. No encryption is broken. One merely sees what conditions the installer is looking for, and supplies that input where it is appropriate. Breaking of encryption is not needed as Apple supplies Xcode tools which are quite robust enough to generate the few text files needed.

I won't bring it up again, but if we can discuss jailbroken iPhones after they are compromised, what is different about discussing jailbroken Dell's running OS X after they are compromised? My whole point was that both devices have been compromised, and neither is really in the spirit of the law. Reminds me of the Anarchist's Cookbook in a way - legal, but dubiously ethical. Details can be argued, ethics and perspectives differ which is why lawyers and exist, but the results are basically the same. Tacitly allowing one begs the question "Why not both?" Are the end results substantively any different? Neither are expressly criminal, unless money or demonstrative loss of revenue is involved. I personally wouldn't allow either, as I think it conveys the wrong message and creates a grey area that just begs to be played in. Then again, I don't call the shots, so I'll shut up now. I appreciate the information and comments. You'll hear no mention of hackintosh or jailbreak by me.

I've been reading about how using jailbreak and adding third party applications to the iPhone is against the EULA. I would like to know what are the other problems having in it.

Well, you've come to the right place.