We might have to let customers do what they want
Apple is awaiting a ruling from the US copyright office as whether its
attempts to block jailbroken phones is actually legal.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation have asked the FTC for a ruling that
would pave the way for third-party apps on the iPhone. While this
would be great news for those who want an iPhone it has sent the
control freaks in Apple into a spin. Not only would Apple lose the 30
percent for every App sold from its
proprietary iTunes store, it would also have to allow its customers to
do what
they like.
Greg Joswiak, an Apple marketing czar, recently told regulators considering
the jailbreaking proposal before the U.S. Copyright Office that such a ruling
would severely limit Apple's ability to continue what it is doing as well
as innovate for the future. In other words it would stop it bringing in huge profits at the expense of
customer choice something which has been a key stone of Apple's policy for
years.
The EFF wants the proposed hack is part of the exemption process under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Every three years, the Librarian of
Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office entertain proposals for exemptions to
copyright law. Few exemptions have every been granted. One was laws allowing the
circumvention of anti-copying restrictions on DVDs for the purpose of making
compilations of portions of those works for educational use in a classroom.
Another was directed at the blind, allowing the circumvention of an e-book’s
shuttered read-aloud function. Another allows the circumvention of access
controls on CDs to research for security flaws.
So far the government has repeatedly denied consumer-friendly oriented fair use
changes, such as requests to make up backup copies of DVDs or video games, as
well as requests for exemptions to enable copying DVDs to laptops and portable
devices. The content industry has also lobbied against the jailbreaking proposal backing
Apple as it would create a giant iPhone platform to play and copy
infringing content like movies and games. The content industry loves
closed source applications because it can be controlled and charged.