On Monday a groundbreaking moment for the liberalization of copyright law occurred. The US Library of Congress granted iPhone consumers who practice what has come to be known as “jailbreaking,” exemption from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Jailbreaking is essentially when a consumer circumvents digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved third-party software or applications. Consumers are exempt from punishment when such jailbreaking is found to be “noninfringing.” The exemption was proposed by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) in 2008 who argued that consumers should be allowed to install third-party software to their phones if such was legally attained.
Exemptions determined by the Librarian expire every 3 years, meaning the previous 2006, 2003, and 2000 findings no longer apply. It is worth noting that Apple or other similar companies to remove digital protection from their software; rather, if a consumer chooses to circumvent the protection and is within the rules while doing so, they will not be held criminally responsible for the act of jailbreaking. Also, the exemption only applies for legally attained software, not for pirated applications.
Several other exemptions were announced on Monday, but they all are quite similar to their 2006 version.
The iPhone jailbreaking exception is certainly a victory for the EFF and other proponents of liberalized copyright law. Our civil liberties certainly grant consumers the right to utilize and alter their purchased technological devices however they see fit.