Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed [LWN.net]

Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed

Posted Feb 13, 2009 16:50 UTC (Fri) by heinlein (guest, #1029)
Parent article: Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed

Personally, I think iPhone users ought to be able to gain control of their hardware. Period.

There's a legitimate question of public interest here, however, if you change the metaphor a bit. The EFF says that Apple's argument can be translated into automotive terms:

One need only transpose Apple's arguments to the world of automobiles to recognize their absurdity. Sure, GM might tell us that, for our own safety, all servicing should be done by an authorized GM dealer using only genuine GM parts. Toyota might say that swapping your engine could reduce the reliability of your car. And Mazda could say that those who throw a supercharger on their Miatas frequently exceed the legal speed limit.

There's only a partial truth here. No one should be legally prevented from modifying his own vehicle -- but that doesn't mean that everyone who modifies a vehicle should be allowed to operate it on public roads.

iPhones are not simply private computing devices. They also operate on a shared, crucial telephony infrastructure. It's legitimate to ask how "street legal" translates into telephony.

Apple's problem is that it thinks it should be the arbiter here, hence the appeal to the DMCA. No private entity should have that right.

So who should? What entity defines and enforces the public good in telephony infrastructure?

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Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed

Posted Feb 13, 2009 17:09 UTC (Fri) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

In the US, the FCC. They're the ones who set the regulations for use of wireless technologies, so it's they who should determine whether modifications to a device are "broadcast legal" or not. And lucky for us, they already have.

So, really, any modification which does not change how the device transmits and receives radio waves in such a way that it violates FCC regulations for that class of device should be allowed.

Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed

Posted Feb 13, 2009 17:16 UTC (Fri) by gurulabs (subscriber, #10753) [Link]

"iPhones are not simply private computing devices. They also operate on a shared, crucial telephony infrastructure. It's legitimate to ask how "street legal" translates into telephony."

Phhhhfff.

Windows Mobile and PalmOS smartphones have allowed "bare metal" access for years with 10s of millions of devices sold. The "crucial telephone infrastructure" has done just fine.

All modifications are "street legal" as long as they don't modify the radio operations.

-Dax Kelson

AND, ...

Posted Feb 13, 2009 17:20 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

back to the "car analogy": it's the responsibility of the owner to comunicate to the DMV any "non-street-legal" mods she does in her car, and it's the DMV/PD responsibility to ensure that "non-street-legal" cars do not drive in the streets.

IOW: the FCC (in the US) could go after people who modify their phones so they are not anymore in accordance with its regulations, and operate them in the network. Others should be AOK.

Budget and DMCA corporate welfare

Posted Feb 13, 2009 18:06 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

As Tim Lee at the Cato Institute has pointed out, the question isn't just what is good and bad policy, but what policy should the government spend your tax dollars to enforce?

Is the DMCA's business benefit to Adobe great enough to justify the "subsidy" cost of the Dmitry Sklyarov trial? Is the subsidy to Apple great enough to justify the cost of the Ashton Kutcher trial?

Budget and DMCA corporate welfare

Posted Feb 17, 2009 11:06 UTC (Tue) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link]

Don,

You missed one point there. The questions surrounding enforcement priorities are completely invalid if the issue at hand is bad policy (especially if it runs counter to the public good).

While arguments about enforcement priority are interesting in cases where a given law serves legitimate public interest, they are a reeking red herring when that is not the case. A "good law" can be effectively unenforceable if the cost/benefit ratio of that enforcement is high enough.

However, this is not a "good law."

DMCA is very bad public policy. It creates a huge incentive for companies to attempt many abusive forms of "vendor lock-in" and criminalizes many creative ways in which people might attempt to use and modify devices which they have purchased.

To strain the widely over-used automotive analogy a bit here is as if there was a law making it illegal to pick or otherwise circumvent a padlock. So car manufacturers start putting padlocks on the hoods of their vehicles and keeping the keys. It clearly does not serve the public's legitimate interests to keep people from choosing their own mechanics, their own brands of spark plugs, oil, and so on. In fact it would be considered an absurd injustice to arrest and try someone for cutting the lock off his own car. Beyond that the very notion of someone buying a car but being locked out of it ... and for it to be a criminal offense for him or her to gain access to his own property ... is absurd.

All efforts to do this with software are ultimately doomed. However, the effort has done tremendous harm to the public ... and will continue to do so until these policies are changed and the DMCA, in particular, is repealed.

Budget and DMCA corporate welfare

Posted Feb 17, 2009 20:13 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Good point. The subsidy to Apple and Adobe has to be balanced against (1) The harm to customers and the public domain they use (2) The value that would have been created by the startups that anticircumvention suppresses (3) The costs of providing security coverage and administration for non-upgradeable, DRM-enforced technologies (4) The cost of works lost to users and libraries because they're not legally copyable when original media fails...and not just (5) the cost of enforcement.

And that's not even counting the political risks of non-quotable, take-backable speech by politicians.

Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed

Posted Feb 14, 2009 4:12 UTC (Sat) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]

Jailbreaking the phone doesn't affect the baseband processor at all, and the main processor that applications (Jailbroken or otherwise) run on can't really cause the baseband to do anything that would harm the operation of the cellular network. Thus there's no "integrity of the cellular network" argument against jailbreaking. That's most likely a significant part of the reason that they are separate processors with separate memory.

The argument Apple is trying to make is more like GM arguing that you shouldn't be allowed to install your own radio in the GM car in place of the factory radio, because it would somehow make the car unsafe and thus hazardous to the public. Installing the radio doesn't affect the drive train, so it won't affect the roadworthiness of the car. (Of course, with either the factory radio or an aftermarket one, the driver could turn up the volume too loud or otherwise use it in a manner that distracts him or her from driving, which would be unsafe, but that's not fundamentally changed by replacing the radio.)