DMCA update shuts down new phone unlocking next year, allows rooting (but not for tablets)
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And so it passed that Congress didst layeth its blessing on the jailbreaking and rooting of all manner of devices; the hacking community saw the miracle and rejoiced. But that amendment to the DMCA two years ago was just a temporary exemption and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been vigorously lobbying to get it reinstated. The Library of Congress has now done just that through a new three year extension, but with some serious caveats: After 90 days, unlocking of new phones will be verboten and all tablet mods will still be illegal. This differs from the 2010 decision which did allow unlocking, because the Librarian decided that a recent copyright ruling means fair use rules no longer apply to a handset’s OS. It also said the exception isn’t needed anymore because carrier rules regarding unlocking are now more liberal — although the lawmaker may be confounding chicken with egg by that reasoning.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
DMCA update shuts down new phone unlocking next year, allows rooting (but not for tablets) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Oct 2012 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A while back it was pretty big news when prominent iOS hacker, Comex, or Nicholas Allegra as he is known in real life, was hired by Apple. Given his work on JailbreakMe, a jailbreak tool that could be used within Safari, we guess Apple was right in snapping him up, possibly in an effort to help identify and close exploits. While we’d love to think that he’s still at Apple busy working on making life harder for hackers to jailbreak iOS devices, that is unfortunately not that case as in an interview with 
With the release of the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, we’re sure that there are many iOS users out there who are itching to have their devices jailbroken. Unfortunately if that describes your current situation, you might be in for a wait. This was revealed by none other than pod2g during the JailbreakCon 2012 where he stated that there is no working untethered jailbreak available for iOS 6 yet. In case some of you guys came across a photo of a jailbroken iPhone 5 (pictured above), that is apparently what is known as a “failbreak” and is actually a version available only to developers which means that it is by no means suitable for regular folks like you and me. No word on when an untethered jailbreak will be available for iOS 6 or the iPhone 5, although it has been suggested that we could be waiting for months, so until then for those who want a jailbroken iOS device, you will need to downgrade back to iOS 5.1.1.
While some might have more pure and noble reasons for jailbreaking an iOS device or rooting an Android one, it’s safe to assume that many people do it for the free apps. By jailbreaking/rooting your device, you will have to ability to downloaded pirated apps instead of having to pay for it, and that’s generally the perception people have when you tell them that you jailbroke or rooted your device, even though you might have just done it for customizability and still pay for apps. That being said, Cydia is an app store alternative for jailbroken iOS devices and it has been revealed that during JailbreakCon 2012, Jay “saurik” Freeman, it seems that Cydia developers were paid a pretty impressive sum of $8 million in 2011.