Yes, thats right, breaking free from jail is now in fact legal….sort of. While actually breaking out of a penitentiary, prison or that medieval castle’s dungeon in which you’ve been toiling away may be met with local law enforcement or cries to release the hounds, “jailbreaking” your new high tech device will leave you with considerably less to worry about.
When the iPhone went on sale in 2007, several options for removing the apple imposed restrictions quickly appeared online. The process of removing such restrictions, allowing one to load applications not sold or approved by Apple, became known as a “jailbreak” and now is widely used to describe the same process for other tech products. While manufacturers wish to control what can and cannot be done with their devices for a variety of reasons, Apple has notoriously been a leader in providing rewarding but tightly controlled user-experiences.
Due to legislation which was newly enacted last year, the US Copyright Office no longer considers reprogramming an electronic device a violation of federal copyright law. Of course there are still consequences to jailbreaking your devices, like voiding warranties or violating license agreements, and you will have to go through the jailbreak process again each time an update is released. These issues are probably minor though if you are adventurous enough to consider jailbreaking your device in the first place.
Now remember, this is not an endorsement to go out and start jailbreaking like there’s no tomorrow. Just confirmation that freeing your device from the restrictions placed upon it by the manufacturer isn’t going to land you in the slammer for copyright violations.
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