For everyone who has been holding off  jailbreaking their iPhone for fear of legal ramifications from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), your day has come.  New exemptions were presented by the U.S. Copyright Office this morning allowing for the circumvention of copyright protection in six areas. The six exemptions are:

1. Defeating a lawfully obtained DVD’s encryption for the sole purpose of short, fair use in an educational setting or for criticism

2. Computer programs that allow you to run lawfully obtained software on your phone that you otherwise would not be able to run aka “Jailbreaking” to use Google Voice on your iPhone

3. Computer programs that allow you to use your phone on a different network aka “Jailbreaking” to use your iPhone on T-Mobile

4. Circumventing video game encryption (DRM) for the purposes of legitimate security testing or investigation

5. Cracking computer programs protected by dongles when the dongles become obsolete or are no longer being manufactured

6. Having an ebook be read aloud (i.e for the blind) even if that book has controls built into it to prevent that sort of thing.

[via CrunchGear]

The complete original text can be found here

The big ones for iPhone users are numbers 2 and 3.  If you want to see the big scary world outside of Apple’s beautiful walled garden, you can.  And, if you’re frustrated with a certain proprietary carrier, you can try T-Mobile. Don’t expect either of these goals to be anywhere near as easy as downloading an app though. The revisions released today simply make these actions exempt from prosecution under the DMCA.

The first exemption allows for a wide use of content from lawfully obtained DVDs to be used in non-commercial ways, with a particular impact in education.

The DMCA is reviewed every three years for revisions and because the review took so long the next review is only two years away. Hopefully this will become a trend, and the Librarian of Congress will continue to listen to digital freedom advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Will you be jailbreaking your iPhone now that it’s legal? Are you ready to try out a different network? Do these exemptions mean anything to you?

Today among the Gizmodians, there was discussion of hardware versus carrier.  Who was under the gun?

The usuals: the Apple iPhone 4, AT&T and Verizon.

So what do you think?  Would you rather choose the iPhone 4 over Verizon?

[image via DailyiPhoneBlog]

According to a BGR report Apple has stopped shipments of the iPhone 3G 8GB:

“A move that is sure to surprise few, we suppose. We’ve heard that Apple has stopped shipping iPhone 3G 8GB units to AT&T stores and orders are not being placed for the device. Could this mean we might see the iPhone 3GS drop to $99 and make way for a new model?…”

The iPhone model is still available in the Apple Store and AT&T at a lowered cost of $99. The move appears to be in preparation for a new iPhone model expected to be announced by Apple’s own Steve Jobs at WWDC on June 7th. Could this be the beginning of the end for all iPhone 3Gs?

[via BoyGeniusReport]

[Image via Dvice]

According to a recent Engadget report, the original Apple / AT&T contract signed in 2007 was a for a five year period. Until now, the agreement between the two companies had but rumored to be 5 years but never independently confirmed. Citing an Apple Brief and a Court Order stemming from a class-action law suit, Engadget shows that the original agreement between the two IT giants was intended for five years. Therefore, their unique relationship would be exhausted as early as 2012.

Here are the telling quotes from Apple:

“The duration of the exclusive Apple-[AT&T] agreement was not ’secret’ either. The [plaintiff] quotes a May 21, 2007 USA Today article – published over a month before the iPhone’s release – stating, “AT&T has exclusive U.S. distribution rights for five years-an eternity in the go-go cellphone world.”
…
“[T]here was widespread disclosure of [AT&T's] five-year exclusivity and no suggestion by Apple or anyone else that iPhones would become unlocked after two years… Moreover, it is sheer speculation – and illogical – that failing to disclose the five-year exclusivity term would produce monopoly power…”

Of course this all happened in October of 2008, and as Engadget puts it, “Contracts can be canceled, amended, and breached in many ways, and AT&T’s spotty recent service history plus the explosion of the iPhone and the mobile market in general have given Apple any number of reasons to revisit the deal.” It’s not for sure if this contract still holds, but for now, as the AT&T/Apple contract nears its end, it will be interesting to watch just how the key players (Apple, Verizon, and AT&T) act.

[via Engadget]

Luke Wilson vs. Big Red. iPhone vs. Blackberry.  These enemies are no more.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is noted to be producing an iPhone for Verizon.  Supposedly, “the new iPhones is being manufactured by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which produced Apple’s previous iPhones. The model that has CDMA capability, used by Verizon Wireless, is being manufactured by Pegatron Technology Corp., the contract manufacturing subsidiary of Taiwan’s ASUSTeK Computer Inc., said these people” [via Wall Street Journal]. Apple, Pegatron, Hon Hai and Verizon have not commented on this potential product.  While all of these companies are pleading the 5th, Apple will yield the greatest results as they will be benefiting from both AT&T and Verizon users.

I know plenty of iPhone users who are frustrated with AT&T services and now they will be able to continue to enjoy their user interface and apps on their iPhone with Verizon.  So maybe Apple isn’t causing incest breeding between these two providers, but Steve Jobs is dipping into two honey pots.

[image via LarryFiles]