Jailbreaking of Tablets is now ILLEGAL in the US (DMCA)
The new batch of exemptions to the DMCA was just released!
Impact on your business
Simply think about the following points:
- Do you want to invest and rely on technology and processes that are anchored on a field that is in permanent flux and lacks any logical process of evolution?
- In addition Android and iOS are getting more features with every release so less people have the need to find a jailbreak for extending functionalities to their needs.
- Also enhanced security features and patches popping up with every new release, which makes it harder to find a new way to break into the system.
On the outcome it will take much longer to have a full jailbreak with every year!
In Germany[Spiegel] and Canada[Wikipedia] the jailbreak is even illegal for both phones and tablets.
Who is owning your devices?
Smartphones and tablets are computers powerful enough to install and run ordinary software. Since the vendor can’t provide all wished functionalities for all users at the same time, or simply can’t due to copyright or security reasons, some people might expand their system functionalities by their own (e.g mobile application testing, installing software without provisioning profile, …). This can only be done by obtaining super user rights on the device.
In 2007 Apple unveiled iOS together with their first iPhone. iOS was and is still not available for licensing by other hardware vendors. On the user side there is no way to get super user rights beside cracking the device. Since Apple is also controlling the only way for mass distribution of software, jailbreaking of an iOS device is the only way to extend the OS features beyond the intentions of Apple.
Later the same year Google unveiled the Android mobile operating system and made it open source under the Apache License. It is free for everybody to use and to customize. Many mobile phone hardware vendors took the invitation and created smartphones running Android to compete with Apple and iOS.
Unfortunately the super user role is denied by default. Today some companies (e.g. HTC) offer unlock passwords for their phones.
Unfortunately DRM violations on the android application market are extremely high [Dead Trigger]!
The DMCA
In 1998 the US enforced the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is based on two treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM [Wikipedia]) that control access to copyrighted works [Wikipedia].
Every three years the Librarian of Congress is able to releases a batch of exemptions to the DMCA [EFF] [Arstechnica].
This concludes in a different situation of law every three years!
Mobile Application Testing
The complete Jamo Solutions product suite is designed from the bottom up to be fully compliant with copyright laws. We achieve this by not taking any advantage of a jailbroken device and so accessible functionality!