Is Jailbreaking Illegal?

The Librarian of Congress determined in October of 2012 that certain actions involving mobile phones were illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The rules were revised to state that while it is legal to jailbreak smartphones, it is illegal to jailbreak tablets and illegal to unlock phones without permission from your wireless provider. A 90-day window was put in place that allowed consumers to purchase a phone and unlock it, however that window closed on January 26th. Most carriers lock their phones to prevent them from running on competitors’ networks. Starting next week, U.S. consumers will no longer legally be allowed to unlock their carrier-locked devices without permission, though some smartphones such as Verizon’s iPhone 5 and the Nexus 4 are unlocked to begin with.

I think I just herd a permission statement coming from Verizon and Nexus.

So which organizations wanted consumers to legally be allowed to jailbreak their devices?
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative
New Media Rights
Mozilla Corporation
Free Software Foundation (FSF)
These were all proponents, and I stand behind them 100%!

So on January 2013 you will now, in essence, "need permission from your carrier to legally unlock any phone," as the terms of authorized jailbreaking have been narrowed.

To read the leagal documentation provided by The Federal Reserve click here

So if you really read into the depths of this whole ordeal, this does not even pertain to the jailbreaking community! What they are referring to is "unlocking" First of all unlocking and jailbreaking are two totally different things. Jailbreaking means freeing your device from the limitations imposed on it by your carrier. The act of a jailbreak works by installing a software application on your computer, and then transfering it to your iPhone, where it "breaks open" the iPhone’s file system to allow you to modify it.

Unlocking is something totally different. So if you purchase your iphone through AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. you are limited to using your iPhone only with the carrier from whom you buy it from because of the mobile service contract that goes along with the phone. An unlock is where you manipulate your iphone to where you are able to use it with any other carrier's network.

So before anybody freaks out, do your research, and relax...