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Experts weigh in on iphone hack
The idea of a closed iPhone was shattered Friday when two camps announced that they had managed to unlock the iPhone from AT&T and run the device with third-party SIM cards.
People were skeptical. Then people were impressed. Then someone realized that this would probably be a very good way to get sued.
Apple is famous for its willingness to sic the lawyers on just about anyone that gets within a mile of its intellectual property. Of course, it wasn't long before a webmaster in Ireland received a call in the middle of the night from a lawyer encouraging him to reconsider releasing his iPhone unlocking tools.
But how clear cut is this case? We spoke with Fred Von Lohmann from the EFF, and the answer seems to be "not at all."
As we noted earlier, there's a recently added rule that shields the act of unlocking a mobile phone from a DMCA claim. Well, at least, it sort of does.
It turns out that an unlocked mobile phone in the US is a bit like hashish in Amsterdam: You can have it, but you can't sell it to the guy next door.
The short of it is, the act of unlocking a phone in and of itself is not illegal, but if you try and distribute the tools or even the code...well...expect to be served a little mail from Jobs and Co.
Of course, it's far more complex than that. As Lexmark found out a couple of years ago, the copy protections being defeated have to actually be a copyrightable work. Then, the code used by the unlocking tool has to be found to be actively circumventing the protections. In other words, heavy analysis needed on both sides.
Unless the unlock-tool distributors back down, it seems that we can expect this saga to take a while.
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