Tag: legal

Unlocking A New iPhone Is Now Illegal, But Jailbreaking Is Still Safe — What It All Means For You

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It can be easy to get “unlocking” and “jailbreaking” confused, but the two terms mean totally different things. Unlocking refers to freeing your phone to work on any carrier instead of just the one you bought it on. Jailbreaking is the process of circumventing Apple’s security measures in iOS to install tweaks, hacks, and mods that aren’t allowed in the App Store.

The U.S. Library of Congress has ruled that it is now illegal for you to unlock your smartphone if it was bought after January 26th, 2013. Carriers can still legally unlock your device for you, but it’s illegal to go through a third-party unlock vendor.

Jailbreaking your iPhone has been kept legal through 2015 under an exemption in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The crazy catch is that jailbreaking the iPad has technically been made illegal, while the iPhone and iPod touch both remain exempt. So jailbreaking is safe mostly, but unofficial unlocking is not. This is important to mention as the iOS 6.1 jailbreak approaches.

Keeping up with the U.S. legal system is very confusing, so what does all this unlocking and jailbreaking legal jargon mean for you?

Carriers Win

“You’ll probably start seeing unlock vendors close up shop”

Unlocking has historically been a grey area for the U.S. government. Third-party companies have been making money selling cheap unlocks for smartphones without the carriers’ permission, and carriers don’t want customers unlocking their devices on the side. That means savvy customers could just switch service providers while they’re still under contract.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) weighed in on the DMCA’s recent banning of unofficial unlocking in a new blog post today:

While we don’t expect mass lawsuits anytime soon, the threat still looms. More likely, wireless carriers, or even federal prosecutors, will be emboldened to sue not individuals, but rather businesses that unlock and resell phones. If a court rules in favor of the carriers, penalties can be stiff – up to $2,500 per unlocked phone in a civil suit, and $500,000 or five years in prison in a criminal case where the unlocking is done for “commercial advantage.” And this could happen even for phones that are no longer under contract. So we’re really not free to do as we want with devices that we own.

Entities like ChronicUnlocks make good money selling unlocks on the cheap, and they work. ChronicUnlocks is perhaps the most legitimate third-party service, and it is currently not unlocking smartphones that were bought after the DMCA’s ruling went into effect last weekend. That’s a small group right now, but it will encompass many more people as new phones keep coming out.

While you won’t probably get sued for unlocking the iPhone you bought in 2013, you’ll probably start seeing unlock vendors close up shop. Or at least fade away. The Library of Congress won’t review the DMCA again until 2014, but there’s an online petition you can sign asking the White House to rescind the decision.

Safe To Jailbreak

Jailbreaking the iPhone is totally legal still, which has never really been an issue in the past. There hasn’t been one notable U.S. lawsuit related to jailbreaking, so you don’t need to worry about the feds crashing through your door for installing Cydia. And the specific update to the legality of the iPad is really a non-issue. There hasn’t been a court case to specifically enforce a ban on any form of jailbreaking. It’s all up to the interpretation of the courts if someone decided to prosecute.

“keep calm and carry on”

“While a DMCA exemption is nice and all to tip the legal scales even more in favor of the jailbreakers, I don’t think they’re critical to the legality of jailbreaking,” said renowned jailbreak hacker David Wang (@planetbeing) in an email. Wang is currently working to release the public jailbreak for iOS 6.1. “I think jailbreaking is legal, with or without the DMCA exemption, so the lack of it does not significantly impact us, the people who develop jailbreak tools,” said Wang.

Jailbreaking your iOS device on your computer at home is totally safe. Some try to sell jailbreaking services on sites like Craigslist, and that could cause issues if iPads are involved. But there has been nothing in the history of jailbreaking to warrant concern at this point. Do as the British do: keep calm and carry on.

 

via Cult of Mac

Facebook legal notice could get you cash, so don’t trash it

Facebook recently sent a legal notice to users that may appear daunting at first glance, but before you relegate it to the trash bin you ought to take a look at it – it could mean cash in your pocket.

The notice is meant to notify some of its U.S. members that their names, profile pictures, photographs, likenesses, and identities were unlawfully used to advertise or sell products and services through Sponsored Stories without obtaining those members’ consent.

“Sponsored Stories” is targeted advertising that uses information about your friends to sell stuff to you.

To settle a class action lawsuit (Angel Fraley v. Facebook) resulting from those allegations of unlawful use of its members’ content, the social network is proposing to pay $20 million into a fund to be used to pay members who appeared in the sponsored stories.

If you received the legal notice from Facebook, you may be paid up to $10 as part of the settlement.

There’s no guarantee you will get the money, however.
As the notice points out: “The amount, if any, paid to each claimant depends upon the number of claims made and other factors detailed in the settlement. No one knows in advance how much each claimant will receive, or whether any money will be paid directly to claimants.”

Since as many as 100 million Facebook members may be affected by the settlement, and the fund would be exhausted after paying $10 to 2 million members, there’s a good possibility that the alternative distribution scheme outlined in the settlement will be implemented.

That alternative would divvy up the money among a number of non-profit organizations involved in educational outreach that teaches adults and children how to use social media technologies safely, or are involved in research of social media.

According to the long form of the legal notice [PDF], those organizations include the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard Law School), Information Law Institute (NYU Law School), Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (Berkeley Law School), Center for Internet and Society (Stanford Law School), High Tech Law Institute, (Santa Clara University School of Law), Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Consumers Federation of America, Consumer Privacy Rights Fund, ConnectSafely.org, and WiredSafety.org.

You can fill out a claim form and see what happens.

The Fraley case began winding its way through the courts in March 2011, when five Facebook members, including two minors, maintained they claimed to represent a class of people injured by the Sponsored Stories.

In June 2012, Facebook and its opponents in the litigation announced a $10 million settlement in the case in which all the money would go to social service organizations and advocacy groups involved in the protection of children in the context of social media.

About a month later, the federal judge presiding over the case — Judge Lucy Koh, who also presided over Apple’s successful intellectual property case against Samsung in the U.S. — recused herself from the case without an explanation.

Judge Richard Seeborg, who took over the case from Koh, subsequently rejected the $10 million settlement . In denying the proposed settlement, the judge maintained that Facebook did not adequately justify the size of the final deal.

A deal with a new settlement amount was hammered out in October and received preliminary approval from Seeborg in December.

via PC World

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