Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

CNET reported that Apple recently told the U.S. Copyright Office that it believes iPhone jailbreaking is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and infringes on its copyright, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The EFF is trying to get the Copyright Office to grant a DMCA exemption on behalf of iPhone owners who have chosen to jailbreak their iPhones, or bypass the restriction Apple places on standard iPhones that only allows the installation of applications from approved sources: the App Store. In its response to the Copyright Office (click here for PDF), Apple disagreed that such an exemption was proper because the very act of jailbreaking the iPhone results in copyright infringement.

The EFF’s argument is that jailbreaking your iPhone is protected under fair-use doctrines, and that the Copyright Office should grant an exemption because “the culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy.” But Apple’s response is that few users of jailbroken iPhones actually jailbroke it themselves; instead, they downloaded software created by other parties to make that happen.