What that means plainly is that you will not go to prison for jailbreaking, but that doesn’t mean Apple will block your way as in the case with iOS 5. The EFF is now looking into making jailbreaking legal on all devices.
The idea behind the lawsuit is to remove jailbreaking from being prohibited by the DMCA (Digital Millineum Copyright Act).
“We were thrilled that EFF won important exemptions to the DMCA in the last rulemaking,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “But technology has evolved over the last three years, and so it’s important to expand these exemptions to cover the real-world uses of smartphones, tablets, video game consoles, DVDs, and video downloads.”
Legalizing jailbreaking has its upside as well as a downside. Although it opens the door wide for creativity, it also becomes a potential ground for malware and security threats.
The EFF has asked that the US Copyright Office protect jailbreaking as a legal practice across the board, and hearings for the proposed DMCA exemptions will be held in the spring of 2012.
