The iPhone Dev Team has released the first official iPhone 4 jailbreak this week, using a browser-based exploit.
However, some of the users that have jailbroken their device has reported broken MMS and broken FaceTime.
Hacker “comex” released the option via jailbreakme.com, and visitors to the site on their iPhone 4 devices can start the jailbreaking process right from their phone browser.
The iPhone Dev Team’s hack is the first for the device, despite hacker Geohot’s claims to an iPhone 4 jailbreak last month.
As a note, iPads running iOS 3.2.1 will not be able to jailbreak their devices.
Making this jailbreak different than pretty much every other one before it, is the fact that it is completely browser-based, using the Apple Safari browser.
The hack comes a week after the U.S. Library of Congress officially made jailbreaking legal.
Result for: congress
New DMCA exemptions announced by the Librarian Of Congress make it legal, at least in the US, to jailbreak mobile phones. The new exemption also allows the rooting of Android devices.
The Librarian Of Congress found that jailbreaking is generally done to enable fair use under US copyright law and that the objections of mobile phone providers and vendors were based on business model concerns rather than copyright protection. The exemption for unlocking phones for use on different mobile phone providers’ networks was also renewed.
The exemption, which was proposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and strenuously opposed by Apple, could open the floodgates for iPhone apps from major software vendors which would never have been available otherwise.
In addition to the EFF, the jailbreaking exemption was backed by such big names as Mozilla Corporation and Skype.
Thanks to Apple’s use of encrypted code during the boot process it was previously a DMCA violation to reverse engineer the iOS. This has allowed them, through the App Store approval process and SDK Terms Of Service, to tightly control what apps were available for the iPhone and even what tools could be used to create them.
The new rules could result in Adobe either releasing Flash for jailbroken iPhones or placing new emphasis on the Adobe AIR Packager for iPhone, introduced in the recently released Flash Professional CS5. Changes in the iPhone SDK TOS earlier this year prompted Adobe to halt future development of the tool.
[More]>>
Result for: congress
A federal judge has significantly reduced the penalty against Joel Tenenbaum, the graduate student that was convicted of sharing 30 unauthorized tracks online.
Last July, Tenenbaum was found guilty and told to pay $675,000 to the RIAA and record labels.
The judge has now reduced the verdict to $67,500, saying the damages award was “unconstitutionally excessive” given the fact that Tenenbaum made no money off the sharing of the music.
Judge Nancy Gertner added the following of the new verdict: The new damages “not only adequately compensates the plaintiffs for the relatively minor harm that Tenenbaum caused them; it sends a strong message that those who exploit peer-to-peer networks to unlawfully download and distribute copyrighted works run the risk of incurring substantial damages awards.”
$67,500 is three times the statutory minimum.
Despite being grateful, Tenenbaum still called the new verdict ‘ridiculous:’ “I still don’t have $70,000 — and $2,000 per song still seems ridiculous in light of the fact that you can buy them for 99 cents on iTunes,” Tenenbaum said. “I mean $675,000 was also absurd.”
The RIAA, unsurprisingly, was not happy: “With this decision, the court has substituted its judgment for that of 10 jurors as well as Congress. For nearly a week, a federal jury carefully considered the issues involved in this case, including the profound harm suffered by the music community precisely because of the activity that the defendant admitted engaging in.”
