According to the US Copyright Office, the act of jailbreaking a mobile phone does not violate any copyright laws. If you happen to use a jailbroken iPhone to side-load some illegally-acquired applications, that’s still illegal, but the actual jailbreaking itself is fine. However, the US Copyright Office does say that this ruling does not apply to tablets, including the iPad. They say that the “category of tablets is difficult to define,” so they haven’t made any sort of over-arching statement about that product category yet.

The issue at hand was described as thus:

“Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset.”

The idea is that smartphones could get tied down the manufacturer or carrier to block the installation of certain “software applications,” so the act of jailbreaking to allow this installation becomes fair game under the DMCA. Realistically, given that tablets can be subsidized by carriers and such, I don’t see how they’re legally all that different from their smartphone counterparts. Your thoughts?

[Source]

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However, this does not mean that Grooveshark is now free and in the clear. It’s still in plenty of hot water with its legal battles, so the actual library of songs available through the music streaming service may get more or less limited as time goes on. That said, at least the app is back and that helps Grooveshark maintain a certain level of mindshare among consumers.

“We’re delighted that the official Grooveshark app has been reinstated,” said Grooveshark in an official statement. “We look forward to continuing to build a relationship with Android and leverage this fantastic platform for our partners.”

This should build on the victory Grooveshark had in a New York court about two months ago. Universal argued that the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA didn’t apply to recordings before 1972. The judge disagreed and said that it wasn’t Grooveshark’s responsibility to determine the copyright status of pre-1972 recordings.

[Source via Google Play

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The U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is forcing PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz to surrender his computer’s hard drive to Sony to sift through in order to retrieve information relating to the hacking of their product.

But they’re not stopping there. Sony says they’ll sue anyone who posts the code, has sent out an undisclosed number of DMCA “takedown” notices to websites demanding the code’s removal, and is asking the judge to force Google and Twitter to surrender IP addresses and information of everyone who’s viewed or commented on Hotz’ jailbreak video and the hackers who first unveiled a limited version of the hack on Twitter in December.

Hotz created the code to allow for home-brewed games on Sony’s Playstation console without allowing pirated games, and posted the code on his website last month as well as a how-to video on YouTube. Sony then launched a suit on Digital Millennium Copyright Act civil allegations, accusing him of trafficking in devices that circumvent controls meant to protect copyrighted works.

Orders to surrender the full contents of a defendant’s computer hard drive are common-place in cases relating to child pornography or when a journalist has kept the names of sources confidential in criminal situations. But this is sure to set a strong precedent for future hacker cases, despite the fact that GeoHot won the Apple suit after doing exactly the same thing to jailbreak the iPhone.

“The conduct Mr. Hotz has engaged in is still covered by the DMCA,” said Sony attorney James Gilliland, pointing out that game consoles and mobile phones fall under different laws.

This fact was underscored last month when Microsoft publicly invited GeoHot to jailbreak the new Windows Phone 7.

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As you may have heard, Sony is filing a lawsuit against Hotz and the rest of the fail0verflow team for “jailbreaking” the PlayStation 3. The DMCA has been updated to allow for the jailbreaking of “closed OS” devices, but the wording is restricted to mobile phones like Android and iOS. That’s the loophole that Sony is trying to use in this case.

In the video interview posted below from G4′s Attack of the Show, Hotz says it’s all because he made Sony “mad.” You see, it’s not even really an issue of piracy; Hotz just wanted to unlock the “Other OS” feature that was taken away in a recent PS3 firmware update. He wants to run homebrew. “The way piracy was previously done [on PS3] doesn’t work in my jailbreak”, he says. “I made a specific effort while I was working on this to try to enable homebrew without enabling things I do not support, like piracy.”

Considering that Hotz was able to set quite a precedent with the iPhone jailbreak and the subsequent win over the Apple lawsuit, I don’t see why his lawyers can’t extend that precedent to non-mobile closed-OS devices like the PS3 too.

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