Go ahead and hack your iPhone, but not your iPad.
New exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — which was passed in 1998 to combat the “circumvention of copyright protection systems for access control technologies” — allow users to “enable interoperability of non-vendorapproved software applications (often referred to as “jailbreaking”), but does not apply to tablets.”
The Library of Congress today announced the exemption, which will take effect Oct. 28.
This means that those who are tech-savy enough to alter their smart phones’ software for the sake of boosting their compatibility are now legally allowed to do so.
“Jailbreaking” has been popular among iPhone users who wish to use open-source applications that are not available in iTunes “App Store.”
However, for no apparent reason, increasing the compatibility of tablets is still illegal.