U.S. Government OK's Jailbreaking iPhones

There's a catch, however: the United States government deems jailbreaking legal if it is done for "educational purposes."

Every three years, exemptions are reviewed and accepted from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act--DMCA--which was created in 1998. There were several other changes to the DMCA, however, the use of jailbreaking an iPhone has caused quite a stir both in the technology world and for iPhone users nationwide. Dozens of apps have been created before this exemption to allow iPhone users to jailbreak their phone, which essentially means to open up the iPhone (and other mobile Apple devices) to any sort of code, rather then the kind that is regulated by Apple. According to this new exemption, those aforementioned apps are now in the okay to continue their purpose as well as encouraging a bigger market of jailbreaking apps. Though it is meant for educational purposes, this still poses the threat of a personal use of jailbreaking, which is more or less inevitable and doubly so with the revision now in place. Regardless, the hope is to lessen the frequency of YouTube and DMCA video problems on the educational level. Some other exemptions that were made, as reported by Mashable: 1.) The ability for cell phone users to unlock phones and switch wireless carriers, 2.) Bypassing video game protection to examine or fix security problems, 3.) College professors, film students, documentary filmmakers can break copy-protect methods on DVDs to embed clips on the rule of educational purposes or criticism or noncommercial video. Three of the exemptions made in the DMCA was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who were pleased with the changes of jailbreaking and other such means of standardizing code.