The Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked the United States Copyright office to review a number of provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and allow for users to jailbreak devices like smartphones, tablets and video game consoles.
The request from the EFF comes after the same organism decided in 2010 to allow an exception for users to jailbreak their iPhone in order to run custom made programs on it.
The EFF says that those who get a
home gaming console should be able to “run operating systems and applications from any source, not just those approved by the manufacturer”.
The DMCA was passed in 1998 and criminalizes any move to
get around DRM and other measures that are protecting the copyright of video game, both in the software and the hardware form.
Corynne McSherry, who is the intellectual property director working at the EFF, stated, “The DMCA is supposed to block copyright infringement. But instead it can be misused to threaten creators, innovators, and consumers, discouraging them from making full and fair use of their own property.”
She added, “Hobbyists and tinkerers who want to modify their phones or video game consoles to run software programs of their choice deserve protection under the law.”
The DMCA was invoked by Sony earlier during 2011 when it went after
George Hotz, aka Geohot, the man who managed to bypass the security measures of the PlayStation 3 home gaming console and then make the method public.
Sony accused the jailbreaker of piracy, which Hotz denied, and the two parties settled out of court, with the hardware maker also upgrading the protections of the PS3 to make sure that the jailbreak method no longer worked.
The United States Copyright Office will hold hearings on the EFF proposal at some point during spring 2012 and a final decision will be presented during October of next year.
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