Free Your iPhone

For those who don't yet know of freeyourphone.org, these guys decided to take some action. As a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world, Free Your Phone, believes that “the threat of litigation has driven consumers underground, stifling innovation and competition.”

Softpedia recently reported that Apple had filed new comments with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA, stating that jailbreaking your Apple device constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation. However, Free Your Phone encourages you, as an iPhone user, to “Tell the Copyright Office where you stand!”

The Foundation explains that “Cellphone manufacturers use locked software to stifle competition and restrict consumers. Apple uses software locks on the iPhone to censor ebooks and block mobile applications that would compete with Apple's own software,” the EFF explains. “T-Mobile's software locks prevent owners from gaining root access to the Google Android G1 phone, needlessly limiting the phone's bluetooth and other capabilities. And virtually every mobile device sold today is locked to a single telecommunications carrier,” reads the message on Free Your Phone.

Due to this, “Hundreds of thousands of cellphone owners have modified their phones to connect to the network or run the software of their choosing, and many more would like to,” according to the Foundation. “But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act poses a legal threat to phone users, even though the law was supposed to protect copyright owners and distributors of digital music and movies.”

The EFF thus argues that this is a direct threat of litigation that eventually forces consumers to approach other means of getting what they want, while innovation and competition are being stiffed.

Pointing out to the EFF's letter to the Copyright Office seeking protection for these innovations, iPhone owners are again encouraged to keep an eye on EFF.org to learn of their chances of cutting off those shackles.