"You Bought It, but Do You Own It?"

While you own the device, you do not own the design.

The copywrite law allows you to tear it apart and make it part of another device, but it does not give you the excuse to reverse engineer the design and blast it all over the Internet.

I sympathise with some people's interest in make everything open source, but in this instance, I consider this activity to be theft, which is what the copywrite law was intended to prevent.

If you really want to show off your skills, I suggest that you independently duplicate the device.  Then you can give "your" work away if you want.  But just copying someone else's design and providing it to people who could then compete with the original manufacturer is wrong.  Hence the law.

Just my opinion.

DAB

While you own the device, you do not own the design.

The copywrite law allows you to tear it apart and make it part of another device, but it does not give you the excuse to reverse engineer the design and blast it all over the Internet.

I sympathise with some people's interest in make everything open source, but in this instance, I consider this activity to be theft, which is what the copywrite law was intended to prevent.

If you really want to show off your skills, I suggest that you independently duplicate the device.  Then you can give "your" work away if you want.  But just copying someone else's design and providing it to people who could then compete with the original manufacturer is wrong.  Hence the law.

Just my opinion.

DAB

I believe the purpose behind this call to action is not to distribute proprietary hardware designs for unathorized duplication but instead to make sure owners are able to run whatever software they choose on the devices they own.  I think this is incredibly important as we see hardware makers creating new measures to prevent the device owners from executing their own software.

I suppose the counter argument to "jailbreaking" would be that consumer who want freedom should only purchase devices free of such restrictions.  Personally, I try to purchase devices that don't restrict user freedom but it can be difficult for some genres of devices.  Unfortunately, most consumers are currently deaf to this issue. 

Recent news make me very nervous like Microsoft's demand that any Windows 8 approved ARM devices must be locked down from running other operating systems (this might be a large chunk of personal computing devices a few years from now).  And even for a platform like Android that offers a lot of freedom, many of the vendors lock down the bootloaders while ironically still releasing the source code to comply with open source licenses (to be fair, the lockdowns are often motivated by the carriers).

I read this compelling essay by Cory Doctorow last week which foreshadows some of the chilling consequences when we are no longer able to control the software on the devices we own:

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

Cheers,

Drew

there great reasons for jailbreaking, imagine a small research group wants to do some specialized computing research, spemding millions of dolars on designing, troubleshooting and building a large complicated system. instead they buy of theshelf hardware and adapt it with either hardware modifications or custom software. no supose that they want to publish thier findings and the hardware company wants toprevent them from publishing thier hardware modifications or software. now thier findings have no meaning because thier methods can't be reviewed by thier peers. this is just one example of how bad IP/copyright law can inhibit innovation.

the real question is how much copyright/IP protection is enough.

Yeah, I think the PS3 was a good example of researchers wanting to tap into the power of the Cell processor at a good price point.  Unfortunately, I believe Sony later removed the "other OS" option in a software update which prevented the PS3 from running Linux.

When you buy a bicycle you can mod it. You can you can add lights to it, change the brake, change the tires and wheels or paint it pink if you wish. You dont have the manufacturer forcing you to use the very same tires the bicycle came with or even tires from the same suplier.

Then why is it illegal to make some modifications to improve or remove anything that anoys you from your electronic hardware device? why on earth would it be illegal to change the opperating system that your hardware came with?.We are not talking about distributing or copying the design or anything, but just exercising your rights on your property.

Most people boasting about IP say they are protecting Intellectual property rights, but are actually damaging the property rights of the common people