iPhone = iPwned

[Farbin Kaiber]

Would it be legal if they completed a full "Reverse Engineer" procedure?

[atomic]

http://gameinvasion.comcast.net/gameinvasion/news/article/1188480000599_iphone_hackers_could_face_legal_battle%20%20&cvqh=itn_iphonehackers

IPhone Hackers Could Face Legal Battle
By: Peter Svensson

For: Associated Press

NEW YORK - Hackers have figured out how to unleash Apple's iPhone from AT&T's cellular network, but people hoping to make money from the procedure could face legal problems.

At least one of the companies hoping to make money by unlocking iPhones said it is hesitating after calls from lawyers representing the phone company.

Unlocking the phone for one's own use, for instance to place calls with a different carrier, appears to be legal. But if it's done for financial gain, the legality is less certain.

"Whether people can make profits from software that hacks the iPhone is going to depend very much on exactly what was done to develop that software and what does that software do," said Bart Showalter, head of the Intellectual Property practice group at law firm Baker Botts in Dallas.

John McLaughlin of Uniquephones.com, an outfit based in Northern Ireland, said in a phone interview Wednesday that its unlocking software for iPhones is ready, but the company is holding off while it gets legal advice.

He said it had been contacted by lawyers from O'Melveny & Myers LLP, an international law firm representing AT&T, who told him the software contained material copyrighted by Apple Inc.

"They don't have it, so therefore they can't actually threaten us," McLaughlin said. "It was 'friendly advice.'"

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel and Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock said their companies had nothing to say about the case.

Uniquephones.com had planned to release the software via iphoneunlocking.com. The price for people on its mailing list, which contained just fewer than half a million addresses, would be $25 per iPhone, McLaughlin said.

"From their e-mail addresses, they're from everywhere in the world," McLaughlin said. "Everybody is just waiting for it."

The iPhone is sold only in the U.S., and only for use on the AT&T network, but it is compatible with cell phone technology used around the world, which means an unlocked phone can use an overseas account and number. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only other major carrier compatible with the iPhone; Sprint and Verizon Wireless use different network technologies.

Most U.S. phones are locked to their carrier when sold, because the carrier subsidizes the cost of the phone. The iPhone, however, is apparently not subsidized by AT&T.

Some carriers provide the unlock codes on request when a subscriber's contract expires, but that doesn't apply to the iPhone, and in any case, the phone only went on sale two months ago, while the minimum contract length is two years.

Another Web site, iphonesimfree.com, has said it plans to release iPhone unlocking software in a few days.

The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress last year issued a statement that unlocking cell phones was not a violation of copyright under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law has been used to go after software that copies DVDs.

But Tracfone Wireless LLC, a Florida-based company selling phones that use prepaid plans, won an injunction in February against a couple who bought its phones in large numbers and resold them unlocked.

The U.S. District Court in Orlando found that the DMCA exception did not apply to those unlocking a phone with the intent to resell it.

Bruce Sunstein, a patent lawyer with Boston-based Bromberg & Sunstein, said unlocking software could well stand up to a legal challenge.

"They're aiding and abetting something that's completely legal ... the exemption the Copyright Office created does not state that it applies only to the user," Sunstein said.

George Hotz, a 17-year-old in New Jersey who managed to unlock his iPhone last week, using both software and hardware modifications, tried to sell it on eBay but ended the auction after apparently fake bids send the price to $100 million.

Instead, Hotz traded the unlocked phone for "a sweet Nissan 350Z" and three iPhones, according to his blog.

Hotz made the deal with Terry Daidone, co-founder of CertiCell, a cell phone repair company in Louisville, Ky.

In a statement on his Web site, Daidone said he was "keenly interested" in having the teenager help his engineers modify phones, but does not have any plans to commercialize Hotz's unlocking procedure.


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Ablice]

TY Anderson

I'll stick with my prepaid phone stuff. I barely use over 1000 minutes a year.

[CorvallisBMW]

T-Mobile is about to come out with a similar, or if you will their own version, of the iPhone. The HTC Touch.

Ya, but it's Mac OS that makes that phone so good, not just a fancy touch screen. Believe me, i have a T-Mobile Dash that runs on Windows Mobile and it SUCKS ASS. Freezing, programs running in the background slowing the thing down, glitches, apps not repsonding, all the terrible parts about windows got carried over to the phone.

I'm sure there are dozens of companies trying to come out with their own 'iPhones' but I wonder how many will actually be any good... With phones getting more and more compicated, software is getting more important all the time.

[CorvallisBMW]

^ lol

[E30_pilot]

Spending two months to unlock the iphone isnt goin to help him get laid..

poor kid...

[Farbin Kaiber]

or the guy from the music video where his shirts keep changing along with the background, but he dosen't while singing?

[Jscotty]

He kinda reminds me of Arnold Horseshack.

[Farbin Kaiber]

Kind of looks like he already has one up there.... reminds me of that one ugly gap tooth stand up dyke looking lady. I forgot her name. Really obnoxious and annoying. Anything short of hacking the price won't do much for me anyways. T-Mobile is about to come out with a similar, or if you will their own version, of the iPhone. The HTC Touch.

you mean SandraBernhard.com ?

[CorvallisBMW]

Good for him. Phones shouldn't be locked in to one carrier or another, it's just another way they rip you off. Imagine how much it would suck if home phones were like that. Oh wait, they used to be, but thankfully the FCC smacked that down.

[czag13]

lol, just read up on his website that he traded an unlocked iPhone for a 350z .

https://www.georgehotz.com

[Jand3rson]

AT&T is paying millions to be the exclusive United States provider of Apple’s much-hyped and glowingly reviewed gadget, the iPhone.

It took 17-year-old George Hotz two months of work to undermine AT&T’s investment.

Mr. Hotz, a resident of Glen Rock, N.J., published detailed instructions online this week that he says will let iPhone owners abandon AT&T’s service and use their phones on some competing cellular networks.

Mr. Hotz’s method, which requires a soldering gun, a steady hand and a set of obscure software tools, is one of several techniques that have emerged over the last week to break the technological locks confining the iPhone to AT&T’s network.

“This was about opening up the device for everyone,” Mr. Hotz said in an interview over his iPhone, which he was using on the network of T-Mobile, a rival to AT&T.

Carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint seek to keep their customers in two ways. They force them to sign multiyear contracts, which are expensive to break. And the carriers put complex technological locks on phones to ensure that they run only on a given carrier’s wireless network. Without the locks, the phones could be used on rival networks that use the same underlying technology.

People who work on unlocking cellphones say those technical locks unfairly restrict customer choice. They want to give cellphone users the flexibility to take their phones with them overseas without incurring heavy roaming fees, or to transfer the devices to other networks once a user’s service contract has expired.

Mr. Hotz says it took him about 500 hours to unlock two iPhone units. He put one of them up for sale on eBay, and by late yesterday, bids on the phone had reached many thousands of dollars. An unmodified iPhone sells for $499 at an Apple store.

His technique is probably not accessible to most people. But Mr. Hotz described it in detail on his Web site in the hopes that others could simplify the procedure.

Neither Apple nor AT&T would comment on Mr. Hotz’s handiwork or on another unlocking technique revealed yesterday by an anonymous group calling itself iPhoneSimFree.

Members of that group demonstrated their technique to a writer for the Web site Engadget. They said they had developed a way to unlock iPhones with a software update, without any hardware changes to the device.

IPhone owners presumably would be able to run that software and then insert another carrier’s SIM card, the small card inside phones that run on G.S.M. networks. A SIM card stores information about the subscriber.

The writer for Engadget verified that the iPhoneSimFree technique worked. Apparently only one feature, AT&T’s visual voice mail system, which lets users retrieve voice mail in whatever order they choose, stopped working when an iPhone was removed from the AT&T system.

The six-man iPhoneSimFree group says that it has been working on unlocking the iPhone since June and that it plans to start selling its software to parties that want to unlock large numbers of iPhones.

The members have not disclosed what they intend to charge, and they declined to reveal their identities.

“We’re a bit paranoid about privacy because we don’t know how things are going to evolve,” said one group member, who identified himself only as Jim in a brief phone interview.

His caution stems from the murky legal status of unlocking cellphones.

Last fall, the Librarian of Congress issued an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ruling that people can legally unlock their cellphones. But the ruling does not specifically apply to people like Mr. Hotz and the iPhoneSimFree group who distribute the unlocking tools.

Apple and AT&T could conceivably sue such distributors under the copyright act. The companies could also argue that people sharing modifications to iPhones are interfering with a business relationship, between Apple and AT&T and the customers.

Apple might also seek to block the unlocking tools with its regular software updates to the iPhone. Mr. Hotz says he thinks his unlocking process is immune to such changes, because he is making a change to the device’s read-only memory, which cannot be changed with a software patch.

One other approach to unlocking the iPhone has made some waves recently.

Two weeks ago, a company called Bladox, based in the Czech Republic, began selling an $80 device called a Turbo SIM. The thumbnail-size card, attached to another carrier’s SIM card and inserted into an iPhone, tricks the iPhone into thinking it is running on the AT&T network even when it is not.

The company has reportedly been overwhelmed by orders and is not selling the product on its site. But Jesús Díaz, a technology writer in Madrid, said he bought the Turbo SIM last week and was now using his iPhone on Spain’s Vodafone network.

“Everyone here asks me: ‘What is that? Can I see it, can I touch it?’ ” said Mr. Díaz, whose iPhone draws a lot of attention because Apple has not yet announced a deal to sell the device in Europe.

The iPhone unlocking craze may have reverberations beyond Apple and AT&T.

Cellphone carriers in the United States generally subsidize the initial purchase of a phone and then work to keep customers paying the lucrative monthly fees. That is why operators offer incentives for loyalty and require long contracts.

But people now want the same freedom with their cellphones that they have with other devices, like televisions and computers.

Mike McGuire, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, says that even though few consumers will try these sophisticated alterations, the iPhone modifications point to “the rather rapid erosion of the carrier control of handset distribution.”

“This has been going on for a while,” he said, “and this is the latest salvo.”

John Biggs contributed reporting.

[Ablice]

*eek*

Could we get a *ahem* copy of the article here? NY Times rewarded my tardiness with a requirement to log in.

[Bill-B]

What a stud:pimp:

[Maluco]

That kid has such a smug motherfucking face, I'll take one and slam it into his nose, the other I'll shove up his ass and with his bloody face eat his shit after he exlaxes it out so he can be "one with his iPhone" once and for all.

Seriously, that face makes me want to beat the colon out of him.

Kind of looks like he already has one up there.... reminds me of that one ugly gap tooth stand up dyke looking lady. I forgot her name. Really obnoxious and annoying. Anything short of hacking the price won't do much for me anyways. T-Mobile is about to come out with a similar, or if you will their own version, of the iPhone. The HTC Touch.