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Need to Fix an iPhone or Android Device? You Can Now Break DRM nder New .S. Rules
Under the newly adopted exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is now legal for consumers and repair companies to break an electronic device's digital right management protections to repair it.
Credit: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Under the newly adopted exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits circumventing digital rights management (DRM) protections used to safeguard copyrighted works, it is now legal for consumers and repair companies to break an electronic device's DRM protections to repair it.
Security researchers also are exempt from the rules when hacking computer programs, such as electronic voting systems, as long as the activity is carried out in good faith and does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The ruling, which went into effect on Oct. 28, affects the legality of owners and professional repairers bypassing access controls on devices for specific purposes.
Said blogger Corey Doctorow, "You're allowed to jailbreak your iPhone, but no one is allowed to give you an iPhone jailbreaking tool, and if you make a tool for your own use you can't share it or even tell people how it works."
From ZDNet
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