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Jailbreaking your iPhone has always been a legal grey area, with Apple saying you’re breaking the law and everyone else either keeping well out of it, or defiantly waving Cydia-equipped iPhones in Apple’s face.  The US government have now stepped in to put the issue to rest and perhaps surprisingly, have concluded that jailbreaking falls under ‘fair use’.

Apple have said that jailbreaking is illegal under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), however at the latest meeting to review it, a ruling was passed making both jailbreaking and unlocking a legal practice.  Seeing as jailbreaking is often erroneously linked solely to the installation of pirated software, you would be forgiven for thinking that the US government has made a particularly radical decision here, but it’s not quite like that!  Here is an explanation of why and on what terms this has been accepted:

When one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.

Whatever the reasons, this is good news for those who have been feeling guilty about jailbreaking their iPhones, but we suspect there aren’t too many of those; however we wouldn’t be expecting too many other changes.  For example, Apple are never going to be OK with the process and will not offer warranty cover or start adjusting firmware updates to take into account jailbroken devices (imagine!), no-one will ever accept that installing pirated software is acceptable and finally, everyone who wants to jailbreak their phone does it anyway.

The difference is, Apple would have a harder time of it if they took you to court over jailbreaking your iPhone, but then this was hardly a looming threat in the first place.

You tell us, has the dodgy legality of jailbreaking previously put you off?  Will this decision see you rush to jailbreak your iPhone now?  Or is this largely irrelevant because you’ve already been doing it since the launch of the 2G?