Jailed for Jailbreaking: New Law May kick you to Jail

Apple’s customers would be itching to get their devices updated iOS 6, which was recently launched by Apple. iOS 6 is said to come with a basket of new and fascinating features. These new features mostly relate to easy searching of movies and places, one can say it’s now possible find anything with ease on Apple’s newly updated software.

But, a hacking group by the name of “evad3rs” has found a jailbreak for all devices updated by iOS 6 and is reported to have launched it last Sunday. Before going into this matter in detail we would like to provide you some information regarding what jailbreaking is? Well, Apple has set some restrictions on every phone it launches. The restrictions don’t apply to the phone usage, but, app downloading and usage of some other feature. One particular example of this, is the restriction on downloading any app from any other app store rather Apple’s official app store.

There are basically two types of jailbreaking i.e. the tethered and untethered. The only difference between both is that tethered requires re-installing of all the features and apps you have installed via jailbreaking after the device has been restarted, whereas, untethered allows the downloaded to remain intact regardless of whatever happens to the phone.

You would consider it harsh on Apple’s users, but it isn’t. All the apps downloaded from outside the Apple’s app store have affected the system’s performance. Hence, these restrictions have become really necessary these days, especially, after considering a number of harmful malwares on web.

But, the act of jailbreaking is considered as serious crime under the U.S. code of law, especially after the recent amendments to copyright laws. Actually, when a phone is been jailbroken it could be used with any carrier which is not acceptable to any brand. So, in order to curb it U.S. code of law has considered it as serious of crime.

Anyone, involve in carrying out this illegal act can be taken to the court and can be heavily fined. However, if any store or site is found to be selling unlocking services could be fined heavily and owner could be jailed, the law ‘criminal offenses and penalties” is discussed in more detail below:

(a) IN GENERAL.Any person who violates section 1201 or 1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain

(1) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and

(2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense.

Now, you should have realized how serious this act is and how severe its consequences could be.

Via: NetworkWorld