Apple recently told the US Copyright Office that it believes iPhone jailbreaking is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and infringes on its copyright, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The EFF is trying to get the Copyright Office to grant a DMCA exemption on behalf of iPhone owners who have chosen to jailbreak their iPhones, or bypass the restriction Apple places on standard iPhones that only allows the installation of applications from approved sources, such as the App Store. In its response to the Copyright Office, Apple disagreed that such an exemption was proper because the very act of jailbreaking the iPhone results in copyright infringement.
Current jailbreak techniques now in widespread use utilise unauthorised modifications to the copyrighted bootloader and OS, resulting in the infringement of the copyrights in those programs. For example, the current most popular jailbreaking software for the iPhone, PwnageTool (cited by the EFF in its submission) causes a modified bootloader and OS to be installed in the iPhone, resulting in the infringement of Apple's reproduction and derivative works rights.
The EFF's argument is that jailbreaking your iPhone is protected under fair-use doctrines, and that the Copyright Office should grant an exemption because "the culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy". But Apple's response is that few users of jailbroken iPhones jailbroke it themselves; instead, they downloaded software created by other parties to make that happen.
Talkback
I can't drive the nail into the wall, I have to use someone else produced tools for this! It's a copyright violation of house architect!
OMG even the nail is not mine - someone else made it!
Madness!