Jail-Break Vs. Pirates!!

11:53 AM Unknown 0 Comments

In this post I will try to make clear the differences between Jail-breaking and Pirating. First I’m going to start with the definition of each word and then I will talk a little bit about both.

Jail-breaking is the process of removing the limitations imposed by a company on devices through the use of custom kernels — such devices include the cell phones, video games console and more. Jail-breaking allows users to gain root access to the operating system, allowing them to download additional applications, extensions, and themes that are unavailable through the official channels.

The following links show that Jailbreak is Legal;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/iphone-jailbreaking-legal_n_659272.html#



Pirating is the use or reproduce of another's work for profit or not without permission of the owner.

This is the long battle of the ages, people mixing the difference between Jail-breaking and Pirating. Even though this two words are use interchangeable by many, it shouldn’t be because they are galaxies apart. First of all Jail-breaking is “legal” and Pirating is not. Why did I use quotes on “legal”, well because of the simple fact that maybe for next year it won't be. The exemption for Jail-breaking was made in 2010 and it has to be reviewed every three years, so by next year if something is not adding up we may have Jail-breaking as Illegal again (lets hope this doesn't happen). This is a big deal even though a lot of companies such as Apple and Sony aren’t giving the attention we as user may want them to give since Jail-breaking is legal. This companies are still in the mind set that Jail-breaking is illegal and bad for their products. This is particularly true for Apple since jail-breaking lies more on the iPhone itself or the so call iDevices than any other type of device. There are some other laws for modding Android, Sony devices and so on and so forth but I’m focusing on the iDevices since I own a couple of them.

The question that many have asked and still ask, can people pirate apps because they are able to jailbreak their devices legally? The statement of companies is that Jail-breaking brings Pirating with it. The short answer for this is yes, they may get pirated apps by jail-breaking but the fact is that even if you jailbreak your iDevice, it won't come prepare for downloading pirate apps. People will need to do a couple more tweaking to their iDevices to be able to download pirated apps. You may say that they are given the option or power to download pirate apps and that's against the law but let me tell you something if that is true then we all must be restricted from the Internet. We all use the web and may of us download illegal music (just to give an example) since there are all over the place but we still use the Internet every day and people make their choices, some people download music and get caught, and some others don’t download anything at all. People that jailbreak make their choices as well, to download pirate apps or not. That doesn’t mean that Jail-breaking is pirating and is bad because we can say the same of the web. 

The hackers that make the jail-breaking possible make sure that a pure jailbreak has nothing to do with pirating apps. They even encourage user not to download apps such as Installous, Installous is an app that allow user to download pirate apps that usually you have to pay in the App Store but with Installous you get it for free. Since I talked about Installous let me take a moment and mention Cydia even though the people from Cydia has no connection with whoever made Installous possible. Cydia is like the core for jail-breaking, Cydia is a store where many tweaks, themes and many other packages are available for the users. This store give you the opportunity to change from your ring-tone to how your iDevices behaves. This is the real deal of jail-breaking your phone, making some changes to your phone that the company does not offer or support at the moment. This sounds good to me, if you bought it you modded it, in this case you jailbreak it. Even though this sounds great, Apple still can refuse to fix your iDevice or void your warranty if they notice is jail-broken or has been jail-broken. You do this at your own risk although is legal.

Why go thru the hustle of jail-breaking your iDevice?

Well if you like your iDevices to be different or want to add some other functionalities then you are going to have to jailbreak it. Other functionalities that you may want to add are; response to a message or tweet right from your lock-screen (BiteSMS, Twitkafly) or from your springboard, change the multitasking behavior (Multifl0w, Zephyr), take calls without ever leaving the game you were playing (Call Bar), change how many icons can the dock support (five icon dock), change your carrier logo with your name and many many other stuff you can do by jail-breaking your iDevice. Jail-breaking is freeing your iDevice and making it a little more useful. 

Pirating goes so far that even the Devs that make tweaks or make the Jailbreak possible for millions of people are hurt by pirates. Tweaks that are sold in Cydia are being pirate by a group of people that called themselves "Devs" but they really are Pirates and are damaging the honest and wonderful work some other real Devs are doing. This is hurting this community, this is why people blame the hardworking Devs of pirating, and its unfair. 

The act of Jailbreking is definitely no a synonymous of pirating and that needs to be clear by now. Jail-breaking is changing the original state of your iDevice and make it do stuff that you need or want. There are alot of Devs working hard every day to give users more and more new tweaks, so you/we can enjoy our iDevices. Pirating is another world that people chooses to be part. Devs that work hard on making jailbreaks  and tweaks for Cydia are totally against pirating apps from the App Store, lets no mix this two concepts anymore because this hurts the Jailbreak community which is doing a honest work. So lets jailbreak your iDevices and have fun with it. Do it at your own risk, always remember that. 

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