DVD Jon cracks iPhone activation for iPod, WiFi use

Firstly, the claims that DVD-Jon broke the DeCSS encryption are a bit inaccurate (look up DeCSS on Wikipedia for the full story) but whilst at a certain level I admire the guy's ingenuity, what is his goal? It can hardly be argued as academic if he has put his PAS into the wild. Should we thank this guy for making it possible to use the iPhone as a sixth gen iPod or should we be angry that his activities are likely to provoke the imposition of some additional form of draconianism upon all of us? It's a bit like terrorism (and I stress that it's only a bit) that provides administrations with the justification to impose greater strictures on our freedoms, including free speech, that might otherwise be used to express our own unhappiness with the very regimes that terrorists oppose. It is a bizarre irony that terrorism actual reinforces the power of the administrations that they and (more passively) we may otherwise both find (some) fault with!

I can take my $600 phone and turn it into a non-phone. Clever. I can also do that by running it over with a steam roller.

Though that may hamper the iPod functions, in all fairness.

What would be more interesting, is if after this procedure, one could install a different, working SIM card and use the phone with that service.

If you tell any service other than AT&T that you are activating an iPhone they won't except you and start the service. Why? Because they'll be sued by both AT&T and Apple because they have no written permission to service the iPhone period. So crack all you want no service other than AT&T will activate the phone anyways. IDIOTS!

So- maybe you just use it as an iPod, a internet enabled browser- and use skype? Seems a lot like a Nokia device I played with- only with a lot better interface. Maybe Apple should release the next iPod- that's not a phone- but has Internet connectivity? Hmmmmm..... might be a way to get even more sales- and not have to deal with AT&T at all. The mega-geeks I know aren't willing to part with their Sprint speed for AT+T even for the cool iPhone.

@horvatic When iPhone is activated and unlocked, no carrier will deny you using their service. No carrier will be even able to deny it. Once you put a working SIM card in an unlocked phone, it works. No need to activate anything. Once you have an unlocked iPhone all you need to do is get a service and a SIM that goes with it. If the carrier forces a phone on you, get a free one, take out the SIM, put it in iPhone and phone away. No need to call people idiots, especially when you don't have the facts right.

Is unlocking legal, moral, or a smart thing to do, taking into account the big picture, that's a different question.

In (most?) European countries, law prohibits to sell a phone with a service-plan (no "coupled-sales" allowed here). So you can count on Apple to bring phones to the European market (end of this year) which are unlocked anyway. Can you spell grey import back to the USA ?

I think it's amusing you call people idiots when you completely misunderstand how to use an unlocked phone.

To answer repi8's question, is it legal, moral, or smart? Well, even if the DCMA applies, that's a US law, so it wouldn't apply in other countries, where people would want an unlocked iPhone. As for moral? Apple still gets their money, and AT&T isn't subsidizing the phone, so I think it's ok. Finally, smart? Probably not. Who's to say the next iPhone update will lock the phone again? Probably not smart.

I bet it works great on those networks that have no infrastructure for it.

Not bad.

I expect more to come in the next week.