Jailtime For Jailbreaking

An anonymous reader writes "Remember how the Librarian of Congress announced that jailbreaking your phone was legal and not a violation of the DMCA? Yeah, well, tell that to Mohamad Majed, who has already spent over a year in jail and has now been pressured into pleading guilty to criminal DMCA violations for jailbreaking phones for use on other carriers."

Re:Well naturally...

[tysonedwards]

Seems more likely that Mr. Majed was already in custody for previous offenses prior to the exception being enacted. As such, as far as the law is concerned, the agency holding Mr. Majed is in the right.
As far as I see the situation, as soon as the acts that 'did not cause harm to others' (quote from article) ceased to be a crime, he should have been released as he was simply being held on those charges, and prosecution had not yet commenced.

A Lot of Confusion

[cob666]

I read the article and some of the comments below the article and I was amazed that there are people that equate unlocking or jailbreaking a phone to stealing intellectual property. I'm not very familiar with the wording of the DMCA exlusion that allows you to carrier unlock a phone but I did believe that it applied to a phone that you own. I somebody is charging a fee to unlock phones that clearly this doesn't fall under the DMCA exclusion as I understand it. However, if somebody were to purchase a phone for X dollars, carrer unlock it and then re-sell it for X+Y dollars then that SHOULD fall under the DMCA exlusion although it would be exploiting a loophole.

I'm still not sure how this guy ended up doing jail time and what kind of precedent that sets.

Re:No ex post facto laws

[commodore64_love]

>>>You're being dense

Well at least I'm in good company. Thomas Jefferson was no dummy, with an estimated IQ of 160, and he agreed with what I said in my post. So do you think Mr. Jefferson was "dense" too, Mr. Insulter???

"Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches." --Thomas Jefferson, 1815. "The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson, 1804.

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." --Thomas Jefferson, 1820.

"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt." --Thomas Jefferson, 1825

In other words, The Supreme Court has NO authority to overrule a law duly passed by the Congress, and signed by the Executive. "But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.' True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.

Jefferson also advocated using the Tenth Amendment to nullify unconstitutional laws.