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There was a lot of hype around the jailbreak community when the evasi0n iOS 6.1 jailbreak was released on Monday. It saw 1.7 million downloads on the first day alone. This jailbreak works by exploiting "bugs" in Apple's iOS code to allow users to write data to the kernel. This article relates to the legal tag because over the past decade, jailbreaking has become a very controversial topic and some people consider jailbreaking unethical or illegal. This article also relates to the economics tag because jailbreakers are pirating App Store apps which digs into Apple's and app developers' profits. I was once a jailbreaker myself, but have recently learned that developers work hard to make their apps and they deserve the credit and money for them. Overall, this article shows that the jailbreak community is still going strong and there are still those people who like pirating apps and taking profit away from developers 

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to help protect digital rights, but allowed the Librarian of Congress to make exceptions to the act that would otherwise not follow the act. Today (October 28), four new exemptions to the DMCA were put into effect most notably the legalizing of jailbreaking on iPhones but not iPads. The other exemptions to the DMCA are the requirement of disabled people to own multiple devices in order to access e-books, the illegalizing of unlocking a cell phone purchased after January 2013 at a new carrier without permission from your old carrier, and the legalizing of ripping some content of a DVD only for specific purposes. The new exemptions put into effect could have a serious impact on the technology market. The number of e-book reader sold to disabled customers will decrease drastically since they will have to buy other devices so they can legally read e-books. Apple and app developers would also lose a lot of revenue from the App Store since more users will be motivated to jailbreak their iPhones and get pirated apps instead of actually buying apps since they can do so legally. The new exemptions could cause some providers to lose some money though not a significant amount should the provider refuse to unlock cell phones when consumers go to other countries since in the foreign country, consumers will be paying and using service from a local provider instead of their original provider causing them to miss out on some money. Finally, the DMCA exemptions could cause a decrease in DVD sales not just because they are losing popularity already but also because if someone wants to rip a part of a DVD, they can just borrow it from someone else instead of buying and ripping the needed content. I think these new exemptions are very silly and could end up being more harmful than useful. Making disabled customers buy multiple devices just to access e-books is very discouraging to potential e-book reader customers. I also wonder th

Unlocking an iPhone is now illegal. Any smartphone bought after January 26, 2013 can not be unlocked as it is illegal in the USA at least. Although unlocking an iPhone is illegal jailbreaking is not. At least it is legal to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch but to jailbreak an iPad is illegal. With all this in mind the real winner is the carrier/provider as the consumer cannot jump from company to company with the carriers phone. Only in the states can one go to jail for unlocking a phone but can own an assault rifle!

the iOS hackers who wrote the evasi0n jailbreak for iOS 6, the beta for iOS 6.1.3 will patch at least one of the vulnerabilities that the evasi0n exploits in order to work. After 6.1.3, Wang stated that they may have to build a new jailbreak from scratch. Reports indicate that iOS 6.1.3 will also fix the passcode bug that's gone unpatched since 6.0.1 as well as the newly-discovered passcode bug in 6.1. This will deny any access to free aps that people want to download. Apple has stated a more serious security issue to push out its latest update. The patch also fixes a bug discovered earlier this month that allows anyone who gains physical access to a phone to bypass its lockscreen in seconds and access contacts and photos

There are two main types of jailbreaks - tethered and untethered. Tethered means you have to connect your device to your computer every time it's powered off in order to maintain your jailbreak. Untethered means you can reboot at will without having to jack in that cable. If you update before one of these becomes available, then you will lose all of your Cydia apps and tweaks until you can re-jailbreak. (And even then, you may have to start from scratch if you don't back it all up. More on that below.)

You think your iPhone or Android phone is safe from hackers just because of a passcode lock? Well, the Swedish security firm Micro Systemation just developed a cracking program that is called "XRY" that can hack into any, I repeat, any passcode of any mobile device. It works by first jailbreaking the phone to expose security flaws in the OS, then proceeds to brute-force the default four-digit pin, which only has 10,000 possible combinations to begin with. This all happens in under two minutes. Once the device has been unlocked, they can get any information they want- from logs contacts and even DELETED items.

It's a shame that this only works by jailbreaking the phone... This could have been... Useful.

This article demonstrates that the popularity of the Harlem Shake has urged people to get creative and think outside the box. A developer, Filippo Bigarella, has created an iOS tweak that essentially lets the icons on your springboard do the Harlem Shake. Harlem Shake videos have gone viral over the past few months and the most popular ones get millions of views a day. Since, many sports teams and popular YouTube channels have made parodies of the popular song. The closest viral video that this can be related to is the Gangnam Style video by Psy that currently has over 1.4 billion views. Although the Harlem Shake is popular now, soon enough it will be yesterday's news and some new video or song will be viral. This article relates to the elifestyle tag because the Harlem shake video has literally become a lifestyle for some people and parodies are sweeping the internet everyday. Overall, this is a pretty cool tweak that I would definitely use if I believed in jailbreaking.