EFF calls for console jailbreaks to be exempt from DMCA

Digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking to make the "jailbreaking" of smartphones, tablets and consoles legal under US copyright law.
The group has filed exemption requests with the US Copyright Office, asking that jailbreaking - the act of bypassing a device's system security to install unsigned software - be exempt from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), the US law protecting copyrights online.
"The DMCA is supposed to block copyright infringement," EFF IP director Corynne McSherry said in a press release. "But instead it can be misused to threaten creators, innovators, and consumers, discouraging them from making full and fair use of their own property.
"Hobbyists and tinkerers who want to modify their phones or videogame consoles to run software programs of their choice deserve protection under the law… Copyright law shouldn't be stifling such uses - it should be encouraging them."
Last year the EFF successfully lobbied for the jailbreaking of smartphones to be made exempt from the DMCA, and is calling for that to be expanded to cover consoles and tablets as part of the Copyright Office's three-yearly review process.
Earlier this year the EFF hit out at Sony over its handling of the PS3 jailbreak, in which the platform holder cited the DMCA, as well as the Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, in a lawsuit against George "Geohot" Hotz, the man who posted the console's root key online and opened the door not just to homebrew on the PS3, butwidespread piracy. The case was eventually settled out of court, with Hotz donating to the EFF what remained of the $10,000 he raised to cover his legal expenses.
The Copyright Office will consider the EFF's requests next spring, with a decision expected in October.

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