If you're not hip to it, jailbreaking an iPhone If you’re not hip to it, jailbreaking an iPhone is essentially hacking the phone’s software to unlock it. This allows you to run it on a carrier other than AT&T and access an alternate-universe app store with apps not sanctioned by Apple. For instance, there’s an app that turns your phone into a WiFi transmitter using its 3G signal. The WiFi can power your laptop.
Jailbreaking now falls under an “exemption” to a 1998 law that prohibits people from bypassing the security measures companies install on their products. We think this should qualify as an exemption in the category of “crap that people do every day that should have never been illegal in the first place.” Like sharing music, for instance. Here are a some other things that are, incredibly, illegal that shouldn’t be.
- Oral sex is illegal in some counties.
- In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next door neighbor.
- You can’t throw shoes at a wedding in Colorado .
- It is illegal to dance in bars in New York City.
- You may not drive a black car on sundays in Denver.
- Bear wrestling matches are prohibited in Alabama (actually, maybe we should keep this one illegal)
- It is illiegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church in Alabama
- You may not possess confetti in Mobile, Alabama
- Last, a Texas law states: “When two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.” Sounds more like a koan than a law to me. No reports on whether there is a law forbidding the sound of one hand clapping.
