Apple punishes jailbreakers by removing the ability to read legally-purchased iBooks

Apple punishes jailbreakers by removing the ability to read legally-purchased iBooks

An interesting report surfaced on Tuesday, one which outlined the extent to which Apple will do its best to "punish" jailbreakers. The report, from Social Apples, told of the author's issues with iBooks on his (gasp) jailbroken iPhone.

After using the greenpois0n jailbreak on his iPhone, he was unable to open iBooks. It turns out, a tweet by by @comex, one of those involved in the latest jailbreak efforts, told the sad tale:

It seems that before opening a DRMed book, iBooks drops an improperly signed binary, tries to execute it, and if it works concludes that the device is jailbroken and refuses to open the book.

So, even though the iBooks were purchased legally, the fact that the device was jailbroken meant that the legal iBooks could not be read. Sort of punitive, one would say.

However, jailbreakers can work around these sorts of things, and although the greenpois0n jailbreak has not been updated yet, the iPhone Dev Team released an update to their PwnAge tool, just hours ago, which fixed the iBooks issue. The fix will likely make its way into the greenpois0n jailbreak, as well.

Jailbreaking allows access to programs that Apple simply won't allow into the App Store, and some say the best smartphone is a jailbroken iPhone. The practice was ruled legal by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2010. While it does void your iDevice's warranty, is it fair of Apple to take these sorts of actions against jailbreakers?