According to the , a freedom-of-speech advocacy organization, this is the first public statement from Apple about its legal position on "jailbreaking," the term used to describe hacking an iPhone to install third-party applications not sold via Apple's own App Store.

In comments submitted to the Copyright Office, Apple said jailbreaking was a violation of copyright laws. "Current jailbreak techniques now in widespread use [utilizes] unauthorized modification to the copyrighted bootloader and OS, resulting in infringement of the copyright in those programs," Apple said. The iPhone's bootloader is a small program stored in the phone's non-volatile memory that, as its name implies, loads the device's operating system.

Jailbreaking an iPhone breaks the law, Apple said, because the process relies on pirated copies of the bootloader and operating system.

"Infringing reproductions of those works are created each time they are downloaded through Pwnage Tool and loaded onto the iPhone," said Apple, referring to one of the most popular jailbreaking tools. Created by a group calling themselves the "iPhone Dev Team," Pwnage Tool traces its history to September 2007, when the programmers .

And iPhone hacking leads to even more piracy, Apple argued. "In addition, the jailbroken OS enabled pirated copies of Apple copyrighted content and other third-party content such as games and applications to play on the iPhone, resulting in further infringing uses of copyrighted works and diminished incentive to create those works in the first place."