Wired come under flak for publishing Apple piracy guide

Wired have been the subject of much discussion lately as Leander Kahney's ‘Cult Of Mac' blog, published by Wired has been the centerpoint of a ‘superguide' showing the end user how to jailbreak their phone and access stolen software.

Wired have tried to defend their reasons for publishing the guide saying that it was only made live after a ‘flood of Cult of Mac reader emails' asking for details on jailbreaking. Unfortunately for Wired, the majority of the user comments linked to the story were negative and complained that the post should be removed from the publication.

For Apple jailbreaking proves to be a thorn in their side as recently a court hearing approved an exemption from the DMCA which makes device jailbreaking legal. This doesn't however make piracy legal it just makes Apple's job hard to enforce copyright or to seek damages from groups who facilitate jailbreaking.

Since we started to get information on this story it appears that Wired has taken down the jailbreaking guide and Kahney has stated “I guess we raised a few red flags — like putting ‘How To Pirate Apps' in the headline and including a half-hearted disclaimer. […] I’ve always liked publications that informed me about things we’re not supposed to do. I can then make my own moral decision whether to act on that information or not. […] We support developers and enjoy their many wonderful creations. Saying there are ways out there to install cracked apps is one thing, showing people how to do it is another. So my apologies to readers for misjudging this, and to developers for being insensitive and opportunistic.”

KitGuru says: Do you have a jailbroken iPhone, do you think this knowledge should be made public for every user to make a choice?

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