Hackers today are testing mobile devices ever more strenuously, but the work often stands on shaky legal ground, according to Jennifer Granick, an attorney for ZwillGen, a law firm that specializes in legal issues related to the Internet. Granick was formerly civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Presenting at Black Hat, a computer security conference in Las Vegas, Granick outlined the tricky legal landscape that faces researchers trying to work in mobile. While historically, companies have often been reluctant to open their arms to hackers, mobile devices introduce new challenges, such as having to deal with tangled FCC regulations, and laws that aren't designed for modern devices.

For example, Granick explained, techniques such as jailbreaking iPhones to run non-Apple approved software are governed under U.S. copyright law. The U.S. Copyright Office reviews its rules every three years, and did add exemptions to allow jailbreaking. However, since the iPad didn't exist the last time this review happened, jailbreaking these devices exists in a legal limbo.

Just to work on devices often requires taking some legal risk. Companies such as Apple lock down mobile devices and software through restrictive developers' agreements and end-user license agreements, as well as with technical protections that are backed by law.

One particularly tricky area is location-based services. In many cases, Granick said, how communications are classified can determine how severe the legal risk connected with hacking them becomes. Accessing communications in a way that could be considered wiretapping comes with strict legal penalties, but accessing stored communications is sometimes treated differently. Under some interpretations, Granick said, there might be reason to classify communications between users and companies such as Foursquare so that intercepting them would be considered wiretapping.

Considering the fierce debates already going on around the info that passes through mobile devices, Granick's talk illustrated the legal difficulties of pinning down exactly what goes on.

The Library of Congress made several rulings today that reinforce the rights of people who experiment with software and hardware.

The rulings define exceptions the the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which includes prohibitions against circumventing software designed to lock particular content or software so they can't be copied or modified by users. These particular exceptions were requested by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital civil liberties.

Perhaps most significantly, the Library of Congress ruled that users can "jailbreak" their iPhones--allowing the phone to run software that hasn't been approved by Apple. Another ruling protects consumers' right to unlock their phones so that they can operate on a network other than that of the carrier who originally sold the device. The third ruling protected the rights of artists who circumvent anti-pirating software in order to extract samples from DVDs for use in remixes. All three of these cases were deemed examples of fair use.

The rulings illustrate just how strange copyright law has become in the digital age. Of all the reasons Apple could give to prohibit jailbreaking iPhones, copyright law is far from the most obvious. Nevertheless, the company argued that jailbreaking iPhones violates its copyright on its operating system, since the modified phones use a modified version of that operating system.

It's increasingly common for companies and users to battle over how devices, software, and content can be used. That technical battle will continue regardless of the ruling, but it's good to see that some of the legal prohibitions have been eased.