(hubze) Jailbreaking has been the cool thing to do in the United States– at least for tech-savvy iOS owners who dare to go the distance.

In 2010 the U.S. Copyright Office decided that jailbreaking devices wasnot a crime. Until recently, the only risk run by jailbreakers have been warranty voids and the likelihood that your iOS device will discombobulate.

Last Friday a new tool called the A5 Absinthe tool came out, allowing people to jailbreak the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

So far, the app has been downloaded around 1 million times.

Why Jailbreak?

• App Fiend: apple limits you to 12 app icons in a folder; apps available through Jailbreaking provides you with control to put unlimited apps in a folder.
• The Little Things: closing a folder upon closing an app, put five icons in your icon dock instead of four, turn-off the camera shutter sound so you can take pictures in complete stealth, etc…
• Lock-Screen Customization: you can tweak the lock-screen or turn it off all together.

If you are interested, ReadWriteWeb has a great list of 30+ reasons to jailbreak your iPhone.

But all this messing around won’t be legal for long– of course, one could predict that one thing legal in 2010 is simply unacceptable in 2012.

History flows that way, up and down: carrying an ice cream cone in your pocket is illegal one minute and legal the next (a real law in Kentucky). And take the Jamestown colony for example, which enacted the first American marijuana law ordering all farmers to grow marijuana under penalty of hard-time.

I digress, and now, place Jailbreaking iOS devices on top of the pile of ever-changing legalities in the United States.

Personally, I’m not the type to undermine or tweak an operating system, but I do care about those of you out there who do spend a lot of free time customizing your iOS device and giving Apple the finger.

Jailbreaking Will Soon Be a Crime

Apparently the only legal power that can really get things set in stone these days is the Supreme Court who did not make a ruling on Jailbreaking.

Yea, it was just the U.S. Copyright Office, no big deal– and their directive on jailbreaking can expire.

And it will expire according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Thankfully there is a way to deflect the expiration. You can let the Copyright Office know that you would prefer to continue jailbreaking from the comforts of your own home rather than a dank jail cell (although, who doesn’t want to make new friends?).

You can do that via THIS COMMENT FORM.You can also find guidelines to answering this form, here.

Comment and let us know what you think, are there any jailbreakers out there who read hubze with their morning coffee?