Thanks to Barack Obama, you may not jailbreak your iPad.

It will be illegal, starting in two days.

The DMCA makes it legal to jailbreak an iPhone but not an iPad. The rule states that “telephone handsets” are allowed to make changes, but found that the definition of a ‘tablet’is “broad and ill-defined.” The Librarian ruled that because there’s no clear definition of what can be considered a tablet – according to the Librarian and manufacturers, an eReader, portable gaming device, or a laptop could conceivably be labeled a tablet – it did not provide an exemption for that class of device. One could easily point out that there is a considerable difference between an iPad, which is a tablet, and a MacBook, which is a laptop, but the Librarian found that there is enough gray area to warrant not offering an exemption that could then be widely applied to many form factors.

This pleases Apple, of course; they purely hate it when people stubbornly insist on actually using Apple products in non-Apple approved ways.  Which is probably why the administration made sure that the new rules were as inflexible as possible.

And that’s pretty much it. …What? I didn’t vote for the guy.