We hold these truths to be self evident:

That as long as Apple’s iPhone is locked, there will be those who wish it open. And that as long as this is the case, iPhones will be jailbroken and outfitted with third-party applications not vetted by Apple. And this will remain so regardless of whether or not Apple manages to convince the U.S. Copyright Office that jailbreaking an iPhone is copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So all this jawing over Apple’s legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking is ultimately for naught.

So the Electronic Frontier Foundation can argue that jailbreaking is protected under fair-use doctrines. And it can urge the Copyright Office to add a jailbreaking exemption to the DMCA on the grounds that “the culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy.” And Apple (AAPL) can insist that such an exemption is “an attack on Apple’s particular business choices with respect to the design of the iPhone mobile computing platform and the strategy for delivering applications software for the iPhone through the iPhone App Store.”

And they can go round and round and round. But their sparring and bloviating will ultimately be meaningless. Because if Apple’s history with iPhone jailbreaks (see stories below) has taught us anything, it’s that they’re essentially unstoppable.

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• Apple HQ on Defcon 1 Tantrum Alert After iPhone 2.0 Crack
• iBrokeIt
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The iPhone Dev Team, the folks responsible for the notorious iPhone jailbreaks, have cracked iPhone 2.0–before the software has even shipped. After decrypting the version of 2.0 included in the recently released iPhone SDK, the Dev Team jailbroke it so that it will run most any application (see video below).

Quite an achievement. And one that may have inspired shrieks of rage at Apple HQ. Many companies will obviously be put off by the security issues raised by such a hack, and it’s not going to be easy for Apple to close this hole. What’s more, if 2.0 is indeed hacked, it means Apple has potentially lost control of the sole point of entry to the device through which it had hoped to vet third-party applications.

Research In Motion (RIMM) must be smirking into its cornflakes this morning. Unless, of course, this is all part of Apple’s master plan. In which case, Steve Jobs is smirking into his soy yogurt.

Actually, it does get bricked out. Sources at Apple tell Ars Technica that the activation limbo into which unlocked iPhones are sent is the company’s definition of “bricking”: “Current attempts to reactivate across the Web are failing and therefore [a hacked] iPhone cannot be used to do anything–no phone calls, no Safari, no iPod, nothing. An unlocked iPhone that runs firmware update 1.1.1 is unusable no matter what SIM is in it.”

UPDATE:The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) reports that Apple Stores around the country are restoring bricked iPhones. “We’re not sure whether they’re doing a low-level reflash or just swapping units out,” TUAW explains. “We have reports of at least four customers who walked in with iBricks and walked out with iPhones. It is unclear at this time whether these customers unlocked their iPhones or not–we’re also receiving reports of iBricks from people who never unlocked or modded their units.”