In case you hadn’t seen it, George Hotz, the teenager from New Jersey who has spent the last two months (yes, 500 hours of time) hacking the iPhone so that it’s compatible with carriers other than AT&T, has traded his newly created device. The deal? Hotz traded his “invention” to CertiCell, a Kentcucky-based cell phone repair company, for a car and three new 8 GB iPhones. According to the AP article, Holtz will be sharing the devices with the two friends of his that helped him hack the device…no word on how they plan to share the car.

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You can also check out Hotz’s official blog.

It will be interesting to see what this changes. Realistically, probably nothing. Holtz has posted his information on his public blog, so anyone could technically “do it” now, though it’s not the kind of thing the average person can pull off easily. The average person has no shot at pulling this off, despite the fact that Hotz says he can now do it in an hour. If, however, another company decides to get several people who can do this in an hour and sell them in large quantities, then we’re talking about a different story. From what I’ve read, this would be perfectly legal (you can buy a car, tinker under the hood and sell it for more, right?) but if some sort of mass distribution were developed we might see some additional legal claims from folks at AT&T.

Speaking of AT&T, they have not issued a public statement but I’m sure are not too excited about all this publicity with Hotz on tv saying he was bummed that it could only be used on AT&T and so he went around it. Even if people can’t do it themselves, it has to have folks thinking that a cross over model will be available sooner rather than later.

Apple, on the other hand, saw its stock rise…

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Update - According to this blog, the DMCA doesn’t necessarily cover hacking the iPhone and selling it commerically…

The article also notes that there is also a blogger who has offered $100,000 to anyone who can unlock a software release of the iPhone. The person claims they just want to post it freely and release the iPhone to the world.