AfterDawn: News

While Apple's battles against iPhone hackers and modders have been well publicized, things have been much quieter on the Android side up until now. Even as hackers found ways to gain root access in devices and port otherwise-unavailable new builds of Android, Google and its hardware partners HTC, Motorola and Samsung, have kept quiet.

Now a website run by Android hacker Conflipper is in HTC's sights. The website, Shipped ROMs, provides ROM dumps of released and unreleased Android devices. HTC has fired off cease and desist letters to the site, alleging that its intellectual property was "illegally obtained by fraudulent means."



HTC even released a statement on the issue to clarify its problem with Shipped ROMs. "While HTC tries to take a hands off [approach] about the modder / ROM chef community, this site's sole purpose [is] to make HTC's content available for download from a source other than HTC," HTC's statement reads.

"That content is not just the open source parts and kernels of Android but all of the software that HTC itself has developed. This is a clear violation of our copyrights and HTC needs to defend itself in these cases."

Written by: James Delahunty @ 20 Jun 2010 23:50