Did you know that your right to root your Android phone is actually protected by U.S. copyright law? It's true. In a 2010 revision to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the US Copyright Office granted an exemption that made modifying copyrighted software legal for the purposes of unlocking phones. This was mostly aimed at the iPhone (as Apple was trying to establish a legal precedent for suing its own customers at the time) but the exemption applies to any cell phone, including all Android phones sold in the United States. There's just one problem: the exemption wasn't permanent, and it's set to expire later this year.