Owners of iPhones and other smartphones are one step closer towards taking complete control of their gadgets, thanks to a new government ruling Monday on the practice of “jailbreaking.” as Yahoo news reports.

This weekend has seen a flurry of activity about digital rights, but the biggest news dropped Monday morning, when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking” your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.

Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are used on the U.S. T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers, or are used to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone’s SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

While technically illegal, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice. (Apple does seriously frown on the practice, and jailbreaking your phone will still void your warranty.) It’s estimated that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their handsets.

Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely enhanced the inter-operability of the phone, and was thus legitimate under fair-use rules.

Okay champs, you guus ready for the best selling games in the US for March 2009 ? Here are the NPD results:

1. Empire: Total War / Creative Assembly / $48
2. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King / Blizzard / $38
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis / $19
4. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II / Relic / $48
5. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest / Blizzard / $38
6. World Of Warcraft / Blizzard / $20
7. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Exp. Pack / EA Maxis / $19
8. Spore / EA Maxis / $49
9. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack / Blizzard / $29
10. Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst / Big Fish Games / $20
11. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 / EA LA / $28
12. StarCraft Battle Chest / Blizzard / $20
13. Fallout 3 / Bethesda / $49
14. Civilization IV / Firaxis / $21 (Average)
15. Empire: Total War – Special Forces Edition / Creative Assembly / $70
16. The Sims 2 Pets Exp. Pack / EA Maxis / $19
17. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning / EA Mythic / $29
18. The Sims 2 University Exp. Pack / EA Maxis / $19
19. Call Of Duty: World At War / Treyarch / $50
20. Diablo Battle Chest / Blizzard / $36

As a result of Time Warner Cable’s plan to charge its customers by the gigabyte in Rochester, New York, congressman Eric Massa “called TWC’s proposal to switch its 8.4 million cable broadband customers to metered internet billing an “outrageous plan to tax the American people.”

Critics say usage caps will cost users more and hurt innovation on the net – especially in new video services, as subscribers begin to calorie-count their internet usage. TWC’s new tiered pricing structure for its Roadrunner internet service starts at $15 for a plan that allows 1 GB a month with an overage charge of $2 per GB. (A GB of data equals about three hours of online video from Hulu.com and about half of a rented standard definition movie.) The company says bandwidth hogs need to pay their fair share and maintain that if the company doesn’t get enough money to build new infrastructure, “internet brownouts” will be inevitable.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Massa dismissed those arguments, describing TWC as a greedy, unregulated monopoly providing a utility service. His yet-to-be-introduced bill would seek to increase competition among broadband providers and regulate monopolies, he said, though he declined to give specifics.”

Particularly interesting is the fact that “Time Warner Cable’s 2008 annual report shows its high-speed data costs actually declined by 12 percent to $146 million. Meanwhile its subscriber count increased by more than 10 percent to 8.4 million, and high-speed data revenues climbed to more than $4 billion.

“Congress must investigate these anti-competitive practices before they become a nationwide problem.” Timothy Karr, a campaign director at the consumer advocate group FreePress, said last week.

A Massa spokesman said the text of the bill would be ready late in the week.”