Congress Considering New Law That Would Make it Easier to Unlock Cell Phones

[Plutonic Panda]

This would be nice

You know that when you “buy” a mobile phone, you don’t actually have full access to it. Most phones are locked to the carrier you bought them from. But buying a phone may soon look more like actually owning a phone, thanks to a bill to legalize phone unlocking that passed the House last week and faces decent odds in the Senate.

Requiring an act of Congress to use things you’ve paid for as if they are actually your property is maddening. It’s also tech policy as usual. What’s less usual is seeing forward momentum in this area.

While the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is a flawed solution, it still represents one of the few times when Congress has not just refrained from passing an awful law but moved to fix an older bad law.

The bad law in question is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which when it passed in 1998 made it a crime to circumvent “a technological measure that effectively controls access” to a copyrighted work. Bizarrely, our mobile phones were caught up in that sweep.

Stretching the law
So do wireless carriers lock the SIM card slots of phones to protect software copyrights? Not really. They do it to make it harder for you to switch to another carrier (even though they already have early-termination fees to thwart your defection). But the wonderfully elastic DMCA was easily stretched to cover this situation.

The 105th Congress wasn’t completely oblivious about the blank check it gave to Big Copyright with that law, and so the DMCA included a provision that lets the librarian of Congress, on the advice of the register of copyrights, grant temporary exemptions to the anti-circumvention clause. That’s exactly what Librarian James H. Billington did in 2006 when he allowed phone unlocking.

Alas, in subsequent exemption rulings he narrowed that right before extinguishing it almost completely in 2012, on the grounds that “consumers now have access to a variety of unlocked phones.” As in, why whine about not being able to unlock your paid-for iPhone when you can buy a new, unlocked iPhone for $450 and up?

At that point, unlocking-service entrepreneur Sina Khanifar and Republican policy wonk Derek Khanna got righteously mad and filed a petition at the White House’s site.

Theirs easily crossed the required 100,000-signature threshold and drew a more serious response than, say, an earlier request that the U.S. build a Death Star. Wrote senior adviser R. David Edelman: “The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties.”

That got a few policy wheels turning a little faster. By the end of last year, some public nagging by new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler led to the major carriers pledging to unlock the phone of any out-of-contract subscriber on request — and even to notify them when they’d (ahem) unlocked that option.

That didn’t make the Unlocking Consumer Choice bill irrelevant — the industry promise covers only current and former subscribers, not recipients of their old phones. And it doesn’t let you ask somebody else to unlock the phone.

- Read more here: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/progress-...480275871.html

[ylouder]

I've always thought this was a horrible law. Pay 199 for.a.phone and 80 dollars a month for two years and you still don't own the phone....

[SoonerDave]

DMCA is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever enacted - enacted by people without a clue what they were trying to govern, and led by the nose by people with absolutely no interest in anything but leveraging the process for profit.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for making money and for-profit companies - but the DMCA was just an effort to legislate away nearly any leverage of a device owner or the notion of fair use. THe notion that you could buy a phone - buy it - but not have the right to run whatever software you choose is patently ludicrous.

Don't forget that the DMCA was rushed in at just about the same time digital video in DVD's was making headway, and also that much of the push into HDTV was to eventually yank the idea of personal video libraries that the Supreme Court ruled (back in the VHS era) were legal. And they happened to co-opt the DMCA into making it illegal to circumvent any copy protection scheme that protected digital content, rendering moot the notion of trying to make legitimate archival copies of purchased content such as movies.

Lke I said, DMCA is horrendous policy, and its nice to see someone at least making furtive efforts to correct at least some of its stupidity.

[gjl]

Sounds fine so long as it doesn't make the carriers stop offering deep discounts on the phones they sell.

[ylouder]

Sounds fine so long as it doesn't make the carriers stop offering deep discounts on the phones they sell.

You're kidding right. 200 for a device and a contract that garentees $80*24 months of service isn't paying for a phon and that perpetually locks yyou into service with one company?

You've paid 2200 dollars for a phone that is a brick if you try to edit software or find a.cheaper provider. If that's some sorta discount then I want out.

[gjl]

No you've paid $200 for a phone and $1900 for service. Would you say most people are ready for a new phone after 2 years anyway. I guess since I don't jump from carrier to carrier and have been with AT&T for 15 years the discounted phone locked to them is still a better deal for me.

iPhone 5 from AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon with 2 year contract.

16 GB - $199
32 GB - $299
64 GB - $399

iPhone 5 Unlocked and contract free - SIM free.

16 GB - $649
32 GB - $749
64 GB - $849

[ylouder]

Posted from phone so ignore typos -since you have no problem not having control over what programs and features are aviable on your phone then this doesn't really concern you.

With that said I'm also a long time att customer and find there service adequate in Oklahoma, but I would like the flexibility to use the built in wifi hotspots and use the data that I'm already paying for and not able to use each month with out them disabling built in functions in my phone unless I pay them more to use the data I already am paying for.

In addition to being able to competitively going competitors and paying leas.for service.

But if your end all and be all is a new phone every two years, well OK this conversation is.above your head.

[gjl]

Thanks for being condescending. There is a group of people here you'll fit in real good with.

[MustangGT]

Thanks for being condescending. There is a group of people here you'll fit in real good with.

Exactly.

[traxx]

No you've paid $200 for a phone and $1900 for service.

Not completely accurate. The 2 year committment subsidizes the cost of the phone. So the $70/month is not just for service.

If being able to unlock your phone becomes the norm and more people begin to buy their phones outright, then you're gonna see the cost of even the premium phones come down somewhat. Cheap phones that you can buy outright, such as Lumia 520, are going to put pressure on most other phone prices because many people will gravitate to good, low cost handsets.

[Jersey Boss]

Go with T-Mobile. No contract and the phone you buy is unlocked.

[traxx]

Go with T-Mobile. No contract and the phone you buy is unlocked.

Yeah, but I'd double check to see if you can take their phones to other carriers before you get locked into that. For instance, the Lumia 520 that I mentioned above isn't offered on T-Mobile but a Lumia 521 is. I'm not sure you could get a 521 on T-Mobile and then move it to another carrier such as AT&T or Cricket or Straight Talk. Maybe you can, but I'd do some research first.