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What You Need To Know About Phone Unlocking
Now that unlocking a new phone is under many circumstances illegal in the U.S. (!), Digital Trends has collected a useful set of answers outlining just what that means. As they put it, a "quick guide to answer all your why, how, and WTF questions." Among them, some explanation of the rule-making process, the reasoning that led to the end to the unlocking exception to the DMCA (including the Ninth Circuit's 2010 Vernor v. Autodesk decision), and illustrations of situations in which it is not illegal to unlock your phone.
I know it is in Australia (ACCC).... would have thought US had more protection.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
From the article: "In the long run, you will likely end up paying more for your locked device than for an unlocked one." But how is this true even when the only carrier with coverage in your area doesn't give a discount on monthly service for bringing your own phone?
...and I'll be unlocking them now that they've made it "illegal". I just don't fucking care what the United States government has to say about anything, anymore. They've lost all credibility in the eyes of most intelligent, thinking people.
FTA:
Why is it illegal to unlock a smartphone?
Because unlocking a phone requires making changes to its firmware – software that is copyrighted and owned by your carrier – which would be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
I don't understand. If I buy a book, and make some edits (cross out some paragraphs, change some words) that's not illegal. Perhaps it would be if I distributed the book (or copies of it). Selling pens to make the edits isn't illegal either.
How is changing firmware different?
Unlocking devices isn't as relevant in the US as it is in other parts of the world. The big 4 in the US all use different technologies to provide service, so taking a device from carrier a to carrier b doesn't make sense in terms of being useful. Of course there is always the argument of "it's my device let me do what i please" and I agree more with that, but those people should pony up the full retail value of the product. If you buy a phone that is carrier subsidized you're essentially financing the phone over 2 years.
If the carriers want to move to an unsubsidized model they should give consumers an incentive to pay upfront costs. T-Mobile's "value plan" is a good example. The customer buy's the device at a discount and pays an additional fee of $20 until the device's retail value is paid off. The plan then becomes $20 cheaper. If carrier's want a BYOD to work they need to offer cheaper rates.
The carriers can offer their retail salespeople a rate plan of $20 at the cost of BYOD. Why can't they do this for consumers? The plan's dont even have to be that cheap, but a $40-50 plan is not out of the realm of possibility. When I worked retail I bought my own Galaxy S3 and paid $25 for my plan. For an upfront cost of ~$520 I saved about $1800 over the cost of a 2-year consumer rate plan
I'm not a USA citizen, but as a Brazilian (country which all kinds of operator locking were ruled *illegal* a few years ago), I seriously recommend you guys to unlock your phones, being it legal or not, you needing it or not. It's a simple matter of having your rights respected.
The locked subsidized phone model is not viable, at least not here in Denmark.
A year or so ago all the major carriers here agreed that they would stop the subsidizing and thus the locking of new phones. The value of the phone simply did not match how much the forced subscription (6 months) would yield and as many customers simply switched phone and carrier every 6 months, they consistently lost money.
So now you either pay the full price for the new phone or in installments on your phone bill. If you end your subscription after the first 6 months but before the phone was paid for, you had to pay the remainder in order to end the contract. Simple and avoids the creation of stupid laws to fix a broken business model.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
If so, there is an intermediate stage between 'intact' and 'destroyed'.
"Verizon sells all iPhone 5s unlocked, meaning you could take your device over to AT&T or T-Mobile without having to unlock the device."
You could take your Verizon CDMA iPhone over to AT&T or T-Mobile, but you won't ever get it to work on their networks.
I think I'd rather have unlocking be legal even if it meant the end of subsidized devices.
Why would it mean the end of subsidized devices? You've signed a multi-year contract with the company to get the subsidized device so why should they care whose network you use it on - you will still be paying them their pound of flesh to use their network regardless of whichever other network you sign up for.
In fact it is very probably to their benefit for you to use another network since then they'll get the money and someone else will get the network traffic to deal with! The only possible benefit is that it lets them make huge profits on roaming but for the US only less than 40% (assuming a 300M population) of the US even have a passport so an even smaller fraction will travel abroad in any given year. In fact it probably is this which is driving it - in the EU, which has controlled roaming charges, unlocking a phone seems to be far more common (at least that's my impression without hard evidence to back it up).