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We Should Be Allowed To Unlock Everything We Own
An anonymous reader writes "When cell phone unlocking became illegal last month, it set off a firestorm of debate over what rights people should have for phones they have legally purchased. But this is really just one facet of a much larger problem with property rights in general. 'Silicon permeates and powers almost everything we own. This is a property rights issue, and current copyright law gets it backwards, turning regular people — like students, researchers, and small business owners — into criminals. Fortune 500 telecom manufacturer Avaya, for example, is known for suing service companies, accusing them of violating copyright for simply using a password to log in to their phone systems. That's right: typing in a password is considered "reproducing copyrighted material." Manufacturers have systematically used copyright in this manner over the past 20 years to limit our access to information. Technology has moved too fast for copyright laws to keep pace, so corporations have been exploiting the lag to create information monopolies at our expense and for their profit. After years of extensions and so-called improvements, copyright has turned Mickey Mouse into a monster who can never die.' We need to win the fight for unlocking phones, and then keep pushing until we actually own the objects we own again."
Our property is our property, and we should be able to do with it as we please. Further, breaking encryption is just math. Prohibitions on any sort of math amounts to thought crime. They want to make it illegal to figure things out.
The standard excuse for all this bad policy is that without DRM, our music, movies, and video gaming industries would collapse. I say, let them. It's just entertainment, which is a surprisingly small part of the economy (Google could buy the RIAA outright easily). Much better to let that happen than to enshrine bad policy as law for decades to come. And I'm willing to bet that people will find ways to entertain themselves anyway.
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>We Should Be Allowed To Unlock Everything We Own
I think there is a misconception here: You only own everything you are able to unlock.
If you can't do that, you don't "own" it, you're "owned".
Can someone explain to me what the fuss is about unlocking?
If I understand it right, you are not allowed to unlock a phone which you are buying with monthly contract.
Well, makes sense to me, you haven't paid the device fully, it's not yours to hack.
Once you've paid the (24 month?) contract you're free to do what you want with the device.
If you don't like those terms why did you even buy the phone with contract rather than directly with cash?
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That's sort of the point, though, isn't it? An EULA that governs a service is one thing, but an EULA that governs a physical product is something else entirely. A manufacturer exercising ownership rights over a piece of hardware that you have purchased outright, to which said manufacturer holds no obligation beyond addressing manufacturing defects, is patently (heh) absurd. That we're even having this discussion is a testament to the sad state of affairs in which we currently find our copyright/patent laws.
Seriously Boycott Apple and Microsoft, that are locking hardware. Its not hard to support companies that have open hardware. The fact that your xbox, and iDevices are locked down is only part of the problem...and soon your general purpose computer.
I'm sorry your favourite abusive mega corporation wants to lock you into their self styled ecosystem. Its easy to walk away...I did.
This sentiment is so wrong on so many levels. Stuff should not be "locked" in the first place.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Any EULA must be enforceable. Just because it is written down doesn't make it so. For example, the EULA can't say that the buyer must provide a webcam feed from their bedroom, or is required to deliver up their firstborn son on demand.
And that's what this is all about. What is valid and enforceable in a EULA and what is not. Hopefully the pendulum is swinging back to a common law conception of ownership, and damn all the restrictive EULAs. And if Apple or Microsoft or anyone else with restrictive EULAs wants to bow out of the marketplace because they can't fathom how to make a phone or a videogame console without restrictive EULAs, I say let them take their toys and go home. Their market shares will be taken up in a microsecond by plenty of companies willing to make a buck actually **selling** such things.
There's nothing 'obviously' about this. It's not a grey area. Either you limit everything or you limit nothing.
Medical devices, utility meters, safety systems, casino games, ATMs, airplane navigation systems should all be secured, by the hardware, in such a way that NOBODY can unlock them once they leave the manufacturer's hands. Pretending that some copyright law will protect these devices does nothing more than feed homeless lawyers.
You OWN your home, even though its mortgaged. You are not leasing it. You are not renting it. It is yours to do with ANYTHING you please. The bank has a lien on your home if your are mortgaged. They do not own it, nor can they tell you in any way what to do with it. You can sell it for any price you wish or burn it down, but before the government will grant the deed to someone else, they must verify the lien has been removed. Likewise, when I purchase a phone + contract, I own the phone immediately. The phone company counts it as an immediate sell on their books and all other accounting, which is why you pay taxes for it immediately rather than over time. The sell of the phone is complete at that time in every legal way that matters. Its not a lease, its a sale. If it was a lease, you would be required to buy it at the end of your contract ... that is a LEGAL requirement for leases, they can't automatically be 'given' at the end. The purchase price can be one dollar (which you'll find on all sorts of deals, Lease at XXX amount, buyout for $1, great corp accounting cheat ;), but a new transaction must take place for the lease to become a sell. They aren't doing that, again making it clear the sale happens at the start of the contract.
If I were renting or leasing, the price of my monthly bill would go down when I stopped leasing or renting, like if I bought a unlocked, no contract phone. But it doesn't. My bill remains the same regardless of where my phone comes from. Again, it can't be a lease or rental if there is no transaction and length of terms.
They have structured it as a sell in every way for their accounting purposes, but they want to pretend its not, again for their own financial interests (keeping you tied in to their service).
As far as 'defaulting', they are not the legal framework designed to deal with that situation. They are not supposed to be enforcers either. They have early termination charges attached as an agreed on termination cost. Not allowing your phone to not work on another provider ISN'T IN THE CONTRACT AT ALL, so its not something you agreed on ever.
If I pay $600 cash in $100 bills to Joe Smith who happens to own an unlocked iPhone on the street corner, the phone company treats me the same in EVERY SINGLE WAY as the guy who gets a contracted iPhone. So you get treated like you bought it ... again, they treat it as a sell for their benefit.
Only when it may benefit you is it suddenly not a sale to you but some other rental term bullshit they made up.
I don't know about you, but it seems more like I live in the Land of the Fucking Owned. A land owned by fucking assholes, totalitarian politicians, selfish and infinitely greedy (and incredibly crooked) multi-national corporations, and foreign laws like the recent cell phone unlocking, which was conveniently signed away from American citizens, giving foreign countries the 'right' to dictate what we can and cannot do.
Why doesn't the U.S. just fully sell themselves out? It seems like they desperately want to. Most goods are already produced and/or manufactured in China. Most support calls to American companies already connect you to people from India or some other cheap country, who not only can't even speak or understand English worth shit, they don't seem to know a fucking thing about the question at hand.
The U.S. is excellent at outsourcing, incarceration, taking money, and generally just fucking over its citizens. Too bad those are not really the kinds of things you would want your home country to excel at.
I agree with your position on allowing unlocking. But your arguments are so wrong in so many ways that you'd really do better to shut up. "Our side" does not need such ignorant easily disproven drivel clouding the issue.
You OWN your home, even though its mortgaged. You are not leasing it. You are not renting it. It is yours to do with ANYTHING you please. The bank has a lien on your home if your are mortgaged. They do not own it, nor can they tell you in any way what to do with it. You can sell it for any price you wish or burn it down...
So, you've never actually read a mortgage and are completely unfamiliar with the laws pertaining to them...
Likewise, when I purchase a phone + contract, I own the phone immediately. The phone company counts it as an immediate sell on their books and all other accounting...
No, they do not--they recognize the revenue on the subsidized part of the phone as they receive it.
...which is why you pay taxes for it immediately rather than over time.
No, you do not. You pay taxes on the part you pay, not the part that is deferred.
If it was a lease, you would be required to buy it at the end of your contract ...
No, you would not--in fact you've got this one exactly backwards. A lease means you return the item (in good condition) without further obligation at the end of the contract.
...that is a LEGAL requirement for leases, they can't automatically be 'given' at the end.
It is a legal requirement in order to be able to deduct certain leases as business expenses that there be no pre-negotiated sales price at the end of the contract, that you pay fair market value at that time, that you receive no special consideration as the former lessee. Now you are right that if you get the item for free at the end, it's not a lease--because that's the very definition of a lease, that you don't take ownership. But getting this point only partly wrong still leaves your argument resoundlngly muddled.
They have early termination charges attached as an agreed on termination cost.
Yes, and that should be enough.
Not allowing your phone to not work on another provider ISN'T IN THE CONTRACT AT ALL, so its not something you agreed on ever.
Of course it is in the contract--the questions are: 1) whether or not such a term should be enforceable at all, and 2) if it should be enforceable, should it be a criminal act to unlock, or a civil issue between you and the carrier in the event you do not pay the early termination fee.
Therefore you don't really own it, but rent it from the state.
Not really true. Just because the government can take something of mine if I don't pay a fee, that doesn't mean that I don't really own it. Any of my posessions can be confiscated by the government if it's used to commit a crime.
If you don't pay your license fee, you are no longer allowed to drive it.
Also not true. If you don't pay the fee, you are not allowed to drive it on public roads. I can buy a car and drive it on my private property without paying any fees, without needing a driver's license, and even without paying some taxes on fuel.
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This is only because we the citizens of the United States have allowed it to become so. Write and call your reps in Congress. Tell them how you feel. Get all your friends and family to do it. Get them to get all their friends and family's to do it. I can almost guarantee that if over 100 million emails are sent tomorrow to Congress saying we want to own our devices fully. A bill will be introduced and most likely will be passed within a week.
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