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Reps Introduce Bipartisan Bill To Legalize Mobile Device Unlocking
New submitter tomservo84 writes "It seems some people in the House of Reps have their heads screwed on straight. A bill would 'make it permanently legal for consumers to unlock their mobile devices, and consumers would not be required to obtain permission from their carrier before switching to a new carrier.' 'This bill reflects the way we use this technology in our everyday lives,' Rep. Lofgren said. 'Americans should not be subject to fines and criminal liability for merely unlocking devices and media they legally purchased. If consumers are not violating copyright or some other law, there's little reason to hold back the benefits of unlocking so people can continue using their devices.' Now, what chance does this have of actually passing?"
This administration is owned by enormous corporations - and Obama just nominated a Telecom lobbyist to head the FCC (after promising during his campaign that there would be no lobbyists in his administration). Seriously. There is zero chance he would sign this bill were it to find its way to his desk.
It conflicts with the current industry notion of the permanent payment.
"Americans should not be subject to fines and criminal liability for merely unlocking devices and media they legally purchased"
MEDIA???? No way the media cartels will give up all the monstrous legislation around copyright circumvention.
Certainly the good Congressman misspoke.
to see if the cell phone company's don't try/succeed in adding some sort of loophole to prevent a mass exodus of customers wanting to unlock/switch carriers.
This is a more general fix for the situation in the DMCA where what you are doing is otherwise legal except for the circumvention part. It doesn't have to be a phone. It could be a tablet, for example. Or some other device.
People should be supporting this with the same kind of enthusiasm that they opposed SOPA. If that could get stopped, then it should be possible to get this passed.
This bill would have never passed when it actually meant something to consumers. With the plethora of unlocked devices available on the market, T-Mobile has already begun offering favorable deals on no-contract plans where you pay for your own device, so it's only a matter of time before the rest follow suit. If this actually does pass, it just means that the financial incentive to the phone companies was simply too small to justify the cost of supporting a lobby against it.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
There already is a loophole. Devices made for CDMA2000 typically can't do GSM/UMTS, nor vice versa. Even within a particular mobile system, carrier-branded devices tend to have the competing carrier's frequency bands blocked off.
With the plethora of unlocked devices available on the market, T-Mobile has already begun offering favorable deals on no-contract plans
Phones aren't the only locked-down devices. Several devices are locked down in a sense even when used on Wi-Fi. These include at least game consoles (PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS) and Apple tablets (iPod touch, iPad mini, iPad), all of which enforce developer qualifications and application restrictions through code signing. I haven't read the bill yet, only the section-by-section summary. But if it does limit the access control provision to facilitating infringement as the summary claims, that would make it easier to convert a locked-down device into a device that respects users' freedom.
This bill goes way beyond cellphones. According to the summary posted on the linked article, the bill's text "makes clear that it is not a violation to circumvent a technological measure if the purpose of the circumvention is to use a work in a manner that is not an infringement of copyright." In other words, it neuters the infamous anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA!
I've always heard it explained that U.S. carriers lock the phones so that they can continue to charge still-paying-off-the-subsidy rates even after the 2-year contract has ended.
... If consumers are not violating copyright or some other law,
It was always the case that phone unlocking would be against the DMCA. For many years there was a DMCA exemption that allowed unlocking even though it was against the DMCA, that is not gone. So unlocking _does_violate copyright.
So Rep. Lofgren has to change his bill a bit: To declare the act of unlocking your phone not a copyright violation.
My best guess is that a bunch of our "brilliant" legislators have been burned by this (unlockable phones) and are now going to do something about it! :rolleyes:
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Simply Repeal the DMCA. Making NEW laws to fix broken ones is not the answer. Start repealing laws that have no use except to force an iron fist around consumers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You are confusing "locked down" and "locked to a carrier".
I was addressing diakka's claim that this bill doesn't "actually mean[] something to consumers." The bill appears to address both the concepts of "locked down" and "locked to a carrier".
Simply Repeal the DMCA.
Please be careful in how you phrase that. The DMCA is a bundle of several independent pieces of copyright-related legislation. Repealing the DMCA as a whole would repeal not only the anticircumvention provisions (17 USC 1201) but also the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (17 USC 512), which protects YouTube and other service providers from liability for its users' infringement. Viacom would have cause to sue YouTube.
The issue here is that what are "valid reasons from a carriers standpoint" may not also be valid reasons from a public policy standpoint. Consider a public policy case from the turn of the century: There were valid reasons from Microsoft's standpoint to put restrictions on companies that buy Windows licenses, install Windows on PCs, and sell the PCs, forbidding them from bundling any web browser other than Internet Explorer. Competition regulators in multiple countries put restrictions on Microsoft's marketing of the included Internet Explorer browser to preserve browser choice in the face of such tying.
Only distribution is covered by copyright.
If they're talking about unlocking cell phones from a specific carrier, that almost doesn't matter anymore. With each carrier getting different 4G/LTE frequencies it's physically impossible to easily switch. So few phones are pentaband and all that, the device availability of phones that work on multiple carriers at the fully rated speed is next to nil. If I have to use 2G/3G as a result of switching, I'm definitely ditching my phone and buying a new one at the new carrier.
This is quite sad after the glorious standardization that was GSM/GPRS. Spectrum sales are bad for freedom.
Now we'll learn if the US cell providers have been paying enough in "campaign contributions" to kill this off.
This outcome is exactly what the Librarian of Congress sought when he withdrew the DMCA exemption for cellphones, and I'm thrilled it's working out like this. Many people here complained at the time, but it was obvious to many others how useful the withdrawal would ultimately be.
Had he continued the exemption, the cause of locked hardware would have remained uninteresting to the public, and ignored by Congress. Now, we have a fighting chance at rational legislation.
Seriously, read it. It starts out by truly fixing some of the most egregious brain damage and expansiveness of DMCA, making it into a legitimate copyright law. The cellphone unlocking technicality is just one a thousand bugs this fixes; the bill would also legalize making/selling/using ink cartridges, legalize the playing the DVDs that you have bought, etc. If DMCA had passed originally in this form, it would be much less destructive and hated.
After the first part, then it looks like it does something benevolent related to phones specifically, but to some code I'm unfamiliar with. Then it takes a shot at WIPO.
Overall, this is a no-brainer, and anyone who opposes it, will be outed. That means they'll kill it in some committee, but just in case they don't, remember names and who votes for/against. Reward and punish, based on this one, right here.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While they are at it, maybe they should make a law to making it legal for you to open your refrigerator, or your turn on your television.
It's MY device, MY property (NOT leased), and I will do whatever I want with it...PERIOD! I don't need any law telling me that I can.
I think there's a good chance this administration will sign it and take credit for it: it's popular, yet it's largely a meaningless gesture in the US markets (people are still locked into contracts, and most phones are still incompatible between carriers). That's the kind ot stuff the Obama administration loves to do.
They should not be making it legal to unlock phones. They should make it illegal for companies to lock phones in the first place.
If there has ever been something un-american and un-capitalist, then this ban on unlocking. It is anti-competition and anti-innovation, it keeps people from doing their job in a capitalist world (awarding money to those that provide them with the best product) and generally, voting against the ban pretty much means that you're either un-american or in the pockets of some media concern.
Now try to weasel out of that one!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had actually contacted BOTH my state senators about this.. and it was actually the republican's office who told me about the democrat who was introduction a bill along these lines.. and I'm glad to see this news!
reproduction for personal use has already been ruled to be fair use.
Even reproduction by loading a work into RAM was ruled an infringement in MAI Systems v. Peak Computer because the repair technician who turned the machine on wasn't the same person as "the owner of a copy". This led to a narrow carve-out to address the facts of that case, an amendment to section 117 enacted as a rider to the DMCA.
If you have a citation the other way for works other than sound recordings, I'd like to see it. RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia doesn't appear to count so much because sound recordings have their own narrow exception in section 1008 that doesn't apply to works in other media.
Any artificial limitation, which puts somebody else's economic interests ahead of the interests of the owner of the device, should not have been legal in the first place.
A digital camera, which cannot store more than 30 pictures on a 128MB storage card when using the best quality setting is a limitation which exists for a good technical reason. Such a limitation is not artificial, and thus shouldn't be outlawed. But a digital camera that can only take panorama photos as long as they are stored on a storage card bought from the same vendor and not if the storage card was bought from a different vendor is an artificial limitation, which does not benefit the owner of the camera in any way. It must surely have been a little bit of extra work to implement the limitation in the first place, which is what characterizes artificial limitations.
Limitations which are there for safety reasons or to improve durability of the device are fine. For example storage media have extra capacity to compensate for imperfections in the media. That the logical capacity is less than the physical capacity is in the owner's interest, because otherwise the lifetime of the device would be significantly reduced. (It is also in the vendor's interest in order to reduce RMA cases. In some countries vendor's are subject to a minimum two year warranty.)
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.
"Personal use of the machines to record broadcast television programs for later viewing constituted fair use."
This amounts to making a personal copy, but not format-shifting per se.
This decision was reversed in A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc, due to changes made by the DMCA, which is what this discussion is about.
If I could think of it in 3 seconds, wireless companies must have thought of it long ago: Change the business model so consumers are only "leasing" their wireless devices, they remain property of the wireless carrier. Of course I and many others would tell the first company that did this to go fuck themselves, but if they all did it at once..
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If consumers are not violating copyright or some other law, - emphasis mine
There are already plenty of laws that make such stuff illegal (contract law, copyright law, patent law, DMCA, ...) , this would just be pandering to the voters and not actually establish anything.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
To unlock *your* device. Problem is most people think its their phone when it isn't. Until its paid off, its not your fucking phone. Get over it. Either pay for it or accept the restrictions. Its really not that hard people.
Oh wait, this is the "me me me, gimme gimme" generation, with no personal responsibility at all.
All of these can be circumvented without unlocking. Installing CyanogenMod etc doesn't actually unlock your phone, the modem is still locked to one carrier.