Are you doing it because you want to blackmail somebody, or because you want to use the information to commit fraud later? If so, then you've violated the Wiretap Act.
Are you doing it for an innocent reason, not to commit a crime or to do something that they could sue you over? If not, then you haven't violated the Wiretap Act. (And, oh, by the way, making the recording itself doesn't count as one of those things they could sue you over -- it has to be something separate.)
That parenthetical is what this case added to what we already knew about the Wiretap Act.
In addition, the myth ignores the fact that the CPI overstates inflation -- the Boskin Commission estimated this was about 1.1 percentage points per year. Further, it ignores improvements in the quality of goods. So, for example, a car in 1973 might have cost, say $2,000. But, it probably only lasted 5 years, came without air conditioning and was far more dangerous than today's $16,000 cars that easily last 10 years,
Computers really aren't very good at figuring this stuff out -- how would it space "Mr. Smith" or "Prof. Jones" or "M. Chevalier"?
Personally, I'd rather have the computers figure out "Oh... period followed by two spaces followed by Capital letter. Must have started a new sentence" and correct appropriately.
So, recognize that the rules vary state to state. Maryland's law is basically about recording conversations, and says that both parties have to consent before you can do that. Video is fine, as long as you're not capturing audio.
That would depend a lot on the license agreement and on how it's interpreted -- does it just say "you are licensed to make incidental copies only until the dongle expires" (in which case it could be copyright infringement) or "you agree not to make incidental copies after the dongle expires" (in which case it's just a breach of contract).
In any case, Section 117 of the copyright act says that it's not copyright infringement to load a program into memory if you own the copy you're loading. Remember that copyright doesn't say "you can't use the software without the author's permission" any more than it says "you can't read the book without the author's permission." It just limits your ability to copy it and do a few other things.
No... The question is "What does the technological measure STOP people from doing?" If it stops them from doing something which would be copyright infringement, then circumventing it is a DMCA violation. If it ONLY stops them from doing things which are *not* copyright infringement, then circumventing it is NOT a DMCA violation.
It may be that you can come up with a fair use claim to why you want to copy the DVD, but it's really irrelevant -- there are plenty of non-fair use copies that the DVD copy control system.
"Derivative Work" is part of the definition of "Work Based on the Program" in the GPL (v2). When doing v3, Stallman acknowledged that this was a problem because it imported a body of case law around what a 'derivative work' was. So, you won't see that language in version 3.
I should note that if there's no derivative work and the template author isn't copying any of Wordpress, then the GPL is irrelevant, since the template author isn't doing anything which he needs a license for.
A template could be a modification of Wordpress if it started with Wordpress files and changed them around. But, templates don't really do that -- they're separate files created by somebody else. Sure, they all follow some general pattern, but that pattern isn't copyrightable.
The key question here is whether a theme is a derivative work of Wordpress. If it is, then it needs to be licensed under the GPL. If not, then it doesn't.
Let's presume that the template itself is a derivative work -- what does that mean for other potential 'derivative works,' where one piece of software is intended to work in and be integrated with another piece of software? Think software plug-ins or loadable modules or executables using system libraries. Heck, doesn't it really mean that if one piece of software exposes some sort of interface for other pieces of software, then those other pieces will be derivative works of the first? (Does it even matter if they share an address space?) If Wordpress templates are derivative works, then it seems to me that all those other things are too. And that's a big problem because it means that you, as a programmer, now need a license to link or to create interoperable code.
In reality, I don't think that these are derivative works -- that's a legal term used in the copyright act for things like motion picture adaptations, translations, "or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted." That's just not happening here -- the original isn't being touched. There's no new expression being created.
The other argument is basically, "well, the theme itself isn't a derivative work. But, when you combine it in memory with wordpress, the combination is a derivative work." First of all, I think that's wrong -- that's more of what the copyright act calls a "compilation." But, I don't think it matters if I'm right on that or not, because this is a derivative work that isn't covered by the GPL. The GPL only covers the *distribution* of derivative works, not your creating and using that work for yourself. And, that in-memory copy isn't being distributed -- it's just sitting on your server. (This is the problem that the GNU Affero license was trying to cover -- using GPL'd software to provide a hosted service.)
In fact, all of this has been litigated before in the 9th circuit -- the case was Lewis Galoob Toys v. Nintendo. (It's in Wikipedia).
Fortunately, that's not the whole story -- the Interior Department only has the power that Congress says it has, and Congress cannot, constitutionally, delegate power to the executive branch for it to use however it wants. Instead, Congress has to circumscribe that power by saying what it can, and cannot, be used for. Among other things, this means that there has to be a "rational connection" between the department's actions and its findings of fact. In this case, the Judge found no such connection. In fact, he called the decision "arbitrary and capricious."
One of the things that really hurt the administration was that their analysis focused only on wells deeper than 1,000 feet, but Ken Salazar's order affected wells deeper than 500 feet. Further, the order claimed that an independent panel of experts agreed with its conclusions, but a number of those experts said "no we didn't. We never said anything about 500 feet." That gives all the impression of an order rushed through for political expediency, and not in actual pursuit of a duty delegated to the Interior Department by Congress.
This isn't the only time we've seen that: there's no legal authority for the $20B fund that the President strong-armed BP into setting up, either.
The oil spill will be completely cleaned up in 4 or 5 years. The attitude that the President can dictate policies could have much farther-reaching effects.
We can argue day and night about whether more drilling is a good idea. But that's not the question -- the real question is:
Does the law give the President the power to impose a moratorium in this situation?
If not, then it doesn't matter whether it was a good idea or not. The President is not a King or an Emperor. He does not have the authority to decree how things should be, no matter how mad he is or how great of an idea his decree is.
Some of the money will stay in county -- after all, these are Afghan minerals, and mineral rights can be worth a lot. But, some of the money will also go to the companies who put their money at risk digging the stuff out of the ground and processing it, and to their employees. May of those employees will be foreign because Afghans don't have any relevant experience -- that will change over time, but not immediately.
Before oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis were even poorer than the Afghans (living in the desert means you can't grow poppies for heroin). The oil made a lot of money both for the Saudis and for foreign oil companies.
So, back in the 'day (1989 or so), I was grading for the first data structures course for computer science majors, and wrote a very simple program that stripped comments out of programs and then counted the number of semi-colons, colons, parentheses and so in in each program's source code, then sorted them. When two programs were sufficiently close, I compared them side-by-side and came up with more obvious cheaters than I was expecting. (Including one from two roommates who happened to be alphabetically next to each other.) If those programs have advanced *at all* in 20 years, they're now comparing parse-trees.
The problem is that computer programs have structure, and it's impossible to copy somebody else's work and then 'only' replace the underlying structure. Instead, cheaters reorder their code, add a bunch of comments, rename variables, change indentation and so on. That sort of thing doesn't change the structure, so it's easy to catch.
And, yes, this method only works on sufficiently large programs -- there are only a handful of ways of doing "Hello World." But, nobody cheats on "Hello World."
Well, ok, if you want to pick nits, sure that's not exactly what I said.
You're coming across as a huge Apple fan-boy -- merely 'usable' applications have no place existing? Are you serious -- do you have any idea how conceited that sounds? Why is that your decision to make? Why block an app that some people may want to buy merely because of how it was developed?
So, that tool may not exist now. Adobe's trying to bring it to the market, and it's likely that if Apple hadn't made this announcement, others would also. Cross-platform development environment yield cost savings, even if you do have to tweak the result for different platforms. And the cross-platform apps may not be quite as high quality as native apps, but they're generally still usable. (And, if they're not, then nobody's going to use the cross-platform stuff anyway.)
I agree that if a developer has no interest in developing for the iPhone or ONLY develops for the iPhone, then Apple's decision has no significant effect on his cost. But, if a developer wants to develop for the iPhone and for other platforms, then it increases his total cost of doing so above what it would be if Apple hadn't made that decision.
In the case where the developer is primarily interested in going after the iPhone (which, I suspect is most cases), then this increases his marginal cost to also develop for the other platforms.
This is the same as the old Java argument: When Microsoft wanted to distribute a bastardized version of Java, the concern was that it would increase developers costs to develop for other platforms, because they'd develop mainly for MS and then have significant porting costs to go to the other platforms. With a standardized Java, those porting costs go down dramatically.
So.. If I am a developer, I have two choices: (1) Develop using a framework that allows me to write once and deploy on a variety of handsets. (2) Develop natively for the iPhone and use the framework everywhere else.
If the iPhone has, say, 60% of the app market, then that's my target platform -- I do what it takes to develop for the iPhone. If I can get Android support mostly free along the way (option (i)), then great. But, if not (option (ii)), then I have to ask myself if it's worth the time and effort to also develop for Android. In many cases, the answer will be no.
It seems to me that this is anti-competitive. They're using the iPhone's market dominance to increase the costs of producing applications on other platforms. And, that's likely to raise an antitrust lawsuit.
If Apple is so concerned about quality of software being produced, they already have a mechanism to deal with it -- the app store review process.
It varies country-to-country. The US doesn't recognize the "sweat-of-the-brow" doctrine, although there are moves in Congress to change that.
US Copyright is based on "creative expression" -- if a work doesn't have any of that, then the work isn't subject to copyright. Most databases don't have that, so they're not subject to copyright. However, a database may have that creative expression in the selection and arrangement of the facts in the database.
Also, note that if you store creative works in the database (a la Lexis, for example), then copying the entire database would also copy those works, and would be an infringement.
Further, note that even though many databases are sold under 'licensing agreements,' the enforceability of those agreements is unclear since the states cannot themselves protect things outside of federal copyright law. And, contract law is state law. It's a big hole for database owners, which is why many of them sell access to the database, but do not sell copies of the database itself.
I think that's the point. Amazon uses services in states where it has operations. Its usage of services in other states is practically non-existent. Your example of national defense is silly -- that's paid for by the federal government, which Amazon does pay taxes to.
Hmm.. There's a lot more than 50. In North Carolina, sales tax varies by county and, in some cases, within a county. It also varies by type of good. Some jurisdictions tax food; some don't; some tax it at a lower rate. etc... It's much more complicated than a simple 50-element lookup table.
Keeping track of the whole thing is a mess. And, why should Amazon have to collect sales tax for a state when the only connection it was with that state is having UPS deliver a box into it? Is the sales tax to collect for the infinitesimal extra wear and tear on the roads getting there?
Why so? You only need a subsidy when there isn't enough natural incentive. If oil starts to become significantly more scarce, a nuclear power plant will be a fantastic investment. Power companies will build them even without subsidies.
Both your setups (and, from what I've seen, everybody else's) miss a fundamental fact: There's no on/off oil spigot. It's a gradual process.
If there really isn't much oil left, then oil will slowly become more and more expensive as the remaining oil becomes harder and harder to extract. We will never truly run out of it -- it will just get so expensive that it will be used for only a few things.
Along the way, as the price goes up, alternatives will develop. People will switch to more fuel-efficient cars, perhaps plug-in hybrids, substituting nuclear and hydro energy for oil energy. Similar innovations will happen through every place that oil is used today. We have nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, why not nuclear-powered super cargo ships? You will see a slew of new battery technologies as companies realize that there's a lot of money to be made in replacing oil. In fact, the more expensive oil gets, the more alternatives become viable.
The only real shortage would happen if some government put a price cap on oil or gasoline, perhaps saying "You cannot sell gas for more than $5 a gallon" at a time when market forces would set the price at $10. In that case, there would be shortages. Otherwise, there would just be a bunch of people refraining from buying oil because the prices are too high.
Typically in the US, the deal is that you get a big discount on a phone if you agree to a 1- or 2- year contract with the carrier. It's possible to buy most phones without that discount and take the phone to any carrier that supports that phone's technology, without signing up for the contract. However, except for T-Mobile, there's no discount on service in that case -- you're just not locked in for 2 years. And, the price increase is huge -- at Amazon, the Droid goes from $149 to $529. So, people usually buy the contract with the phone.
The original version of the Droid happens to use only Verizon's technology, so you're pretty much locked in anyway. But, it won't be long before GSM versions are available for use in other countries. At that point, you'll be able to buy a Droid and use it on either AT&T's or T-Mobile's network.
Part of the problem is that the US carriers use different technologies. Two carriers (AT&T, T-mobile) use GSM. Verizon uses CDMA. So, even if the phone weren't locked to the Verizon network, you couldn't take it to either of the others.
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Why are you making this recording?
Are you doing it because you want to blackmail somebody, or because you want to use the information to commit fraud later? If so, then you've violated the Wiretap Act.
Are you doing it for an innocent reason, not to commit a crime or to do something that they could sue you over? If not, then you haven't violated the Wiretap Act. (And, oh, by the way, making the recording itself doesn't count as one of those things they could sue you over -- it has to be something separate.)
That parenthetical is what this case added to what we already knew about the Wiretap Act.
That's a myth. See, e.g., http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2007/11/lets-kill-the-s.html
In addition, the myth ignores the fact that the CPI overstates inflation -- the Boskin Commission estimated this was about 1.1 percentage points per year. Further, it ignores improvements in the quality of goods. So, for example, a car in 1973 might have cost, say $2,000. But, it probably only lasted 5 years, came without air conditioning and was far more dangerous than today's $16,000 cars that easily last 10 years,
Computers really aren't very good at figuring this stuff out -- how would it space "Mr. Smith" or "Prof. Jones" or "M. Chevalier"?
Personally, I'd rather have the computers figure out "Oh... period followed by two spaces followed by Capital letter. Must have started a new sentence" and correct appropriately.
So, recognize that the rules vary state to state. Maryland's law is basically about recording conversations, and says that both parties have to consent before you can do that. Video is fine, as long as you're not capturing audio.
That would depend a lot on the license agreement and on how it's interpreted -- does it just say "you are licensed to make incidental copies only until the dongle expires" (in which case it could be copyright infringement) or "you agree not to make incidental copies after the dongle expires" (in which case it's just a breach of contract).
In any case, Section 117 of the copyright act says that it's not copyright infringement to load a program into memory if you own the copy you're loading. Remember that copyright doesn't say "you can't use the software without the author's permission" any more than it says "you can't read the book without the author's permission." It just limits your ability to copy it and do a few other things.
No... The question is "What does the technological measure STOP people from doing?" If it stops them from doing something which would be copyright infringement, then circumventing it is a DMCA violation. If it ONLY stops them from doing things which are *not* copyright infringement, then circumventing it is NOT a DMCA violation.
It may be that you can come up with a fair use claim to why you want to copy the DVD, but it's really irrelevant -- there are plenty of non-fair use copies that the DVD copy control system.
"Derivative Work" is part of the definition of "Work Based on the Program" in the GPL (v2). When doing v3, Stallman acknowledged that this was a problem because it imported a body of case law around what a 'derivative work' was. So, you won't see that language in version 3.
I should note that if there's no derivative work and the template author isn't copying any of Wordpress, then the GPL is irrelevant, since the template author isn't doing anything which he needs a license for.
A template could be a modification of Wordpress if it started with Wordpress files and changed them around. But, templates don't really do that -- they're separate files created by somebody else. Sure, they all follow some general pattern, but that pattern isn't copyrightable.
The key question here is whether a theme is a derivative work of Wordpress. If it is, then it needs to be licensed under the GPL. If not, then it doesn't.
Let's presume that the template itself is a derivative work -- what does that mean for other potential 'derivative works,' where one piece of software is intended to work in and be integrated with another piece of software? Think software plug-ins or loadable modules or executables using system libraries. Heck, doesn't it really mean that if one piece of software exposes some sort of interface for other pieces of software, then those other pieces will be derivative works of the first? (Does it even matter if they share an address space?) If Wordpress templates are derivative works, then it seems to me that all those other things are too. And that's a big problem because it means that you, as a programmer, now need a license to link or to create interoperable code.
In reality, I don't think that these are derivative works -- that's a legal term used in the copyright act for things like motion picture adaptations, translations, "or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted." That's just not happening here -- the original isn't being touched. There's no new expression being created.
The other argument is basically, "well, the theme itself isn't a derivative work. But, when you combine it in memory with wordpress, the combination is a derivative work." First of all, I think that's wrong -- that's more of what the copyright act calls a "compilation." But, I don't think it matters if I'm right on that or not, because this is a derivative work that isn't covered by the GPL. The GPL only covers the *distribution* of derivative works, not your creating and using that work for yourself. And, that in-memory copy isn't being distributed -- it's just sitting on your server. (This is the problem that the GNU Affero license was trying to cover -- using GPL'd software to provide a hosted service.)
In fact, all of this has been litigated before in the 9th circuit -- the case was Lewis Galoob Toys v. Nintendo. (It's in Wikipedia).
Doesn't that scare you? I suggest that any government which has the power to make you do whatever it wants you to do, "or else," is too powerful.
Fortunately, that's not the whole story -- the Interior Department only has the power that Congress says it has, and Congress cannot, constitutionally, delegate power to the executive branch for it to use however it wants. Instead, Congress has to circumscribe that power by saying what it can, and cannot, be used for. Among other things, this means that there has to be a "rational connection" between the department's actions and its findings of fact. In this case, the Judge found no such connection. In fact, he called the decision "arbitrary and capricious."
One of the things that really hurt the administration was that their analysis focused only on wells deeper than 1,000 feet, but Ken Salazar's order affected wells deeper than 500 feet. Further, the order claimed that an independent panel of experts agreed with its conclusions, but a number of those experts said "no we didn't. We never said anything about 500 feet." That gives all the impression of an order rushed through for political expediency, and not in actual pursuit of a duty delegated to the Interior Department by Congress.
This isn't the only time we've seen that: there's no legal authority for the $20B fund that the President strong-armed BP into setting up, either.
The oil spill will be completely cleaned up in 4 or 5 years. The attitude that the President can dictate policies could have much farther-reaching effects.
We can argue day and night about whether more drilling is a good idea. But that's not the question -- the real question is:
Does the law give the President the power to impose a moratorium in this situation?
If not, then it doesn't matter whether it was a good idea or not. The President is not a King or an Emperor. He does not have the authority to decree how things should be, no matter how mad he is or how great of an idea his decree is.
Some of the money will stay in county -- after all, these are Afghan minerals, and mineral rights can be worth a lot. But, some of the money will also go to the companies who put their money at risk digging the stuff out of the ground and processing it, and to their employees. May of those employees will be foreign because Afghans don't have any relevant experience -- that will change over time, but not immediately.
Before oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis were even poorer than the Afghans (living in the desert means you can't grow poppies for heroin). The oil made a lot of money both for the Saudis and for foreign oil companies.
It might be wrong, not applicable in your state, ... so use at your own risk. Contact a lawyer for legal advice.
That's the best advice in your entire post. The rest of it... not so much.
So, back in the 'day (1989 or so), I was grading for the first data structures course for computer science majors, and wrote a very simple program that stripped comments out of programs and then counted the number of semi-colons, colons, parentheses and so in in each program's source code, then sorted them. When two programs were sufficiently close, I compared them side-by-side and came up with more obvious cheaters than I was expecting. (Including one from two roommates who happened to be alphabetically next to each other.) If those programs have advanced *at all* in 20 years, they're now comparing parse-trees.
The problem is that computer programs have structure, and it's impossible to copy somebody else's work and then 'only' replace the underlying structure. Instead, cheaters reorder their code, add a bunch of comments, rename variables, change indentation and so on. That sort of thing doesn't change the structure, so it's easy to catch.
And, yes, this method only works on sufficiently large programs -- there are only a handful of ways of doing "Hello World." But, nobody cheats on "Hello World."
Well, ok, if you want to pick nits, sure that's not exactly what I said.
You're coming across as a huge Apple fan-boy -- merely 'usable' applications have no place existing? Are you serious -- do you have any idea how conceited that sounds? Why is that your decision to make? Why block an app that some people may want to buy merely because of how it was developed?
So, that tool may not exist now. Adobe's trying to bring it to the market, and it's likely that if Apple hadn't made this announcement, others would also. Cross-platform development environment yield cost savings, even if you do have to tweak the result for different platforms. And the cross-platform apps may not be quite as high quality as native apps, but they're generally still usable. (And, if they're not, then nobody's going to use the cross-platform stuff anyway.)
I agree that if a developer has no interest in developing for the iPhone or ONLY develops for the iPhone, then Apple's decision has no significant effect on his cost. But, if a developer wants to develop for the iPhone and for other platforms, then it increases his total cost of doing so above what it would be if Apple hadn't made that decision.
In the case where the developer is primarily interested in going after the iPhone (which, I suspect is most cases), then this increases his marginal cost to also develop for the other platforms.
This is the same as the old Java argument: When Microsoft wanted to distribute a bastardized version of Java, the concern was that it would increase developers costs to develop for other platforms, because they'd develop mainly for MS and then have significant porting costs to go to the other platforms. With a standardized Java, those porting costs go down dramatically.
So.. If I am a developer, I have two choices:
(1) Develop using a framework that allows me to write once and deploy on a variety of handsets.
(2) Develop natively for the iPhone and use the framework everywhere else.
If the iPhone has, say, 60% of the app market, then that's my target platform -- I do what it takes to develop for the iPhone. If I can get Android support mostly free along the way (option (i)), then great. But, if not (option (ii)), then I have to ask myself if it's worth the time and effort to also develop for Android. In many cases, the answer will be no.
It seems to me that this is anti-competitive. They're using the iPhone's market dominance to increase the costs of producing applications on other platforms. And, that's likely to raise an antitrust lawsuit. If Apple is so concerned about quality of software being produced, they already have a mechanism to deal with it -- the app store review process.
It varies country-to-country. The US doesn't recognize the "sweat-of-the-brow" doctrine, although there are moves in Congress to change that. US Copyright is based on "creative expression" -- if a work doesn't have any of that, then the work isn't subject to copyright. Most databases don't have that, so they're not subject to copyright. However, a database may have that creative expression in the selection and arrangement of the facts in the database. Also, note that if you store creative works in the database (a la Lexis, for example), then copying the entire database would also copy those works, and would be an infringement. Further, note that even though many databases are sold under 'licensing agreements,' the enforceability of those agreements is unclear since the states cannot themselves protect things outside of federal copyright law. And, contract law is state law. It's a big hole for database owners, which is why many of them sell access to the database, but do not sell copies of the database itself.
I think that's the point. Amazon uses services in states where it has operations. Its usage of services in other states is practically non-existent. Your example of national defense is silly -- that's paid for by the federal government, which Amazon does pay taxes to.
Hmm.. There's a lot more than 50. In North Carolina, sales tax varies by county and, in some cases, within a county. It also varies by type of good. Some jurisdictions tax food; some don't; some tax it at a lower rate. etc... It's much more complicated than a simple 50-element lookup table. Keeping track of the whole thing is a mess. And, why should Amazon have to collect sales tax for a state when the only connection it was with that state is having UPS deliver a box into it? Is the sales tax to collect for the infinitesimal extra wear and tear on the roads getting there?
Why so? You only need a subsidy when there isn't enough natural incentive. If oil starts to become significantly more scarce, a nuclear power plant will be a fantastic investment. Power companies will build them even without subsidies.
Both your setups (and, from what I've seen, everybody else's) miss a fundamental fact: There's no on/off oil spigot. It's a gradual process. If there really isn't much oil left, then oil will slowly become more and more expensive as the remaining oil becomes harder and harder to extract. We will never truly run out of it -- it will just get so expensive that it will be used for only a few things. Along the way, as the price goes up, alternatives will develop. People will switch to more fuel-efficient cars, perhaps plug-in hybrids, substituting nuclear and hydro energy for oil energy. Similar innovations will happen through every place that oil is used today. We have nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, why not nuclear-powered super cargo ships? You will see a slew of new battery technologies as companies realize that there's a lot of money to be made in replacing oil. In fact, the more expensive oil gets, the more alternatives become viable. The only real shortage would happen if some government put a price cap on oil or gasoline, perhaps saying "You cannot sell gas for more than $5 a gallon" at a time when market forces would set the price at $10. In that case, there would be shortages. Otherwise, there would just be a bunch of people refraining from buying oil because the prices are too high.
Typically in the US, the deal is that you get a big discount on a phone if you agree to a 1- or 2- year contract with the carrier. It's possible to buy most phones without that discount and take the phone to any carrier that supports that phone's technology, without signing up for the contract. However, except for T-Mobile, there's no discount on service in that case -- you're just not locked in for 2 years. And, the price increase is huge -- at Amazon, the Droid goes from $149 to $529. So, people usually buy the contract with the phone. The original version of the Droid happens to use only Verizon's technology, so you're pretty much locked in anyway. But, it won't be long before GSM versions are available for use in other countries. At that point, you'll be able to buy a Droid and use it on either AT&T's or T-Mobile's network.
Part of the problem is that the US carriers use different technologies. Two carriers (AT&T, T-mobile) use GSM. Verizon uses CDMA. So, even if the phone weren't locked to the Verizon network, you couldn't take it to either of the others.