[ale] [OT] White House Petition to Legalize Mobile-Phone Unlocking

[Jay Lozier]

On 02/22/2013 07:20 PM, Brian Mathis wrote:
> Why should you need to ask permission to unlock your phone?  You paid
> for it.  If you want to break the contract that's fine, but you would
> be subject to a termination fee which should cover the subsidy.  And
> since most contracts already have large termination fees, they can't
> argue that it's about that.
>
> Worse is that the phone is still locked after the contract is over.
> If I want to sell my old phone, I need to hope that the phone company
> will give their blessing, and many have rules that you must have an
> active account, it must be in good standing, etc... in order to unlock
> it.  This is *after* you have paid off the contract and probably
> signed onto a new one with a new device.
>
> The only reason is to increase the friction for you leaving for
> another carrier, and that is anti-consumer and can only happen in an
> oligopolistic market.
>
>
> ❧ Brian Mathis
DMCA provisions are worded so that jailbreaking a phone is the same as 
breaking the DRM on a CD/DVD. There is an exception for assistive 
technologies that has to be issued by the Library of Congress every 3 
years. It lapsed about 1 week ago.

Congress critters are proving Thomas Brackett Reed's observation that 
most only "subtract from the sum total of human knowledge" when they 
open their mouths.
>
> P.S. Why does my phone bill not go down after I have supposedly paid
> off the subsidy?  Because the prices of non-contract phones are
> inflated on purpose as an incentive to sign a contract.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 11:44 AM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
>> Or we can just purchase unlocked phones. There are lots of choices. Nobody forces anyone to buy a subsidized phone, though the fact that cell plans do not include a BYOD discount is a problem.
>>
>> Last fall, I contacted t-mobile to get a locked phone unlocked prior to an overseas trip. About 5 days later an email arrived with the unlock code. No real difficulty at all, except the wait.
>>
>> Remember when cell phones were a convenience?
>>
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-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier at gmail.com