Illegal to unlock locked carrier phones!

Roguetadhg · January 2013

Unauthorized unlocking of smartphones becomes illegal Saturday | Crave - CNET

Thought I'd leave this tasty tidbit of information for us techies.

tpatt100 · January 2013

I guess I can see the point where you do have choices in purchasing unlocked phones, consumers just don't like paying full price for them. On the other hand I thought people unlock phones after they are off contract if they want to move carriers (if they can)?

RobertKaucher · January 2013

https://ting.com/ I do not thing they will care. It's over the Sprint network.

About7Narwhal · January 2013

That story is misleading. The way I understand it is that unlocking and moving to another carrier is illegal without permission. The story makes it sound like jailbreaking / rooting a phone is not illegal which simply isn't the case.

Devilsbane · January 2013

Saw the article and then came here to see what was being said.

Unlocking Phones Without Carrier Permission Now Illegal - Bonnie Cha - Mobile - AllThingsD

I haven't read the law, but it does sound that it is only illegal to unlock and then move to another carrier. I really don't see how they can say this. If I buy a toaster, I'm more than capable of taking it apart and changing how it works. Why wouldn't the same be true for a phone? I bought it fair and square and now it is mine to do what I see fit with.

Imran_Haider · January 2013

About7Narwhal wrote: »

That story is misleading. The way I understand it is that unlocking and moving to another carrier is illegal without permission. The story makes it sound like jailbreaking / rooting a phone is not illegal which simply isn't the case.

Yup. That looks like Code breaking is jail breaking. lolzz
anyhow they can't make law like this because people use code breaking when they are in different country... etc....

There is company unlock and personal unlocking ways.... (2nd option not allows full features...)

netsysllc · January 2013

I think it would be hard for them to get anything to hold up in court if they were to take someone to trial for this. It is perfectly legal to get a phone on contract and turn around and resell it. The person is still liable for the contract even though they don't have the phone. The contract is on the service not the phone itself.

Roguetadhg · January 2013

From what I've read it's when you get a phone with a contract. If you pay for the phone outright [Full Price], it's alright. However, if you go down to the local Verizon store, pick up an iPhone subsidized (Verizon picks up the majority of the phone cost), you're forbidden to unlock it.

DevilWAH · January 2013

netsysllc wrote: »

I think it would be hard for them to get anything to hold up in court if they were to take someone to trial for this. It is perfectly legal to get a phone on contract and turn around and resell it. The person is still liable for the contract even though they don't have the phone. The contract is on the service not the phone itself.

While you own the physical hardware, you do not own software, like windows it is a licence model and like with most software is is protected under law. In the same way as, reverse engineering windows, or bypassing the authentication system can land you in trouble, so can making changes to the software code running on your hand set. You know the bit of the licence agreement that goes "no part of this code my be copied or altered with out prior agreement....". This is a nice blanket clause that has very few loopholes, and if the carriers and manufactures don't want you to unlock the phone then all they have to do is insure that the code that locks/unlocks the handset is covered by this licence agreement.

Illegal to unlock locked carrier phones!

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