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Saturday, March 9, 2013

postheadericon Congress Rushes To Legalize Phone Unlocking; But Existing Bills Need A Lot More Work

Well, what a difference 114 000 signatures, presidential support, and an investigation by the FCC do! As the militant leadership on this issue, I can say that in Congress, there has been a significant change in the field of mobile phone unlocking. Several Republicans and Democrats have said publicly in favor and against the criminal hand open. On Monday, a few hours after the approval of the presidential statement, we heard Rep. Chaffetz worked on legislation - through him tweeting:


Tuesday, Senator Wyden introduced his bill, the Act of Independence of the wireless device. This is a good first step, but unfortunately it does not really solve the problem for the moment. In its current form, seems to allow people to discover their own phones, but retains the development, sale, trafficking and discuss the technological tools and cell phone unlock still illegal. Without these tools are legalized, the release is still actually illegal.

today, we heard many members of Congress who support the legalization of release, including Rep. Darrell Issa and Representative Polis Jarred. There was also a statement of Senator Patrick Leahy, who was considered by many as a green light for other Democrats to pass legislation. Senator Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, issued this statement:


"I intend to work in one of two parties, two chambers to restore the ability of users to unlock their phone and give them the choice and freedom we have all become accustomed to expect in the digital age, "
  1. Then on Thursday, Senator Amy Klobochar, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator Mike Lee introduced Act wireless consumer choice (and Representative Anna Eshoo plans to introduce complementary legislation House).


Senator Lee:



"Consumers should not have to fear prosecution if they unlock their cell phones and switching companies ... increased competition between wireless is the way safest increase the consumer is. "

This statement is misleading because it implies that this bill - but it is not really that Act choices GIVE wireless consumers.

The current text of the Law on Consumer Choice Wireless said: "[FCC] leading commercial providers of commercial mobile services and services mobile data to allow subscribers to these services, or agent of the subscribers to unlock any type of wireless device used to access those services. "This text is a bill to confusion. Here are some problems. What does the authorization in this context? They are:


Door actively
can not stop consumers of technology (unlikely).
Carriers
can not stop consumers (but not addresses or other manufacturers that the Department of Justice goes after criminal charges). Facilitate to provide unlock codes to order? Would give you the codes, even if you are on a contract to unlock? No permit is required for this period?



All we know for sure is that the "permission" has nothing to do with the adjustment of contract terms "allow consumers to" unlock under your contract (all the legislation seems to have a clause requested by CTIA that will not affect the rights of existing contracts). Basically, this law states that mobile phone companies can not enforce section 1201 of the DMCA .
But it does not protect against manufacturers such as Apple, HTC, etc. occurs after users (as was the case Khanifar Sina, who accompanied me in the campaign activism to unlock)., and does not protect against the criminal provisions, which would require another Act. So it has nothing to do with criminal law, it is unclear why the statement of Senator Lee would criminal law, however, it seems that you can enter a new subsidiary legislation dealing specifically as criminal provisions.
Ok, so now we're in a total of two Bills presented.

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

good post

Unknown said...

The updated information is.....It is now legal to get our phones unlocked from third party unlocking services in U.S. Recently, I unlocked my mobile .I had to travel outside my country and I had to unlock it very quickly. My network provider prolonged the unlock process...and luckily the amendment of unlocking phone made legal saved my time. I used the service from Prounlocking.com and removed the network lock very easily. They unlocked my phone within few hours....