Phone Unlocking Bill Unveiled as Group Takes Aim at DMCA




iPhone lockscreen

Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced a legislation that would make it legal for cell phone consumers to unlock their cell phones without carrier permission where the unlocking of cell phones was previously banned in October by the Library of Congress (LOC) Copyright Office. It’s called the Wireless Consumer Choice Act, calls on the FCC to allow consumers to lawfully unlock cell phones. “Consumer should have flexibility and choice when it comes to their wireless service and they deserve to keep and use cell phones they have already purchased,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said. Sens. Blumenthal and Sen. Amy Klobuchar on the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing with the FCC on March 12, allowing Congress to examine the issue of consumer rights in the wireless marketplace. The Copyright Office reviews the rules of unlocking every three years as required by the DMCA. The regulators saw that there is such a wide array of unlocked phone options available to the point where there appears that consumers no longer has the need to unlock their own cell phones. OpenSignal’s Sina Khanifar didn’t agree with the ruling who added a petition which was reviewed and was given a response by the White House on Monday. The Obama Administration called on Congress and the FCC to make unlocking legal again. Although Sina was joyous over the response, he believes that there needs to be revamp of the entire DMCA. He launched a website which has drawn support from EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Y Combinator, iFixit, Reddit, Mozilla, Internet Archive and others. Klobuchar is not the only one who planned to craft cell phone unlocking bills; Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Jason Chaffetz have announced plans for similar legislation to make cell phone unlocking legal.

            The people supporting this legislation hopes that it passes with flying colors and opens the door for software and/or hardware modifications of the closed-source variety to making it perfectly legal rather than reviewing this subject every few years and not do anything about this. Supporters are asked to view the website (FixTheDMCA.org) to share it on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and to tweet and email the legislators who are to vote on this later this month.

           

If this legislation were to pass, it would allow millions of Americans to unlock their cell phones again legally without carrier (AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) intervention. It could be a start of a change in the rigged DMCA enacted in 1998 allowing consumers to have more power over what they buy or what they can use after buying the object in question such as possibly removing the DRM (Digital Rights Management) in software, games, music, etc. that prevents you from modifying it to your liking or sharing it with a friend. Consumers would have more power and less bickering from the companies trying to protect their “rights” that prevents the consumer from doing what they want with a product that they had bought with their own money.