In case you’ve somehow missed the news over the past week or so, unlocking your smartphone to use on the carrier of your choice is now illegal. Even a phone you’ve purchased yourself. We can’t do what we want with our own smartphone! Our coverage yesterday confirms just how bad of a taste that left in many of our readers mouths, so today we found a petition started to change the ridiculous law. More details after the break.
A quick edit to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was put into place and as of yesterday unlocking a smartphone to use on another carrier is now illegal without the carriers consent and cooperation. This isn’t for rooting, jailbreaking and custom ROMs, but the way in which an AT&T phone is unlocked to use internationally for a business trip, or to be used on T-Mobile.
Many people are upset with the new law, considering we should get to do what we want with our own devices we purchased with our hard earned (and taxed) dollars. Reports have arrived from TheNextWeb confirming that a petition has already been put into place to fight this petty law. The petition has been sent to the White House and we’ll see how it goes.
The White House Petitions website requires roughly 100,000 signatures before they even look to consider anything. The good news however, is the petition has only been online for about 3 days and already has over 21,000 signatures at this point. We have until the 23rd of February to get another 78k to reach the goal of 100,000 signatures. We should mention that even if the petition does get the required amount of signatures there’s no telling anything will get done. We know the slow speed that the ol government works at anyways right? We know there’s much more pressing things needing attention, but still. If you’d like to do more head to the site below to sign the petition and make carrier unlocking of locked smartphones legal again.
[via We the People]
- Change.org - Start, Join, and Win Campaigns for Change
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