Cellphone unlocking might become illegal soon ?

[bamx2]

Well maybe (at least temporarily).

see these links-

http://now.msn.com/unlocking-cellphones-ban-starts-january-26\

http://mashable.com/2013/01/23/unlocking-cellphones-illegal/

http://www.todaysiphone.com/2013/01/unlocking-phones-becomes-illegal-in-the-us-this-saturday/

http://www.dailytech.com/US+LoC+Res...e+for+Unlocking+Tool+Authors/article29047.htm

 

[phucheneh]

Well then...the more you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock#United_States

Wonder which company paid for the lobbyists/politicians that got this accomplished.

Hardware: you're only borrowing it from us.

Does this make rooting illegal as well?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

eh who cares (ok obviously a lot do). cell phones are unlocked worldwide to begin with. i dont think i've owned a US-model phone since... my short run with the 3GS, but seriously... for a long term phone maybe 2004 or so. motorola v600.

this is why we should buy non carrier phones.

screw the US carriers

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Still not going to stop anyone. A lot like torrenting.

 

[jacktesterson]

Whats the point of locking anyways if your on a Contract?

It's not like people can get out of Contracts anytime they want without Transferring it or paying big fees. I don't see the issue.

 

[webdave]

Whats the point of locking anyways if your on a Contract?

It's not like people can get out of Contracts anytime they want without Transferring it or paying big fees. I don't see the issue.

Using the phone with another SIM will traveling outside the country without paying the outrageous roaming fees with your US provider.

 

[openwheel]

carriers want you to upgrade every two years. They don't want people buying used smart phones and going contrac-less.

greedy bastards. US carriers are the worst.

 

[pm]

The links are a bit sensationalistic. I'm a fan of unlocking, rooting, jailbreaking phones and I have donated a fair bit of money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation over the years, and I agree with the EFF on this issue, but all that said, they aren't taking away the right to unlock your phone, they are saying that people who write tools that hack a phone to make it unlocked can be prosecuted. The titles to the linked articles are all a bit misleading since they state that something akin to "unlocking no longer allowed" or "unlocking is illegal" but in reality there aren't that many people who unlock their phones using rooting-based tools.

I still think it's a step backwards - away from freedom, away from allowing people to do what they want with the electronics that they own - but it's not quite as bad as the titles imply.

 

[cbrunny]

In Canada, the carriers are required to unlock once a contract is up - you just have to ask them. I think there is a fee, but they're not allowed to say no.

 

[gevorg]

This sucks badly for those who travel and still on a contract with their carrier. For example, you buy the latest shiny iPhone from AT&T locked with 2-year contract. Months later, you travel to another country and would like to use their local carried instead. Without unlocked phone, you'll be forced to use AT&T extortionate roaming rates, or end up buying some local junk phone.

 

[pm]

This sucks badly for those who travel and still on a contract with their carrier. For example, you buy the latest shiny iPhone from AT&T locked with 2-year contract. Months later, you travel to another country and would like to use their local carried instead. Without unlocked phone, you'll be forced to use AT&T extortionate roaming rates, or end up buying some local junk phone.

To be fair though, the last version of Ultrasn0w, the iPhone unlocker that worked was for one specific and early baseband of the iPhone 4. You couldn't use the tool to unlock a late-model iPhone 4, or 4S and you can't even jailbreak an iPhone 5. So your arguement about buying a iPhone doesn't really apply because even before the provision passed, there was no way to unlock any new iPhone that you can buy. Besides, I've found that even when my iPhone is under contract, I have been able to sweet-talk AT&T into unlocking it. Just be nice, patient and persistent. It's certainly a lot easier nowadays to sweettalk AT&T into unlocking an iPhone than it was back in late August 2007 when I took my brand new shiny original iPhone (2G) apart, and scrapped the PCB with an Xacto knife so that I could solder a wire to it so that I could enable access to the JTAG port of the baseband controller so that I could then hack into the ROM to rewrite a portion of the baseband using Hayes Modem commands.

Again, I'm not try to argue that this change to the exemptions of the DMCA is a good thing in any way, shape or form. I'm just trying to put it in perspective.

It's interesting but I don't see that the EFF attempted to argue for an extension of the unlocking provision for the 2012 session.
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/reply/electronic_frontier_foundation.pdf

I wonder why they dropped their lobbying for that provision...?

I notice that the Consumer's Union (ie. "Consumer Reports") argued for it.
And I notice that MetroPCS strongly argued for it.

The main opposition - the only one as far as I can tell - which opposed extending the unlocking provision was CTIA.
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/reply/ctia-the_wireless_association.pdf

 

[pm]

To reply to my own post, I emailed one of the lawyers at the EFF to ask why they didn't directly address unlocking in their latest public comment. I'm not sure if he'll answer, but I'll be curious what he says.

 

[elkinm]

My only question is how is the DMCA at all related to locking a phone? Especially if rooting is still legal?

I (kind of) read the entire document and did not find any reasonable connection between network and copyright.

Unlocking a phone can in no way give you access to software you would not otherwise, only block access to some carrier only software.

I am trying to move my family to a T-Mobile value plan with my own phones. I would love for the US to be all unsubsidized, but it may be hard as most countries I know of with only unsubsidized phones ban locked phones to prevent carriers from luring people in with subsidiaries.

 

[pm]

My only question is how is the DMCA at all related to locking a phone? Especially if rooting is still legal?

I (kind of) read the entire document and did not find any reasonable connection between network and copyright.

Unlocking a phone can in no way give you access to software you would not otherwise, only block access to some carrier only software.

I am trying to move my family to a T-Mobile value plan with my own phones. I would love for the US to be all unsubsidized, but it may be hard as most countries I know of with only unsubsidized phones ban locked phones to prevent carriers from luring people in with subsidiaries.

I'm not an expert, merely an overly interested party, but as I understand it, the DMCA has an anti-circumvention clause in it that restricts people from hacking copyrighted software - primarily to make it so that hackers can't legally work around limitations in the software related to copyrights (ie. strip out the DRM from a blu-ray, for example). But while it blanket restricts anti-circumvention, there's the ability to add exemptions to the DMCA by writing to the Librarian of Congress to petition for an exemption - for example, showing a portion of a movie to students as part of a class. As I understand it, every two years the Librarian of Congress or maybe it's the copyright office, releases the current list of DMCA exemptions based on their decision based on public comment.

Here's the wikipedia entry on exemptions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions

So there used to be an exemption that allowed people to hack the software of a phone to allow them to unlock it to use on any carrier, and that exemption has not been renewed. So, hypothetically, authors of a tool which unlocks iPhones (as an example) could be sued for releasing a tool which circumvents access control and unlocks iPhones - even if they made no money from the tool.

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm not an expert, merely an overly interested party, but as I understand it, the DMCA has an anti-circumvention clause in it that restricts people from hacking copyrighted software - primarily to make it so that hackers can't legally work around limitations in the software related to copyrights (ie. strip out the DRM from a blu-ray, for example). But while it blanket restricts anti-circumvention, there's the ability to add exemptions to the DMCA by writing to the Librarian of Congress to petition for an exemption - for example, showing a portion of a movie to students as part of a class. As I understand it, every two years the Librarian of Congress or maybe it's the copyright office, releases the current list of DMCA exemptions based on their decision based on public comment.

Here's the wikipedia entry on exemptions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions

So there used to be an exemption that allowed people to hack the software of a phone to allow them to unlock it to use on any carrier, and that exemption has not been renewed. So, hypothetically, authors of a tool which unlocks iPhones (as an example) could be sued for releasing a tool which circumvents access control and unlocks iPhones - even if they made no money from the tool.

That's a terrible law!

Everything is illegal apart from certain exemptions is exactly the opposite of what a good law should be.

 

[pm]

That's a terrible law!

Everything is illegal apart from certain exemptions is exactly the opposite of what a good law should be.

Yeah... we got our act together when SOPA was being debated, but when the DMCA was passed in 1998 the computer industry seemed to not really be paying much attention.

I will say that when the DMCA was passed and I read about what it was and what it did it was the first time that I really started paying attention to all of this. Since then I've donated to the EFF several times, I've written opinion pieces for when public comments are taken on issues, and I've started donating and writing letters to my representatives.

One thing that I will say is that if any US citizen is really truly outraged by this unlocking decision, then you should get involved in the process. There were only 674 public comments submitted to the copyright office regarding the DMCA exemptions in the last half of 2012. If you look through them, they are almost entirely arguing for being to "jailbreak" or "root" devices and I couldn't find many that were arguing for the unlocking provision. The people submitting comments for unlocking were arguing for 6A, 6B and 6C. CITA wrote a big opposition to it, but look yourself how many people wrote in favor of unlocking
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/
Scan through and look for 6A, 6B and 6C and then read the comments. There really were very few.

Only 674 people (and corporations) took the time to write and explain their position on the DMCA provisions and only roughly 16 - yes, only 16 total - wrote about the unlocking provision. It's really a small number. I would say that this idea that our voices are never heard has more to do with the fact that very few of us (including myself this time) actually speak up at all.

Truthfully, I was much more passionate about protecting unlocking until AT&T changed their policy and decided to allow unlocking of all of their phones at which point I mostly stopped caring.



By the way, the EFF lawyer wrote back and said - effectively - that they spent their energy arguing for the jailbreaking exemptionand left it to the Consumer's Union to argue to for the unlocking exemption. Or at least that's how I read his reply.

 

[phucheneh]

Wait, I thought jailbreaking and unlocking were interchangeable terms? Unlocking is the 'SIM lock' one, right? Is jailbreaking just used in the same context as 'rooting'?

I guess I'm out of the loop on the semantics here, as I've only ever really heard 'jailbreaking' used in the context of iPhones, and it was most popular when they were not available on all carriers.

 

[WelshBloke]

Wait, I thought jailbreaking and unlocking were interchangeable terms? Unlocking is the 'SIM lock' one, right? Is jailbreaking just used in the same context as 'rooting'?

I guess I'm out of the loop on the semantics here, as I've only ever really heard 'jailbreaking' used in the context of iPhones, and it was most popular when they were not available on all carriers.

Unlocking is to do with what network you can use the phone on.
Jailbreaking is giving yourself elevated user rights in the operating system.

 

[elkinm]

I'm not an expert, merely an overly interested party, but as I understand it, the DMCA has an anti-circumvention clause in it that restricts people from hacking copyrighted software - primarily to make it so that hackers can't legally work around limitations in the software related to copyrights (ie. strip out the DRM from a blu-ray, for example). But while it blanket restricts anti-circumvention, there's the ability to add exemptions to the DMCA by writing to the Librarian of Congress to petition for an exemption - for example, showing a portion of a movie to students as part of a class. As I understand it, every two years the Librarian of Congress or maybe it's the copyright office, releases the current list of DMCA exemptions based on their decision based on public comment.

Here's the wikipedia entry on exemptions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions

So there used to be an exemption that allowed people to hack the software of a phone to allow them to unlock it to use on any carrier, and that exemption has not been renewed. So, hypothetically, authors of a tool which unlocks iPhones (as an example) could be sued for releasing a tool which circumvents access control and unlocks iPhones - even if they made no money from the tool.

I understand the part about circumventing for access to copyrighted maretial, however, the documents specifically mentions jailbraking and/or (rooting) is legal.

The rooting is hacking or circumventing software. But the carrier lock in itself is not software related in general. Meaning if you root a properly locked phone you can put any software you like on it, but it still will not unlock the radio for use with another carrier.
Granted apple products may be different but I doubt it.

The lock as I understand it in the hardware, and in no way can grant access to copyrighted material.
If the law can consider the cell service itself as copyrighted material, a locked phone cannot restrict access to the copyrighted material, it can only restrict legal access to other copyrighted material (another network) since only the carrier can hold a copyright to it's network, but I am free to use, and share all the copyrighted material (network) on the network the phone is locked to right?

I see this the exact opposite of copyright and simply anti-competitive practices, more so than what they mentioned regarding jailbraking.

 

[phucheneh]

Unlocking is to do with what network you can use the phone on.
Jailbreaking is giving yourself elevated user rights in the operating system.

So jailbreaking and rooting are the same, then?

That confuses me, though, as I always heard the term with regard to getting your iPhone to function on a network other than ATT (which was the sole authorized carrier upon initial release, IIRC).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking

According to that, it sounds like you HAVE to jailbreak an iPhone TO unlock it...yet if you look at the entry on SIM locking, it mentions flashing firmware to circumvent...

Essentially, I just don't understand the above post mentioning someone lobbying for jailbreaking but not unlocking, as the two seem inexorably linked. Also, it kind of seems backwards, or at the very least redundant.

You jailbreak/root to gain full control over the device. It still has the factory software installed. You're not distributing the software, you don't have the source code...as someone else asked, how does this involve copyrighting? It's like making it illegal to have an Administrator account in Windows.

Flashing firmware goes a step further, but has two distinct 'versions':

1) You can flash to another carrier's firmware...while the intent (using the hardware you own with any service provider) seems like it should be entirely legal, I can see the execution ('stealing' the new provider's firmware) having dubious legality.

2) You can flash to new aftermarket firmware. You're not 'pirating' anything, and again, you own the device...calling this illegal is certainly absurd. Again, you make a parallel to 'normal' computers; you buy a Windows desktop/laptop, get rid of the copy of Windows (that you own, since the device came with a license), and install a free Linux distro. I don't think we'll ever see Microsoft pursuing legal ramifications for buying their product and not using it...

...our legal system really is completely FUBAR.

 

[pm]

elkinm, I'm not really going to try to argue the other side since I mostly agree with you. It's not a copyright issue as long as the unlocking software doesn't actually involving copyrighted material.

Here's CTIA's arguement against unlocking. I personally found it unpersuasive and I only skimmed it since it's dense reading.
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/Bruce_G._Joseph.pdf

Note, I'm not a lawyer, so if my terminology is not legally accurate, please ignore it.

That said, as I read it basically their view is, the software the phone runs on - including the baseband - are all copyrighted. Any change to this software to enable a feature (SIM unlock in this case) is a change/modification to the copyrighted software which is a violation of the DMCA. Use of the anti-circumvention exemption to enable it is a doesn't actually apply since the anti-circumvention provision doesn't apply in this case since this isn't seeking to circumvent copy protection but instead is just straight up modifying copyrighted code. So they think the exemption is invalid. And even if it were to be valid, it's not justified (and then they go into great detail as to how you can buy unlocked devices if you just pay full price).


Edit:
phucheneh, I'm not arguing anything... except that this provision is mostly a don't care in my opinion because no one I know actually unlocks their phone using unlocking tools... and if anyone actually has unlocked their phone recently (last two years or sooner) using some hacker-based tool (and not paying someone on Ebay to submit a real request), I'd be curious to know how and why. But I do generally agree with you...

And yes, in my experience, you have to jailbreak to be able to unlock. But theoretically, you shouldn't need to. But to get access to the commands to read/write the baseband ROM you generally have to have root (or "jailbreak" in iOS parlance).

So jailbreaking and rooting are the same, then?

Yes. Same thing. Android people call it rooting (which is an accurate description) and iOS/iPhone people call it jailbreaking (which is always confusing). They are the same exact thing.

That confuses me, though, as I always heard the term with regard to getting your iPhone to function on a network other than ATT (which was the sole authorized carrier upon initial release, IIRC).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking

According to that, it sounds like you HAVE to jailbreak an iPhone TO unlock it...yet if you look at the entry on SIM locking, it mentions flashing firmware to circumvent...

In my experience as an unlocker of iPhones (I did it for my own phones from the original iPhone up through the iPhone 3GS), usually unlocking goes something like, you gain "root" access to the phone and then either write a chunk of code which is resident in memory which changes the code to look if it's locked, or change the result of an unlock check so that it returns the unlocked value.

I've never seen anyone flash an unlock baseband firmware. You modify the firmware that's already there.

The closest thing to flashing a firmware that I've seen is flashing an iPhone 3GS baseband over to the 1st iPad and then modifying the newly installed iPad baseband firmware to return "true" to an unlocked query.

Essentially, I just don't understand the above post mentioning someone lobbying for jailbreaking but not unlocking, as the two seem inexorably linked. Also, it kind of seems backwards, or at the very least redundant.

I don't think they need to be linked. But in the realworld, so far, they have been.

You jailbreak/root to gain full control over the device. It still has the factory software installed. You're not distributing the software, you don't have the source code...as someone else asked, how does this involve copyrighting? It's like making it illegal to have an Administrator account in Windows.

Flashing firmware goes a step further, but has two distinct 'versions':

1) You can flash to another carrier's firmware...while the intent (using the hardware you own with any service provider) seems like it should be entirely legal, I can see the execution ('stealing' the new provider's firmware) having dubious legality.

2) You can flash to new aftermarket firmware. You're not 'pirating' anything, and again, you own the device...calling this illegal is certainly absurd. Again, you make a parallel to 'normal' computers; you buy a Windows desktop/laptop, get rid of the copy of Windows (that you own, since the device came with a license), and install a free Linux distro. I don't think we'll ever see Microsoft pursuing legal ramifications for buying their product and not using it...

I'm fine with both points, except that they aren't how I've seen unlocks happen. Unlocks seem to involve taking a code sequence and modifying it so that the result of the unlock check is that the phone is unlocked (or something like that).

 

[phucheneh]

phucheneh, I'm not arguing anything... except that this provision is mostly a don't care in my opinion because no one I know actually unlocks their phone using unlocking tools... and if anyone actually has unlocked their phone recently (last two years or sooner) using some hacker-based tool (and not paying someone on Ebay to submit a real request), I'd be curious to know how and why. But I do generally agree with you...

And yes, in my experience, you have to jailbreak to be able to unlock. But theoretically, you shouldn't need to. But to get access to the commands to read/write the baseband ROM you generally have to have root (or "jailbreak" in iOS parlance).

I'm definitely not trying to argue/debate with anyone. More just satisfying my own curiosity. If someone can provide a source for the reasoning used in these legal decisions (or otherwise expand my knowledge), I'd consider that to be just providing information; not making a counterargument.

I don't quite understand your meaning with regards to using automatic tools, though. With this exemption expiring, carriers are no longer required to allow unlocking*, so...what other way is there? For those of us that don't write code or have nearly enough understanding to do this stuff without help, what option is there other than an executable program/batchfile or whatnot?

*Does allow = support in this context? As in, did all carriers HAVE TO give you a method for unlocking your phone if you requested it, or could they simply say something to the extend of 'we're not legally allowed to say you can't do it, but you're on your own'?

edit: you added some more edit.

But that does clarify things; I've never done unlocks, so I thought there was more to it. Information on Wikipedia misled me; go figure.

 

[pm]

I'm definitely not trying to argue/debate with anyone. More just satisfying my own curiosity. If someone can provide a source for the reasoning used in these legal decisions (or otherwise expand my knowledge), I'd consider that to be just providing information; not making a counterargument.

I don't quite understand your meaning with regards to using automatic tools, though. With this exemption expiring, carriers are no longer required to allow unlocking*, so...what other way is there? For those of us that don't write code or have nearly enough understanding to do this stuff without help, what option is there other than an executable program/batchfile or whatnot?

*Does allow = support in this context? As in, did all carriers HAVE TO give you a method for unlocking your phone if you requested it, or could they simply say something to the extend of 'we're not legally allowed to say you can't do it, but you're on your own'?

edit: you added some more edit.

But that does clarify things; I've never done unlocks, so I thought there was more to it. Information on Wikipedia misled me; go figure.

Yeah, it's a bad habit of mine to keep editing. My rule is that I stop when someone else replies. But yeah, I should stop doing that. But I don't like to post one thing and then make a new post of mine below it because... I don't know, I'm weird I guess...

The exemption never required carriers to unlock. It allowed people to write tools to allow users to unlock. Carriers decide to unlock because... well, honestly I'm never quite sure why they do it, but I'd guess that they do it as a good-will gesture to prevent the FCC requiring that they do it. But as of right now, Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile will unlock anything at a user's request as long as they are in good standing... and AT&T makes you try to justify it if it's an iPhone. But the DMCA exemption and carriers unlocking are, to my mind anyway, completely unrelated things.

As far as the executable quesstion.. and here I am editing again after I posted... forgive me..

The executables are just doing exactly what I described except as a program. Usually you can do it manually, or just have a program do the same thing. Since programs don't make typos that could render the phone inoperable, most people prefer to let a program do it for them. But I've manually -by hand - hacked hexadecimal code to re-write portions of the baseband firmware. It's a bit nerve-wracking though. I prefer executables for this too.

 

[wirednuts]

i thought they made it law that you cant be punished for unlocking your phone... this was like a couple years ago... ugh...

 

[pm]

i thought they made it law that you cant be punished for unlocking your phone... this was like a couple years ago... ugh...

No, it wasn't a law. It was a temporary exemption to the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. And that exemption expired and was not renewed.