US Deems Phone Unlocking Illegal

The US introduced the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) back in 1998.

From time to time the US revises it ..

The latest set of revisions, as reported by Digital Trends, are a little .. well .. “odd” would be too polite a word, so let’s go with “crazy”.

Under the new provisions in the DMCA a lot of the things that we all do in Europe would be deemed illegal.

While you can “jail break” a smartphone, if you try to unlock it so that you can use it with another network operator this is now deemed illegal.

Other changes are simply illogical:

Ripping a DVD you legally own so you can watch the movie or TV shows on a device that cannot play DVDs, like a tablet or laptop without an optical drive, is illegal. Same goes for CDs. As Michael Weinberg of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge notes, this rule “flies in the face of reality,” especially given the fact that both the MPAA and RIAA agree that consumers should be allowed to do this.

Copyright legislation is not exactly renowned for being logical ..

Related articles

• UnLocking Smartphones Unlegal (landbar.wordpress.com)
• DMCA rules it’s okay to jailbreak your iPhone, but not your iPad (imore.com)
• Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets (arstechnica.com)
• Unlocking your smartphone will soon be illegal, and other DMCA new rule insanity (digitaltrends.com)
• DMCA update shuts down new phone unlocking next year, allows rooting (but not for tablets) (engadget.com)