Hasta La Gadget!

Last Saturday, January 26, marked the first day that it became illegal to unlock your smartphone without permission from the carriers. Of course, many users got upset over the news and for good reason, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation has clarified some details about the new laws regarding unlocking and jailbreaking your phone.

The EFF wanted to point out that the entire situation has both positives and negatives. First, it’s still completely legal to jailbreak and root your phone (but not tablets, mind you), and that law will stand through at least 2015. However, unlocking your phone yourself is illegal as everyone says it is, but the EFF note that carriers “probably aren’t going to start suing customers en masse, RIAA-style.”

The EFF says that carriers will be more likely to sue businesses that unlock and resell phones, rather than the individuals, and the charges are stiff: up to $2,500 per unlocked phone in a civil suit, and $500,000 or five years in prison in a criminal case when the unlocking is for “commercial advantage.”

Even for phones that are no longer under contract, it’s still illegal to unlock them, proving ever more that we’re really not free to do as we want with devices that we own. This law will stay put until late 2014, when the next round of creating and defending exemptions will start back up. It’s possible that we could see lawsuits form against the DMCA, but that’s something we’ll have to wait and see on.

EFF clarifies laws behind unlocking and jailbreaking phones is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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It was great while it lasted, but the days of users legally unlocking their own phones is over. Back in October of last year, the Library of Congress added an exemption to the DMCA to allow folks to free their new phones for 90 days. That three month window has now closed. Of course, carriers are still free to offer unlocked handsets themselves, and some will also unlock them for you as long as certain conditions are met. “Legacy” or used handsets purchased before today can still be unlocked without any finger-wagging from federal courts.

So, what does this mean exactly? Well, Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Mitch Stoltz told us, “What’s happening is not that the Copyright Office is declaring unlocking to be illegal, but rather that they’re taking away a shield that unlockers could use in court if they get sued.” This does make lawsuits much more likely according to him, but it’s still up to the courts to decide the actual legality of phone unlocking. Indeed, it’s a grim day for those who want true freedom over their own devices. Stoltz said to us, “This shows just how absurd the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is: a law that was supposed to stop the breaking of digital locks on copyrighted materials has led to the Librarian of Congress trying to regulate the used cellphone market.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: Tech News Daily

Source: Library of Congress (Amazon)

One year ago today, Internet users of all ages, races, and political stripes participated in the largest protest in Internet history, flooding Congress with millions of emails and phone calls to demand they drop the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)-a dangerous bill that would have allowed corporations and the govenrment to censor larger parts of the Web. More »

The topic no one wants to talk about at CES? Yep, it’s gonna be a half-hour of frank patent litigation talk with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Julie Samuels. If you care at all about legal kerfuffles, you’re not gonna want to miss this one.

Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here!

Update: video embedded

Continue reading Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with the EFF’s Julie Samuels (update: video embedded)

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And so it passed that Congress didst layeth its blessing on the jailbreaking and rooting of all manner of devices; the hacking community saw the miracle and rejoiced. But that amendment to the DMCA two years ago was just a temporary exemption and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been vigorously lobbying to get it reinstated. The Library of Congress has now done just that through a new three year extension, but with some serious caveats: After 90 days, unlocking of new phones will be verboten and all tablet mods will still be illegal. This differs from the 2010 decision which did allow unlocking, because the Librarian decided that a recent copyright ruling means fair use rules no longer apply to a handset’s OS. It also said the exception isn’t needed anymore because carrier rules regarding unlocking are now more liberal — although the lawmaker may be confounding chicken with egg by that reasoning.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile

DMCA update shuts down new phone unlocking next year, allows rooting (but not for tablets) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Oct 2012 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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