…Altogether now, “it’s none of the state’s damned business”.
Over the pond, in the land of the free, consumers have to get permission to unlock their phones.
From Saturday, Americans will have to get permission to “unlock” their smartphone so it runs on more than one mobile network.
On that date a 90-day time limit that made it legal to unlock phones without permission is due to expire.
Many Americans unlocked their phones to avoid running up big bills when travelling outside the US.
Look, the all caring state granted them an amnesty for 90 days – how kind, how generous of the state to “allow” people to do what they wish with their own property.
I have a smartphone and it is the first I have had that has been locked. I’ll probably replace it with an unlocked one when the time comes. But if I decide to unlock it in the meantime, I will and my provider will not be consulted. As it is, in the UK I don’t need to, but even if I did, I wouldn’t on principle. I’ve paid for it, I own it, I’ll do as I damned well please with it and the state has no business poking its nose into a contract between customer and provider.
An online petition has been started asking for unlocking without permission to be made permanently legal.
Pleeeeeeese Mr Obama, can we play with our toys, pleeeeeeeese? You don’t ask these authoritarian shits, you tell them by treating their petty laws with the level of respect they so richly deserve.
In addition, many online services have sprung up that unlock phones for a small fee and some have said the change will have no effect on them.
Precisely.
“I’ve paid for it, I own it”
Have you REALLY paid the full retail price for it though? If you bought it with a contract the provider will have subsidised the true cost, which could easily be £500 or more. That’s why they will have locked it to their network…
I expected someone to come up with this argument. Over the course of the contract, the handset is more than covered. Mine already is. However, any such arrangement is between the customer and the provider – it is nothing to do with the state. or, at least, it shouldn’t be.
That’s true MD, if you got it cheap you bought it on a contract. The contract includes both the price of the phone plus calls and data on that network. You are locked into paying that contract for the term. In an honest world where phone companies charged an honest rate it wouldn’t matter if you unlocked it – and indeed there would be no real point in unlocking, why would you not want to use the phone time you were paying for?
One reason for unlocking the phone is to use it abroad. The home network is unaffected by this as the contract continues to be paid and they have no entitlement to the roaming charges that are otherwise invoked. No one is being cheated. Indeed, providing the contract continues to be paid, using another network’s SIM for whatever reason, is irrelevant and no one is affected.
Wait, what ?
Unlocking software, services and online forums have been at this for years and years and years. Have the americans only just caught up ?
Or is it that only now governments are sticking their noses in ?
I don’t understand this one…
It did rather surprise me because I thought it was pretty mainstream and had been for years. It would seem that it wan’t okay in the states but there’s been a brief amnesty.
Turns out it’s a bit more complicated than it might have seemed at first…
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/unlocking-your-new-smartphone-is-now-illegal-what-you-need-to-know/
Is anyone really surprised that feral unregulated capitalism turns out to be authoritarian?
Er, it’s the regulation that’s doing this.
To quote Ludwig Von Mises:
“As a rule, capitalism is blamed for the undesired effects of a policy directed at its elimination.”
Even more true now as when it was originally written in 1940.
“feral unregulated capitalism”
You mean voluntary trade.
The only way voluntary trade can become “authoritarian” is when it’s no longer voluntary.
And that happens through your mates, the small elite with a monopoly on violence known as the government.
You can easily see this in that the more controlled by government an industry is, the crapper it is – lower quality, higher price, and inadequate supply.
So your sneering remarks are the complete opposite of reality.
Freedom never fails.
Government is a brutally violent, authoritarian failure to its very core.
Er, this has bugger all to do with the market unregulated or otherwise – it is about the state poking its nose into stuff that is none of its business.