And if you have paid it off the carriers will unlock it for you, all within the law and free.
Basically this guy cares because if this ruling isn't reversed then he's a criminal and his business will be shut down. Nothing more or less. If he cared about the people he'd be asking that phones never be locked in the first place. But he wants them locked so he can make his money unlocking them
Umm, no. The customer is getting the shaft on network and locking policies by the carriers that participate it in it. Again, If you bought an iPhone 4 for VZW or Sprint, and you wanted to switch carriers to ATT, and you were still under contract with VZW or Sprint, you'd have to pay their ETF, start new service with ATT, buy a new iPhone, and are stuck with another iPhone that can't be used. That's another $450 at the least coming out of your pocket, plus a phone that you can't use.
There, the carriers have you by the gonads, whereas if the network were all standardized, we could buy our phone directly from the maker, and take it to any carrier we choose. As I've said before, Europe, Australia, Japan, and various other places have been that way since the late 90s. The USA is the only one behind that curve, with the exception of Cingular, PacBell, and ATT, which were all using GSM at that time. VZW, Sprint, and others were all CDMa, so we were very fragmented compared to the rest of the world.
Now with LTE, there is no need to have a phone locked to a carrier. In fact, there is no need for the carrier to even sell the phone! Let them operate their network, while we buy the phone from the manufacturer. We take it wherever we want to go, they put the money into keeping their spectrum of the network stable, and remain just as competitive. win/win/win for everyone.
They will say something. Which will be to pull a Jim Dalrymple and just say 'Nope'. After all, you signed a contract to stay with the carrier and once that contract is fulfilled the carriers will unlock your phone just fine. But until then you agreed to stay, pay their roaming etc and they have the right to protect their contract.
That is how the government will view it.
We'll remind you of that the next time you have to travel overseas and pay the exorbitantly high roaming fees, that could be as high as your airfare to get overseas, which for you, as the consumer could have been avoided by having the ability to drop in a sim for a network local to where you are, and PAYG. Either way, you wouldn't be breaking your contract with your local carrier, as you would still have it when you returned!
That 83 year old is how it was ever not illegal in the first place. The original law is worded such that even jailbreaking is illegal. That old man is the one that decided that jailbreaking without using it for piracy etc was not illegal.
If you aren't doing any illegal activity with your legally purchased phone, why should the LoC care about the legality of what you are doing? You're equating this as 'guilty until proven innocent', which contrary to either ignorance or naivety, is not how this country runs.
Meanwhile - the CEO of ATT put up that unlocking website and is collecting all the names and imei #s to start prosecuting lol
And according to the law, any phone purchased before 1/26/13 can be unlocked without having to get the carrier's approval or completely fulfilling the contract. So your post is bollocks.
BL.