Hahaha...
i LOVE this forum!
FIRST: You are correct sir, I am not an attorney. Thus, my ingenious handle, DrWeevil. I'm a vet! (No, I was not in the military!)
SECOND: I got out of work waaaay too early today, and the weather was a lil crummy. People skip out on walkin their dogs to the vet when it's crummy out. I've had a bit of free time on my hands today. So I sat down to my laptop and thought of some Subject I could post here to see what nerves I could irritate. THEN, I had to give it some meat to fill in the message body... and that's when the Verizon case came to mind. OBVIOUSLY, nobody who has any sense about them (or value for time) would put up a suit. I doubt any class-action attorney with any sense would take the case. BUT, the US has a TON of people who have no sense about them whatsoever. So, I thought it might be funny to see what they do with their excessive idle time.
I came back from the gym about two hours after posting this and you guys already generated TWO PAGES of smack talk! AWESOME!!!

hahahaha Now THAT is my free-time well spent! hahahahaha
THIRD: I'll admit that the Verizon case is not a perfect legal precedent. I know Jack about legal precedent. However, those of you who are arguing the disabling MMS is like getting an HDTV then suing Pioneer for not having the channels are skipping a few steps in your analogy.
Here, I wasn't saying Apple (the equivalent to Pioneer in AppleMark's analogy) was at fault. I am stating AT&T is to blame. His analogy might work better if Dish network sold him an unlimited HDTV package AND sold him a Pioneer HDTV, then disabled the TV from receiving HD programming.
While somebody out there is going to say, "You're NOT paying for MMS already," indeed many of us are. I am on a family messaging plan which does include unlimited MMS. I am already paying for it. Further, it requires ZERO "programming" on AT&T's end to "enable" the network with any new phone. This is a fact I've verified with my old college friends who now develop and test hardware for AT&T and T-Mobile. As I said in my initial post, they've actually already been using MMS on their iPhones on AT&T in the US for about 2 months now. Their network is already "programmed". AT&T has just disabled it on our units. THAT's where this is close to the Verizon suit.
Again, you are correct in saying that AT&T never advertised that the iPhone would be transmitting MMS, or at least not until the fall. WHERE THEY FAIL: THEY ARE CHARGING ME MONTHLY FOR MY PLAN THAT ALLOWS ANY PHONE I ACTIVATE ON THEIR NETWORK TO TRANSMIT UNLIMITED SMS AND MMS. UNTIL NOW, THEY WERE ABLE TO CLAIM THE iPHONE WAS INCAPABLE OF MMS. NOW, 1) THE PHONE IS CAPABLE, 2) THEIR NETWORK IS CAPABLE, yet they choose to disable the feature. Where Verizon was attacked for misrepresenting the new Motorola hardware unit, AT&T is misrepresenting their Unlimited Messaging plan.
In talking further with my friends just now, they tell me they unlocked their iPhones to work on any network, swapped out their SIMs, and Kah-BLAM... MMS was being transmitted on T-Mobile's network with their iPhones... NO ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING!!! . As the functionality is all already built around standard protocols, it rarely even a matter of a few porting issues... only needed if the phone was developed out-of-standards; though this hasn't been the case in years now. By no means is it something that would take months.
Lastly, as I said in the initial post, MMS is NOT disabled because of network bandwidth. If AT&T can **STREAM** TV, they can send MMS. Yes, this would assume then that they have additional bandwidth above and beyond their current tv-streaming capacity. My logical guess (NOT something i've verified) is that they do; else, how are they now able to add the capacity for a new ***pay-per-month*** service to STREAM navigational maps and traffic data, yet incapable of transmitting the MMS for which I have already paid?
FOURTH: Yeah, tethering is not a good example here cuz I haven't paid for an unlimited data plan that covers ad-on hardware; just covers the phone itself.
FIFTH: I'd have other things to say, but as much fun a time as you all have shown me, I'm now starting to feel guilty about not catching up on some real reading. I spent waaaaay too much time jerkin around today.

I'll let y'all run with this new gift for a bit...
