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Petition the Whitehouse to make unlocking cell phones legal
- joelberman 14y agoHere is a better approach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sukuriant 14y agoForgive me, but wasn't it already legal, since it was special case'd in the DMCA? This whole situation confuses me.
- sinak 14y agoYou're right - this should have "again" concatenated on the end of the title string.
- DannyBee 14y agoIt was not special cased in the DMCA. The short, generalized answer is: The DMCA's DRM circumvention provision (the one that made it not legal to decrypting dvd's you own, etc) has an exemption process, run by the registrar of copyrights every 3 years. In 2010, they exempted unlocking phones. That exemption was not renewed during the rulemaking at the end of last year, and will expire on saturday. See http://www.copyright.gov/1201/ http://www.copyright.gov/1201/
- adamtj 14y agoThis lacks vision. Petition to make locking cell phones illegal. This is also misdirected. Legislators make and unmake law. Petition them.
- tptacek 14y agoSo, petition to make cell phones cost 2x-3x more up front?
- eli 14y agoI know what you're getting at, but the DMCA and carrier subsidies don't really have much to do with each other. My contract with my carrier has early termination fees and other rules that prevent the carrier from getting screwed. This is true regardless of whether or not its legal to unlock my phone.
- tptacek 14y agoYou can already buy an iPhone unlocked from Apple, can't you? If that's what you want, why wouldn't you just do that?
- icebraining 14y agoWhy are you limiting this to iPhones?
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoMaybe it makes more economic sense in some cases to purchase the subsidized phone. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable use cases that do no affect the carrier's ability to recoup the subsidy and or have no other practical effect on the contract.
- sinak 14y agoHi everyone, I started this because I think the Librarian of Congress' decision is really bad for consumers. The new petitions feature requires 100,000 signatures to be considered. Please sign, and if you can tweet it out, share it on Facebook, or email it to a journalist, every little helps.
- eli 14y agoI think this may be (literally) misplaced. The Library of Congress and the US Copyright Office aren't really part of the Executive branch.
- asdfologist 14y agoHas any of these petitions ever accomplished anything?
- charonn0 14y agoNot to my knowledge. But then, 90% of the petitions are frivolous[1] or beyond the power of the Executive branch[2] anyway. Serious proposals (e.g. [3]) rarely meet the "publicly visible" threshold, let alone the (now 4x higher) response threshold. [1]: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/declare-monday-following-super-bowl-national-holiday/qPHHlyZV https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/declare-monday-fol... [2]: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-gerrymandering-every-state-using-algorithm-design-congressional-districts/5rCNbM2L https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-gerryman... [3]: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/call-revision-or-repeal-apportionment-act-1911/Jdt0C1Yw https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/call-revision-or-r...
- eli 14y agoUh, doesn't this petition also fall under [2]? The US Copyright Office isn't part of the Executive branch.
- charonn0 14y agoI hadn't realized the Copyright Office is under Congress (though that might explain its dysfunction.) But you're right, this petition is outside Presidential power to act upon.
- shitlord 14y agoThey are usually met with long-winded responses that boil down to "nah".
- iamdave 14y agoA beer recipe. http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/09/white-house-releases-beer-recipe-134051.html http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/09/white-house-relea...
- electic 14y agoYou will not get a response unless you put "Death Star" in it. So perhaps saying something like, "Make unlocking cell phones being used on the Death Star legal" would get a response. Otherwise, most of these will not get far even if they get the 100k signatures. For example, making research papers free and open (what Aaron Swartz wanted) got the required signatures but did not get a response.
- artursapek 14y agoIf there's any sign of degradation of the HN community, it's the rising frequency of these pointless whitehouse.gov petitions showing up on the front page.
- justhw 14y agoAnd also the rising frequency of blog posts of every minor change at GitHub.
- artursapek 14y agoMeh, there's at least some substance there. But I agree. Too much of several things.
- Diddugdot 14y agoWhy should they have such restrictive control over the device in the first place? After a successful contract completion, the device should be the end-users 100%, but it seems like the telecom's are futilely fighting to control the balance of power by "dumbing down" the absolute potential of the devices they release. This is truly scary.
- visualcsharp 14y agoTo the creator of this petition: You know that the legislative branch writes laws, right? You are effectively asking for the White House to act as dictator and simply decree that this is legal and that is not. You are part of the problem and a reason why the United States is falling apart at the seams. Stop attempting to invest authority in the Executive branch that doesn't belong to the Executive branch; they are already doing enough unconstitutional things.
- swdunlop 14y agoMore importantly, let's petition the Whitehouse to respect petitions! Has anything useful come out of "We The People" petitions beyond a pressure release valve for angry mobs?
- snarfy 14y agoAsk them what copyright law has to do with choosing your cell phone carrier.
- constantmobile 14y agoUnlocking a phone that i own should be my right. If I want to use my phone out of the country or on any provider after I have paid for is no different then changing an engine in a car.