Unlocking phones is only illegal due to the DMCA's restriction on bypassing DRM. I looked through the source code of the utility (fetched with apt-get source),

Unlocking phones is only illegal due to the DMCA's restriction on bypassing DRM. I looked through the source code of the utility (fetched with apt-get source), and it looks like is not what is happening. Effectivly, what the command does is (politly) ask the phone to unlock itself. The code that actually talks to the phone is: "usb_write(usb, cmd, cmdsize)" Where cmd=="oem unlock" If that is not enough to justify that this is not illegal DRM circumvention, after issuing the command, you must accept the terms of unlocking that is presented to you on the device.