Legality of unlocking an iPhone

“When people unlock phones, Apple loses revenue it was hoping for, but also gains customers who would have never bought an iPhone in the first place. That’s life.” Great article on legality of unlocking your iPhones on
Slate.

Unlocking works, is doable, and improves the iPhone. But while unlocking can be fun, it's still a vaguely scary process, a little like installing your own car brakes.

... The famous Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, makes it illegal to break digital locks to get at copyrighted works ... It's true that the library's rule doesn't say anything about people who help you unlock your phone or "traffic" in software to do so. But its logic tracks recent case law suggesting that unlocking for compatibility, as opposed to copyright infringement, is no crime.

[via Nerve Endings Firing Away]

emily | 7:47 AM | News, Buzz |
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