Meanwhile, progress is being made to legalize cellphone unlocking. With grassroots groups leading the charge, the Obama administration announced its support for overturning the ban last week.
I'm astonished that people overwhelmingly believe this falsehood. The White House response opposes legalized phone unlocking, except to phones already out of contract. When they say they "support unlocking", they have a different interpretation of what that means:
And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren't bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network.
[...] neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation.
> I'm astonished that people overwhelmingly believe this falsehood.
Maybe that "falsehood" doesn't conform to your beliefs about what sort of unlocking should be allowed, but I think the quote you highlighted is a reasonable one.
There are legitimate reasons to allow restrictions on what can be done with subsidized devices which are still bound by a service agreement. Your comment suggests that you're astonished that people are swayed by those reasons, which comes across as a bit insulting.
If I'm allowed to take a hammer and smash the phone while it's "bound by a service agreement" I should also be allowed to fiddle with the electronics.
The reason it is not illegal to smash the phone is because it is your phone. The service agreement is a contract that you entered saying you will pay a monthly fee for two years independently of what happens to the phone. The phone is used by the phone company as an incentive to get you to enter the contract.
In any case, breaking a term of a private contract is not a criminal act. If I stop paying my monthly phone bill they can potentially sue me in civil court but the FBI won't come knocking on my door. The DMCA criminal "circumvention" statute doesn't really have anything to do with the private contract.
We're not talking about terminating an agreement. He would have to continue paying his old contract, because he said he would. Now, however, he would be able to take on a new contract with a different company, whether immediately or later on, preventing him from forever being stuck with the same carrier for that phone.
It's not like a mortgage, where the bank technically still owns part of your home. It's a package deal. When you buy the phone, subsidized or not, it's yours. The US legislature has made it illegal for you to unlock the phone, despite that fact.
Maybe that "falsehood" doesn't conform to your beliefs about what sort of unlocking should be allowed,
I think their definition disagrees with most peoples' definitions, including the one in the petition itself:
"As of January 26, consumers will no longer be able unlock their phones for use on a different network without carrier permission, even after their contract has expired."
Unlocking phones under contract is implicitly their core complaint. The White House response didn't actually respond to it.
Your comment suggests that you're astonished that people are swayed by those reasons,
I do not think this; I think they aren't aware of the issue at all.
> Unlocking phones under contract is implicitly their core complaint.
That's not so clear to me. You conveniently neglected to italicize "even after their contract has expired", which along with this phrase -- "decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full" -- seems to be included highlight the fact that the situation where a phone has been paid for in full is potentially different from a subsidized phone which is still being paid off.
Agreeing with the petition for that subset of phones isn't failing to respond to the petition.
[...] which along with this phrase -- "decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full" -- seems to be included highlight the fact that the situation where a phone has been paid for in full is potentially different from a subsidized phone which is still being paid off.
The petition is about both of them. Another of its complaints applies only to phones with contracts: roaming fees,
Consumers will be forced to pay exorbitant roaming fees to make calls while traveling abroad.
(The point being that travellers' inability to deal directly with other telcos, because of the locks on their phones, gives telcos monopoly power, allowing them to charge monopolistic rates).
You conveniently neglected to italicize "even after their contract has expired"
I did italicize it -- that's what I was emphasising! It's double-italicized so it became normal again, according to this rule, which I infer is a bit obscure (sorry for the time-wasting!)
If something within a run of italics needs to be italicized itself, the type is normally switched back to non-italicized (roman) type
Unlocking phones is explicitly their complaint. They didn't divide the issue into contract and non-contract phones: the White House lawyers created that separation.
>There are legitimate reasons to allow restrictions on what can be done with subsidized devices which are still bound by a service agreement.
Like what? As long as the customer is paying the service fee as they agreed to, the carrier shouldn't care if someone wants to use their device on another network. That means less network congestion and less necessary infrastructure, with the possible downside of fewer overage fees going to the carrier.
It's not like people would be able to buy a subsidized phone, unlock it and break their contract to go with another carrier, and pocket the subsidy. The early termination fee covers that. The carriers even say so: when Verizon increased their ETF from $175 to $350 for smartphones, they cited smartphone subsidies as their reason.
Not related to to carrier lock-in, but Kindle Fires are sold at a subsidised price, with the money made up by advertising in the OS. This advertising can be disabled for a fee. If customers were allowed to alter their device in any way they wanted, they could simply remove the ads without paying, and this business model would not be tenable.
If you accept that you should be able to do whatever you want with a device that you own as a basic premise, that just means that anyone who tries to use that untenable business model is stupid and they should come up with a better one, not that we need to make special rules so that it becomes tenable.
E.g., Kindles could be explicitly rented, rather than sold and subsidized, to exactly the same effect.
> If you accept that you should be able to do whatever you want with a device that you own as a basic premise
Then you are begging the question. If there are business models which some producers and consumers choose to participate in which involve some kind of "no-tampering" clause, then clearly there is some value in allowing such deals. If you don't like them, you're free to not participate.
There are legitimate reasons to allow restrictions on what can be done with subsidized devices which are still bound by a service agreement.
Subsidized contracts come with early termination fees and require a credit check. Unlocking was legal for years. Was there a significant problem with people unlocking phones, breaking their contracts and getting away with not paying the fee?
They may have a "different interpretation" of what it means than you do, but it's consistent with what the article claims. The White House supports "overturning the ban," "the ban" being the categorical ban on unlocking. The fact that the opposition is narrower than you would like it to be is neither here nor there.
I don't "own" a car I buy on loan until I pay that off. That doesn't preclude me from replacing seats, putting in a turbo, etc. Why should a phone be different?
Since an auto-loan is secured by the vehicle, your lender can and does put conditions on your use of the vehicle. E.g. they may require you to carry full collision & comprehensive insurance on the vehicle even if your state doesn't require it. In this situation, the lender is your carrier, and attaches a different set of conditions.
>Since an auto-loan is secured by the vehicle, your lender can and does put conditions on your use of the vehicle.
The distinction is that those are contractual conditions. If you fail to carry comprehensive insurance on your vehicle, they may repossess it etc. according to the contract, but the police don't come to arrest you.
1) Not for violating the contract with the car dealer.
2) It's not the same insurance. The law typically requires you to carry liability insurance, which covers third parties you harm. The car dealer wants you to insure against damage to the car, which the law may not require you to insure against.
FWIW, I don't think this should be a criminal issue. I support the right of the telcos to put in whatever twisted and crazy terms they want into their contracts, but their only recourse should be a civil suit.
Why should they be allowed to write onerous contracts? This isn't a freedom issue - they're specifically choosing to bid for handling a limited public resource.
Every minute of hassle and every unreasonable fee holds back the rest of society like broken windows.
Based on the first couple Auto Loan agreement contracts that popped up on a Google search, one of the terms is that the borrower agrees to keep the car in good repair and marketable condition. So you aren't allowed to enter it into a demolition derby, I guess.
Yeah but I can still go to a mechanic and do those things. When it comes to phones, the businesses that might unlock them are now gone by law. A handy position for cell phone companies: their loss leader strategy is given special legal protections.
Warranties are unrelated to cell phone unlockers. You can modify your car to comply with different company requirements. Volvo (or whoever) is just going to not honor their promise to fix things.
This is not true, at least for Verizon where I worked. Your payment for the phone was your agreement to the contract. After that you can sell, trade, destroy, or do anything else you want with the phone, except if you rooted it, the warranty was voided and no updates until you brought it back to stock.
But you haven't paid for it. You've typically paid for about 1/3 of it, and agreed to a contract which specifies a 2-year payment schedule for rest as part of your phone bill.
Yes you have. You "paid for it" when you signed the contract, to which you are obligated regardless of what happens to your phone. A mobile phone contract is not a loan; the phone is not collateral. You can't choose to give back your phone in lieu of an early termination fee.
And the early termination fee is prorated to the outstanding term of your contract. The difference from (say) a car lease simply reflects the difficulty of repossessing your phone. Meanwhile, if you get tired of the contract, you just breach it and pay the ETF. then you can unlock your phone immediately.
No; the difference from (say) a car loan reflects the fact that there's no lien created on the phone. That in turn may be because such a lien would be unenforceable. Still, the reason there's no lien is not relevant. Its absence is relevant.
If your account is current, it shouldn't make any difference. If your account is not current, there is always the civil court system, debt collection, etc.
An argument against this has been that, regardless of the phone's status -- locked or unlocked -- you are bound by the terms of the contract you entered. Specifically, you are still paying the monthly fee and so paying off the subsidy on the phone (one can argue, although a true, cost-based accounting argument might have you paying off that subsidy in a smaller subset of the initial months).
What unlocking then provides, is the ability to escape onerous terms and fees for additional service, such as roaming fees when traveling outside of the normal service area.
If, with a GSM model, for example, you can pop in a different SIM under those circumstances, should you be able to?
Given some the the shenanigans that have occurred in this industry, including outsized roaming fees, I tend to be in favor of saying "yes", to this.
Or, put it this way: Competition's good. Even, or especially, within the term of rather long (with respect to technical and economic developments within the telecommunications industry) two year contracts.
If, with a bit of effort and trouble, you can escape absurd roaming fees, new data cap restrictions, et al. Then, perhaps, your current, contracted carrier will feel more incentive to compete with reasonable terms and pricing.
This is like claiming that you did not pay for your milk unless you also purchased other groceries when your local supermarket uses a loss-leader strategy.
No it's not the same at all. The ads say '$199 with contract.' And the fine print always explains you have to enter into a 2 year contract with the cell service provider, and that said contract will make you liable for early termination fees etc. if you try to skip out of it.
For the last decade I've bought my phones unlocked and subscribed to a monthly plan that I can leave at any time. That means paying full price for the phone at the time of purchase, which is a lot more than the discount prices used to tempt you into a contract.
Look, just because it's in your pocket and you get to use it as soon as you leave the store does not mean you own it.
"Look, just because it's in your pocket and you get to use it as soon as you leave the store does not mean you own it."
So who owns it? When last I checked, there was no line of credit, I am allowed to sell the phone to someone else without informing the carrier, and I am responsible for repairing any damage or replacing the phone if it is rendered non-functional. It sounds like I paid the carrier's price, signed a contract, and then owned the phone (while being locked into a contract).
There is more to this than just the carrier's contract. Let's say I travel to another country, and I want to pay for a phone plan there so that I do not have to pay roaming charges. I'll need to unlock my phone to do that...and now by law I cannot (at least not here in America). For that matter, suppose I am here in America and I want to have two contracts with two different carriers on the same phone...once again, the law stops me. This is, plain and simple, a law that protects the carriers' business model in ways that other businesses are not protected.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the free market is relevant here. It is not a free market when some players get special privileges and protections not available to other players. Cell phone companies get lots of special privileges, and this is just one more to add to that list.
Why don't you read your contract and pay particular attention to the bit where it talks about transfer of title? As someone who doesn't sign these kinds of contracts and hasn't for years, I'm not sure what the exact position of the carrier is without downloading and analyzing a phone contract, which I don't feel like doing right now.
The differences from leasing a car are for obvious reasons. If you don't make the payments on a car, a repo guy comes along and takes your car away. Bit difficult to do that on a phone, so they hit you with an early termination fee instead and you agree to it as part of the contract terms.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the free market is relevant here. It is not a free market when some players get special privileges and protections not available to other players. Cell phone companies get lots of special privileges, and this is just one more to add to that list.
I didn't mention the free market, but since you bring it up, the players within the phone industry have similar privileges. Saying that they get different privileges from, say, auto retailers is pointless, because they're not int he same market. Although I'm no fan of the major cell companies, I could point out that they also bear the burden of paying billions up front for lease of spectrum, whereas manufacturers of cars just have to get the thing running and into the hands of the would-be driver, who then pays over time for road use through taxes on fuel etc.
You want to unlock the phone overseas, then do it overseas where you won't be subject to US law. You want to have two contracts on the same phone, the second one is going to be month-to-month by definition because the second carrier has no property interest in the phone. you can easily get out of your contract by paying the ETF.
As I said elsewhere, I don't like these contractual provisions either, which is why I don't enter into such contracts. I do own my own phone, because I paid for it. This is what people in other parts of the world do, because the rock-bottom prices (with contract!) are not on offer in most other parts of the world.
"the players within the phone industry have similar privileges"
I suppose that would be true if we exclude all the electronics shops that could make a business charging a small fee to unlock phones.
"I could point out that they also bear the burden of paying billions up front for lease of spectrum"
Which actually helps the cell companies more than it hurts them, since it basically rules out a large number of potential competitors. A coffee shop can run a wifi network, but that gets extremely limited bandwidth and extremely limited power. Amateur radio operators have fewer restrictions on power, but are completely tied up in other regulations.
Large areas of the United States are served by only a handful of cell carriers, whose service is overpriced and mediocre at best. There are two possible solutions to that situation: abandon market-based solutions and create a monopoly that is heavily regulated to protect consumers from abusive practices, or embrace market-based solutions and reduce the barriers to competition (say, opening cell phone bands to unlicensed secondary users with established rules for settling interference disputes). Right now, we are not really pursuing either strategy, and in the mean time we are falling behind other countries in terms of wireless deployment.
"You want to unlock the phone overseas, then do it overseas where you won't be subject to US law"
OK, sure, but that just means that American businesses that might unlock phones (say, businesses at international airports) cannot exist. It still helps the cell carriers' business model, just not as much as it might have (it reduces the convenience and introduces potential language barriers).
"You want to have two contracts on the same phone, the second one is going to be month-to-month by definition because the second carrier has no property interest in the phone"
Neither carrier has a property interest in the phone. Nobody is charged a fee for breaking their phone while under contract; they are expected to just buy another phone.
"you can easily get out of your contract by paying the ETF."
So what? That is not the issue. Nobody is suggesting that people should be able to terminate their contracts without paying a fee. The issue is whether or not people will be able to unlock their phones, which is completely orthogonal to the issue of contracts.
Neither carrier has a property interest in the phone. Nobody is charged a fee for breaking their phone while under contract; they are expected to just buy another phone.
You know perfectly well that you retain liability for the ETF, which is a proxy for the phone, and reflective of the impracticality of repossessing it.
And the administration supports the right to unlock your phone out of contract. While it's in contract, and non-unlocking is a contractual provision, that's between you and your carrier. If you find the non-unlocking provision of the contract offensive, as I do, then don't enter into such a contract.
"You know perfectly well that you retain liability for the ETF, which is a proxy for the phone, and reflective of the impracticality of repossessing it."
No, I know no such thing; all I see is a cell phone company using a loss leader strategy, and the US government affording them special protections for that strategy. On paper and elsewhere, you own your phone -- end of story. There is no issue of repossession because there is no line of credit involved. Furthermore, even if there were a line of credit here, credit card companies are able to go after delinquent accounts even in cases where repossession is infeasible, and often with amounts of money that are much larger than the price of a typical phone.
It is not as though the contract is for free service plus payment for the phone in installments. The service is still at a massive premium even with the contract, and the early termination fee is only tangentially related to the price of the phone. The sole purpose of selling the phones at a discount is to entice consumers into paying for contracts; it is a classic loss leader strategy.
"While it's in contract, and non-unlocking is a contractual provision"
Contract law is a separate issue from the DMCA. The problem here is not the enforcement of a contract, it is the fact that even without a contractual prohibition on unlocking the phone you would still be forbidden from doing so.
It is not as though the contract is for free service plus payment for the phone in installments.
Who ever said it was? Arguing with you is turning out to be a colossal waste of time; every time you run into problems you gin up a straw man and attack that. This is my last contribution to this thread.
Contract law is a separate issue from the DMCA. The problem here is not the enforcement of a contract, it is the fact that even without a contractual prohibition on unlocking the phone you would still be forbidden from doing so.
I've already addressed that points. The administration has expressed its support for people being able to unlock their phone when its out of contract. So if the administration gets what it wants and Congress updates the law, your complaints will be moot. If you don't like the terms of offer in a discount cellphone contract, then don't enter into such a contract.
"It is not as though the contract is for free service plus payment for the phone in installments.
Who ever said it was? Arguing with you is turning out to be a colossal waste of time; every time you run into problems you gin up a straw man and attack that. This is my last contribution to this thread."
You are the one who claimed the people do not own their phones while under contract. If the contract is not an installment plan or a line of credit, then what property ownership do you think the companies have on the phone? Well, I guess since it was your last contribution to the thread, you will not answer.
"The administration has expressed its support for people being able to unlock their phone when its out of contract"
That is not in any way related to what I said. I said that the problem is that the DMCA forbids unlocking regardless of the contract. You can enter into a contract that says nothing about unlocking, and guess what? Unlocking will still be illegal.
Stop pretending that this is not a special protection for the cell carriers' business.
Why don't you read your contract and pay particular attention to the bit where it talks about transfer of title? As someone who doesn't sign these kinds of contracts and hasn't for years, I'm not sure what the exact position of the carrier is without downloading and analyzing a phone contract, which I don't feel like doing right now.
More like you're wrong, and are just assuming no one will take the time to read a contract and call you on it.
I just read through the T-Mobile contract (http://www.t-mobile.com/Templates/Popup.aspx?PAsset=Ftr_Ftr_...), and there is no mention of title at all. They do try to restrict what you can do with your device while it is on their network (including prohibiting you from "modifying the device", which should include unlocking), but nowhere do they claim ownership of the device.
The phone is not loaned/leased to you. There is no lien on it. The carrier has no recourse to repossess the phone. The early termination fee is there, of course, but is entirely unrelated from a contractual point of view. If you break your contract, they have the right and ability to collect the early termination fee, and nothing else.
As an aside, I'm not sure why you'd consider it so impractical for the carrier to repossess the phone if someone breaks contract. It's certainly feasible, and they could likely refurb and resell the phone for something on the order of the early termination fee. But yes, that would take more effort than sending a bill, so they have chosen not to consider the phone on loan. It's yours, contract or not.
But none of this is particularly relevant. The question at hand is about whether or not unlocking your phone is a DMCA violation and thus a criminal act. Depending on the particular carrier, it may or may not be a violation of your contract to unlock your phone, but that should be a civil matter, not a criminal one.
Why are you so hell-bent on ceding power to companies that have been granted mono/duopolies by the government, and are making use of a precious public resource (radio spectrum)? Do you seriously care so little for your rights as a customer -- hell, as a human being -- that you'd prefer that modifying a device you own (yes, own) is a felony? I just don't understand why anyone would side with one of the carriers... ever. For the most part they are as anti-consumer as companies can be. Individuals have little way to right that imbalance without government intervention.
Cool, so if I unlock it before time it could be a breech or contract? And once the contract expires I can do it anyway? And sell software that helps other people do the same?
Oh wait no, it's a DMCA violation and a criminal offence, well that all seems fair and proportionate.
Except for the part where the company sells the phone to you without extending any lines of credit. This is not like buying a house or a car using loan money.
Hey, petition author here. I've wondered about the White House's language on this, but my understanding of it is that the White House isn't requiring that the consumer's service agreement be complete, but rather that they not break their service agreement by unlocking.
Afaik there aren't any service agreements that prevent consumers from unlocking. As such, I think they're advocating for the ability to unlock at any time.
Afaik there aren't any service agreements that prevent consumers from unlocking.
Here's one:
WIRELESS CUSTOMER AGREEMENT ("Agreement")
3.0 TERMS RELATING TO YOUR DEVICE AND CONTENT
3.1 Your Device
[...] You agree that you won’t make any modifications to your Equipment or its programming to enable the Equipment to operate on any other system. AT&T may, at its sole and absolute discretion, modify the programming to enable the operation of the Equipment on other systems. [discussion of SIM locks follows]
"...once we buy an object — any object — we should own it."
Sure, but a purchase often comes with restrictions that you agree to before deciding on the purchase. If you don't agree to the restrictions you can avoid the purchase altogether. I can buy a six hundred thousand dollar house and still not have the right to put a garden gnome on my lawn if I bought in a community with by-laws that prohibit that.
"Because manufacturers have copyrighted the service manuals, local mechanics can’t fix modern equipment. And today’s equipment — packed with sensors and electronics — is too complex to repair without them. That’s a problem for farmers, who can’t afford to pay the dealer’s high maintenance fees for fickle equipment."
So farmers are buying "fickle" equipment that is expensive to repair and the blame is put on copyright abuse? Copyright is just the mechanism used to enforce the business model. The equipment manufacturer made a business decision and this is part of their business model by choice. Any other manufacturer is free to supply equipment and compete on a different business model. If the issue is really that significant to the market then farmers will flock to the competition that provides manuals with their equipment.
The traditional U.S. philosophy on property tends to be skeptical of these kinds of restrictions, and a number of them aren't enforceable, though it's gotten less skeptical lately (hence the emergence of things like homeowners' associations).
European property law was full of encumbrances on property: you could own all sorts of sub-holds and fiefdoms and whatnot. Much of that was thrown out in early U.S. law, in favor of a principle that each plot of land has one owner, who owns it fully in the clear, subject only to the superior sovereignty of the governments with jurisdiction. And then that person can sell the land fully, or rent it, but can't sell the complex kinds of partial ownership and sub-ownerships that were common in the UK. That persisted for a while, until contract law reinvented some of them a century or two later.
Any other manufacturer is free to supply equipment and compete on a different business model.
I think we should call this the "Just-market Fallacy" (I just Googled it and I'm not the first person to use the phrase), analogous to the Just-world Fallacy.
In that case the belief is that people get what they deserve. If bad things keep happening to you it must be because you're doing something wrong. Because the world is overall just.
In this case people are willfully encouraging a certain business practice by giving those businesses their money. Then they complain about the business practice they just supported and look to the government to force the businesses to behave differently. They're not being victimized by a harsh world and being told it's their fault. They're willfully victimizing themselves.
This is different if there is some kind of government enforced monopoly interfering in the market. But the end result is the same in that case. The business isn't the problem.
>They're not being victimized by a harsh world and being told it's their fault. They're willfully victimizing themselves.
You're ignoring the collective action problem. Suppose that long-term contracts reduce competitiveness, because if people can't switch providers at the drop of a hat then companies don't compete as aggressively and in consequence their profits go up while the value for money on cellular service goes down. The providers know this and charge a premium for off-contract service (or, equivalently, offer a phone subsidy for on-contract service which add less to the monthly fee than paying full price for the phone would). So for each individual customer, it's better to take the subsidy, even though doing so at scale is bad for customers in general.
Solving collective action problems like that is one of the few things that governments are good at, assuming they haven't been captured by industry lobbyists.
But the collective action as you've described would be disrupted as soon as it becomes a big enough issue that a newcomer to the market can profit from a different business model. Equal service and no contract for instance. Eventually perhaps better service and no contract. Actually, last year I switched to a provider who does exactly that. No contracts is part of the business model. You can't get a long term contract from them if you tried.
You're assuming a low barrier to entry. That is clearly not the case for a business requiring the licensing of multibillion dollars worth of wireless spectrum. Moreover, the availability of service without a contract doesn't break the cartel, because that provider has no incentive to induce a price war by offering it at a more attractive price point than on-contract service from competitors. They can instead offer off-contract service for a premium (or offer lower-quality/coverage service for the same price), which is worse than what you would get if long-term contracts were prohibited and all providers had to compete in the market for off-contract service.
You would know if there was a wireless company offering an off-contract plan that was actually more attractive than their competitors' on-contract plans because everybody would switch to it -- customers don't want to be locked into a long-term contract, they only do it because the providers have the incentive to make off-contract plans more expensive.
An off-contract plan that is actually more attractive than the competitors is exactly what is being offered. WIND mobile is the company I'm talking about. I didn't want to get that specific, but there ya go. I am not affiliated.
And while I see your point about the high barrier to entry, all that does is delay the process. Eventually...if a profitable market opportunity is there to be taken, someone will take it. If it requires a big player, then a big player will do it. Granted there may be a longer period of suffering.
So kind of like I was saying then... their coverage map has more holes than coverage. But they still get to charge about as much as the big players by offering no contracts, and it doesn't break the cartel because customers will never switch to them in large numbers as a result of the poor coverage.
Why do you expect price competition to ever be a profitable strategy in a concentrated market? If you lower your prices to gain market share, so will your competitors, and so lowering prices doesn't actually gain you any share, it just lowers everyone's margins. Nobody has any incentive to be the first to do it.
> If it requires a big player, then a big player will do it. Granted there may be a longer period of suffering.
Maybe if you wait long enough. But if the waiting period is measured using the geological timescale, it may be prudent to weigh other alternatives.
...by doing the only things they can in order to remain competitive in the short term.
The Just-market Fallacy is analogous to the Just-world Fallacy because it assumes that all actors are free to change their behavior, thus if they don't change their behavior, they are getting what they deserve from the market.
True, they might need that farm equipment so in the short term they are at the mercy of the status quo. But there's still nothing to stop a group within the market from competing on new terms. Also, if the gap between what is desired and what is provided is significant, then a newcomer to the market would have a field day leveraging that gap. Finally, the consumers are also free to change their own business model so they no longer require that equipment to remain competitive. The supplier would find its market diminishing and look to get it back.
There's still the inertia of a massive status quo. It takes time to ramp up new distribution channels, supply chains, etc. It also takes time to convince customers to change suppliers, it takes time to design competing equipment, etc. The time taken is even longer if the gap in profitability between what is and what ought to be is relatively small from the perspective of a potential disrupter.
I could maybe accept that markets might tend to create equitable outcomes over very long terms, but most people don't live on very long terms; they live day to day, and if today sucks, today they complain.
Agreed, it could take time. And with a small gap it may never happen, but that just means the pain point isn't all that painful. Otherwise the gap would be larger.
I guess it depends how eager you are to have government get involved and attempt to make things right. I generally have little faith in government meddling resulting in a net positive.
that just means the pain point isn't all that painful.
This is, unfortunately, another fallacy of the market. In real life, the ones with the most pain are often the ones with the least ability, financial or otherwise, to alleviate it.
I doubt that Wired thinks I can buy a copy of their (print) magazine and then, since I own it, I can do whatever I want with it (like scanning it and putting it online).
But Wired may think that you should be able to use what you've bought in a non-copyright-infringing manner. For example, you might scan the magazine so you can read it on your tablet. That's what's at stake here.
Btw, it's a Wired opinion piece, so it doesn't necessarily reflect Wired's own thoughts on the matter.
That is different though. Buying a phone doesn't allow you to make an exact copy and then sell it, but buying a copy of wired does allow you to use it to prop up your monitor, use it as insulation for your house, or anything else you decide to do with the paper.
That is fallacy. Carriers are oligopoly with high cost of entrance. So if all carriers provide only locked phones there may not be enough devices on the market.
There should be laws preventing forced vertical integration. If you sell hardware you cannot restrict the os(you are free to provide os, but locking of the bootloader should be left to the user). If you sell OS you cannot limit what applications the user can run and from where to obtain them etc ...
yet, ATT & Verizon will not charge less. wait, they will force you to buy a data plan too if you use your unlocked smartphone. Imagine a real state market - take mortgage or pay double for the house if you pay cash.
Or you could go to MetroPCS or one of several other providers and buy an unlocked phone. T-Mobile offers both contract and month-to-month service, and IIRC will sell you an unlocked phone if you're willing to pay up front for it.
I'm torn on the issue of buying locked vs unlocked. I have a family to support, so I don't have $500 or more to spend on an unlocked iPhone. Even if I had the money, I live in the US, and I haven't traveled outside of the country in over 10 years. Finally, there is no monthly discount on service if you bring an unlocked phone to a carrier, so that's the third strike. I'll continue to buy a new locked device every couple of years and take the subsidy, thanks. I'll also be having my 4S unlocked when this contract is up.
Having said that, I agree that it should be easier to unlock phones in the US, even if it's just for international coverage (which would be something).
Yes, there is a discount. You can buy an unlocked GSM phone and get a SIM only plan that costs half as much as the regular plans. The total cost is cheaper compared to how much you pay over a two year contract.
Where do you buy this plan? AT&T and Verizon are willing to sell me plans that cost just as much as on-contract plans. T-Mobile is willing to sell me much cheaper plans, but randomly loses service all around my city all the time.
My family recently purchased three Nexus 4 phones straight from Google ($300 each), and picked up a T-Mobile Family Value plan (which means you don't get a phone subsidy, but it is a cheaper) with 1000 minutes, unlimited sms, and unlimited HSPA+ data. $120 / month for 3 lines.
Yep. I know that Nexus devices are cheaper than iPhones when you compare unlocked. But I prefer the iPhone. I also prefer AT&T service. Point is, the unlocked cell phone discussion is a different animal in the US where it doesn't seem to have as many benefits as it would abroad.
Thus, I'll keep using iPhones and my AT&T service and I'll take the subsidy for a new iPhone every few years.
My in-laws only got iPhones because they could get one for free. In their case, spending $0 for 4 older, on-contract, locked iPhones is preferable to spending $800 for 4 new, on-contract, locked iPhones. I would have been laughed at for suggesting $1800 to get 4 iPhone 4's unlocked.
You can get a pretty awesome brand new, not-just-released android phone for $100. Or you can get a used phone in good condition on ebay for much lower (even a used iPhone). Sorry but you have a bit of a yuppie dilemma here. There are tons of off-contract, much cheaper options, but not if you only buy directly from Apple.
I don't think so. I ended up going with a month-to-month provider int he first place because I was poor and didn't want to deal with the risk of early termination fees etc. I just bought a lower-quality phone. Being poor means that you don't get to buy the nicest thing on the market if you don't have the money.
The economics of contract plans didn't look that good to me, because it meant a much higher monthly bill than I felt comfortable paying for a bunch of features I was not at all sure I would really use or need. I was happy with my decision and have stuck with month-to-month service ever since. Back then, MetroPCS (who I signed with at the time) was a tiny company operating in only 2 or 3 urban markets, now they operate in most of the country.
It's sad that this is at the bottom of the stack. Big victories are typically built on a foundation of smaller victories, and the American legal system tends to be an incrementalist one. The 'forget X, because we want X^Y!' argument of the article is self-defeating.
Copyright laws were originally designed to protect creativity and promote innovation. But now, they are doing exactly the opposite...
This is a problem with many laws. Even if unintended consequences don't ruin the effect from the start, changes in the situation a law was meant to address will likely cause problems in the end. And this is assuming the law actually passed with an intention to benefit the whole, and not just some powerful subset of it. I think laws should come with expiration dates.
One "owns" (free and clear) very little in real life. Most people -- house, car, etc -- are financing their lives with debt. In these cases, ownership is a bit of a myth -- your legal rights are only contingent on your credit. With your data and your free speech-- also, this is very circumscribed in reality. Soon, the idea of "ownership" will just be made fully synthetic. We will rent the assets of our lives...just like our homes...wether this is good or bad...or just another level of clarity...is in the eye of the beholder. This will solve any debate on who "owns" a phone, or a piece of software...there will just be no more "sales"...just "leases" of the same...without the residual legal rights of true ownerhsip...nor the notion that denying such rights will be anything less than what is otherwise suspected...
I'd like to know why Sony was allowed to turn off our ability to install other OS'es on the PS3's we had _already_ bought. That's like if the dealership showed up with a mechanic and said they changed their minds and want the turbocharger back.
Actually, companies should not be allowed to lock stuff in the first place.
Or more precisely, they should be able to lock stuff, but doing so should automatically license all their copyrights, patents and trademarks used in the thing they locked for everyone to use for free forever in any way without limits.
If they are out to fuck the public in the ass, there's no reason the public's courts and police should assist or protect them.
I'm not sure exactly what people are asking for here. There's a lot of complexity in the phone network implementations out there (scroll to the bottom of this page to get an idea of what's out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_HSPA )
I've owned a few unlocked phones and found that switching networks is largely useless as my phone is unlikely to support the best data features from another provider.
I'm astonished that people overwhelmingly believe this falsehood. The White House response opposes legalized phone unlocking, except to phones already out of contract. When they say they "support unlocking", they have a different interpretation of what that means:
And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren't bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network.
[...] neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cel...
A (very) few journalists are paying attention:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/obama-s-stance-on-unlock...