Public Knowledge and more than 30 groups and...
Public Knowledge and more than 30 groups and companies urged lawmakers in letters sent Thursday (http://bit.ly/XknoZY) to codify rules that permit consumers to unlock their cellphones. The letters urged the chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary committees, Sen. Pat…
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Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., to adopt “more permanent proposals” to legally permit consumers to unlock their wireless devices. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) those who unlock their phones without permission from their carriers may be subject to civil lawsuits, criminal fines or imprisonment. Leahy and Goodlatte introduced companion legislation this month, the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act (S-517 and HR-1123) (CD March 15 p10). The bills offer a legislative fix that restores an exemption to the DMCA for cellphone firmware unlocking that permits consumers to use their phones with other carriers once their contracts have expired. But such proposals would merely return to a “flawed process that creates a perpetual re-lobbying of many settled issues every three years,” the letters said. The Judiciary committees should instead embrace legislation from Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., or Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., which would “enact sound public policy” that removes wireless unlocking from the “bureaucratic treadmill,” the letters said. Wyden’s bill (S-467) would amend the DMCA, rather than simply restoring the exemption, and Klobuchar’s bill (S-481) would direct the FCC to begin a rulemaking that ensures consumers can circumvent the technological protection measures that prevent their handsets from being used with other networks. Congress should “act quickly to ensure that this exemption to the DMCA can be codified permanently,” the letters said. The groups added that consumer concern about cellphone unlocking “highlights a need to examine the DMCA’s anticircumvention provisions more fully in the future,” according to the letters. The committees should therefore convene hearings to investigate “possible reforms” to the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA, the letters said. The letters were signed by more than 30 organizations and companies including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Archive, Reddit and BoingBoing. Some of the group’s members led or participated in the online protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act in 2012 (CD Jan 23/12 p9). Committee spokesmen from the House and Senate Judiciary committees did not comment.