U.S. Copyright Office issues new rights

U.S. Copyright Office issues new rights

NEW YORK — Cellphone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.

Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books.

All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. Previously, Billington took an all-or-nothing approach, making exemptions difficult to justify.

"I am very encouraged by the fact that the Copyright Office is willing to recognize exemptions for archivists, cellphone recyclers and computer security experts," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Frankly I'm surprised and pleased they were granted."

<snip>

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-11-23-copyright-digital_x.htm?POE=TECISVA

People have been unlocking c-phones for years.

I would like to know which greedy telecom company this is.

Billington noted that at least one company has filed lawsuits claiming that breaking the software locks violates copyright law, which makes it illegal for people to circumvent copy-protection technologies without an exemption from the Copyright Office

People have been stealing cars for years too. (That doesn't make it legal.)

The crappy software locks are like warning labels on mattresses.

You buy a phone, you own it. Period. Some cell phone companies will even send you an unlock code themselves if you're traveling overseas or the like, so that you can use foreign providers. This ruling simply clarifies that there's no grounds to prevent unlocking via copyright law.

One difference, of course, is you probably bought the phone with a huge
subsidy paid for by your friendly cell phone company whose lock on the
phone you now want to break. Did they promise you that the $25 subsi-
dized phone was the functional equivalent of the same unit bought at a
more-realistic retail price of (say) $295? Did you not already get $25
worth of value from that phone?

Tesha

At least, that's what I got the last time I had a cell phone, I was in the process of BUYING the phone from the company, through a slightly larger bill because of it. In fact, most phone companies work like this, you have an "Activiation fee"(down payment on phone), then if you break the contract(payments) early, there is an additional fee you have to pay to get out of the contract, usually it equals the remaining value of the phone or more. Usually, by the time you renew a contract with a phone company, the phone itself is paid off. This is why so many companies offer "1 cent" deals and such. The only exceptions would be companies you rent phones from and "pay as you go" phones, that you just buy, straight out.

The problem was that by the time you paid off one phone, you may want to switch carriers so that phone could be used with them instead. In many cases, it was as simple as calling the old carrier, and getting the unlock code for the phone. But there's always that ONE company that is run by assholes that says no, so then you get the pleasure of hacking the phone, said asshole company may try to sue you for copyright or DMCA violations, this change in fair use laws is to prevent that.

1-year contracts were not good enough for them.

They don't promise you anything about the phone. They don't want unsuspecting consumers to know their phones are worth jack on another network.

Anyways, when phones were costing hundreds of dollars, the telecom companies still had locks on them. These days, phones costing hundreds of dollars from telecom companies still have locks on them, and come with multi-year contracts.

Even if you buy a phone at a discount with new activation, as is the custom, you still own the phone, and you can do what you want with it. You are obligated to maintain service with the company for a period of time (which is how they easily recoup the relatively small amount of money they lose by discounting a cell phone), but that doesn't qualify or mitigate your ownership of the phone.

My point, of course, was that by buying the phone at a steep discount,
you had no reason to expect that its feature set wasn't also "discounted".

I actually agree with the recent change in the interpretation of the law
and I agree with you: once you owned the phone, you could do anything
you wanted with it. (Google up "Cue Cat" for a much earlier legal battle
along the same lines). But I also feel that no one was cheated when they
bought a $25 phone and found it was locked to a given cell service
provider.

Tesha

The right analogy would be that you are allowed to convert your automobile to use a non petrol source, hell, sometimes, you can even get kits from the manufacturers to help with the conversion.

By the way, comparing a copyright violation, even a dubious one, like this claim, to theft is not only intellectually dishonest, but just plain stupid.

Why drop so many s-bombs? Sounds unfriendly :(

Like I said, stupid.

I don't mince words, if I find an argument stupid, I'll call it exactly that, stupid.

Here, I'll give another example, I'm a gamer, I bought the game GTA:San Andreas for my PC at Best Buy. So I did the full install, then I try to fire up the game, then problems arose, the game asks for the game disc, which is ALREADY in the drive. So I contact Rockstar, they said that the copy protection they use isn't compatible with my DVD drive, they said a firmware update of the drive will help. So I go to Sony's website, download the firmware update, the game still won't run. So I got fed up with it, went on some "unfavorable" sites, and downloaded a "nocd" crack of the game. The game runs fine now.

Now, is what I did something that is illegal? Oddly enough, yes, according to the DMCA, but is it the same as stealing, uhm...I don't think so. I bought the game, I bought this computer, I can do whatever the hell I want with either. Same with phones, if I buy a cell phone, and hack it to use satellite signals with a damned Pringles Can and able to play movies, or whatever else I can think of, I should be able to do what I want WITH MY OWN PROPERTY, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, which it obviously doesn't.

You'll probably be entitle to some class-action money here at some point. Somebody will sue these companies for that sort of thing at some point, if they haven't already. Keep your eyes open! But why not be nice to people? :shrug:

I insulted his argument, those are two different things. As far as I'm aware, that poster could be a MENSA member, I have no way to know, but simply has a blind spot of either ignorance or bias in regards to this particular issue.

so I can use all the features it is able to use and that other services would readily allow me to use (custom ringtones, background images, et al.)

A few of these decisions seem to call some DRM hardware lockdowns into question. Is the US Copyright office taking a clue from the GPL v3 draft? It's a funny day when the US Copyright office seems more radical than the Linux kernel maintanence squad. :rofl:

I swear, sometimes I think I live in a parallel universe where common sense no longer exists, nice to know that sometimes, common sense wins out in the end.

This is called "debranding" removing the brand mark of certain providers and enabling all the original functions of the mobile phone.

This is pretty much the same as any other firm ware update on any other device.

Google "debranding" or "unlocking" cellphones.

There are many little enterprises that offer debranding kits.
Usually in the form of a CD and a USB wire to hook up your cellphone to your computer and flush the annoying software out of your cellphone replacing it with the original firm ware.

In some mobile phone the provider restrictions are severe!!
Not being able to use mp3 as ringtone etc..

fuckin'-a-right!

:bounce:

(just joshin')

www.skype.com