Want to force the President Barack Obama administration to enter the mobile-phone-unlocking fray?
Sign a whitehouse.gov petition by Saturday and, if the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the administration must respond publicly about a recent decision by copyright regulators making it illegal to unlock mobile phones purchased after January 26. Unlocking enables a phone to operate on a compatible carrier of a consumer's choosing.
Sina Khanifar, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur who was threatened with legal action by Motorola in 2004 for launching an unlocking tool, started the petition nearly a month ago.
"The decision to remove the exemption for unlocking phones is bad for consumers, and it's up to our elected officials to help defend consumer rights," he said.
Four months ago, the U.S. Copyright Office ended the practice of granting an unlocking exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA makes it illegal to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access" to copyrighted material, in this case software embedded in phones that controls carrier access.
That said, not much is likely to change with consumers despite the changeover. Before unlocking was first exempted in 2006 and again in 2010, the carriers never sued individuals for unlocking their own phones, and they don't plan to now. When unlocking was exempted and allowed, the carriers and phone makers were busy successfully suing illicit businesses that bought throw-away phones by the thousands, unlocked them, and shipped them overseas.
But now there's nothing preventing the carriers from suing individuals and abandoning the practice of unlocking mobile phones for their customers.
The carriers, however, last year told the Copyright Office, which every three years re-examines exemptions to the DMCA, that they did not oppose individuals unlocking their phones. Many carriers provide the service today to individuals.
Among the reasons the Copyright Office changed course was because many carriers and phone makers sold unlocked phones and would also unlock them for their customers.
The petition demands that the White House "champion a bill that makes unlocking permanently legal" or, in the alternative, require the administration to ask copyright regulators to reverse course.
As of Tuesday afternoon, there were nearly 81,000 signatures on the petition that is being backed by tech luminaries Vint Cert and John Perry Barlow.
