ADVISORY
BY DECREE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS
IT SHALL HENCEFORCE BE ORDERED THAT AMERICANS SHALL NOT UNLOCK THEIR OWN SMARTPHONES.
PENALTY: In some situations, first time offenders may be fined up to $500,000, imprisoned for five years, or both. For repeat offenders, the maximum penalty increases to a fine of $1,000,000, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both.*
That's right, starting this weekend it is illegal to unlock new phones to make them available on other carriers.NEW ABSURD CRIME
When did we decide that we wanted a law that could make unlocking your smartphone a criminal offense?
The answer is that we never really decided. Instead, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998 to outlaw technologies that bypass copyright protections. This sounds like a great idea, but in practice it has terrible, and widely acknowledged, negative consequences that affect consumers and new innovation. The DMCA leaves it up to the Librarian of Congress (LOC) to issue exemptions from the law, exceptions that were recognized to be necessary given the broad language of the statute that swept a number of ordinary acts and technologies as potential DMCA circumvention violations.
Every three years groups like the American Foundation for the Blind have to lobby [warning:PDF download] Congress to protect an exception for the blind allowing for books to be read aloud. Can you imagine a more ridiculous regulation than one that requires a lobby group for the blind to come to Capitol Hill every three years to explain that the blind still can't read books on their own and therefore need this exception?
Full Article on The Atlantic
You can check out the government document here.
Library of Congress - Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
The Backlash On YouTube Has Already Begun
http://youtu.be/iQbhBC4SJvo
http://youtu.be/nxlBxjURaOg
http://youtu.be/win-mjqgUjg
http://youtu.be/cnw20YcKSDA
http://youtu.be/kIKBY1pfH30
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