Obama signs cellphone unlocking bill
Source: IDG News Service
IDG News Service - The right to unlock your cellphone became law on Friday as President Barack Obama signed a bill that rapidly passed both houses of the U.S. Congress.
The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act passed in the Senate on July 16 and was unanimously approved by the House of Representatives last Friday. Obama had been expected to sign it.
The law restores U.S. consumers' rights to update the software on their phones so they can change mobile operators. That practice had been outlawed by a January 2013 decision by the Library of Congress, which ruled that consumer unlocking violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Most cellphones sold in the U.S. come with built-in software that locks the phone so it can be used on only one carrier's network. The Library of Congress had found that changing that software violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, which are typically deployed against cracking of digital-rights-management technology.
Read more: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250121/Obama_signs_cellphone_unlocking_bill
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