Unlocking new phones now banned under DMCA, the EFF weighs in
It was great while it lasted, but the days of users legally unlocking their own phones is over. Back in October of last year, the Library of Congress added an exemption to the DMCA to allow folks to free their new phones for 90 days.
Context & Ripple Effects
In October 2012 the Library of Congress granted a temporary DMCA exemption letting owners unlock their own phones, but with a 90-day window that has now run out — returning unlocking to prohibited circumvention under the statute. The EFF's objection frames the lapse not as a technicality but as the removal of a right users briefly held.
The story traveled unusually far for a rules footnote: TechCrunch, CNN, the BBC and ABC News all picked it up on or about January 26, 2013, reflecting how many consumers had built unlocking into ordinary upgrade behavior. The EFF has a track record here — it previously backed Steve Wozniak's criticism of Apple's closed platforms and pushed patent-reform proposals it called insufficient — so its stance on the DMCA sits inside a longer campaign against lock-down mechanisms.
First-order effects
- Consumers who unlock phones after the lapse now risk DMCA anti-circumvention liability, while carriers regain a legal backstop for keeping devices locked to their networks.
- Third-party unlockers and resellers of used phones operate in legally exposed territory, since the service they provide is no longer exempt.
Second-order effects
- Digital-rights groups led by the EFF are positioned to push Congress or the Copyright Office for a fix, converting a bureaucratic expiry into a public policy fight.
- Carriers benefit from higher switching friction on locked handsets, strengthening contract lock-in at exactly the moment subsidized-smartphone economics depend on retention.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer rights over devices they own remain hostage to the Library of Congress's triennial exemption cycle rather than to property law — an arrangement where ownership is conditional on administrative grace periods.
- Regulators outside the Copyright Office may be drawn in: the FCC has jurisdiction over handset locking practices, and pressure on the DMCA regime invites scrutiny of whether carriers' lock policies serve consumers at all.
The trend: Ownership rights in consumer electronics are being decided by periodic DMCA exemption rulings rather than by statute, leaving user freedoms to expire on administrative schedules.