How legally unlocked cell phones will — and won't — improve your life

You may not even know that jailbreaking your phone is now illegal. The White House wants to change that

If you're attached to your phone but not your carrier, sorry. The Library of Congress doesn't want you to switch.
(Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Since January, it has been illegal to "unlock" your cell phone — or decouple it electronically from the service provider that sold it to you. That's because in October, the Librarian of Congress James H. Billington decided not to re-up an exemption to a portion of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that makes it a crime to unlock your cell phone, punishable by up to $500,000 in fines and/or five years in jail. After two three-year waivers for that part of the law, Billington and his relevant underling, Registrar of Copyrights Maria Pallante, decided that proponents of unlocking mobile devices hadn't proved their case.

Digital libertarians and consumer advocates didn't take this sitting down, exactly. Having lost at the Library of Congress, handset-unlocking entrepreneur Sina Khanifar started a petition at the White House "We the People" page, and more than 114,000 signatures later, the Obama administration got on board Monday. R. David Edelman, Obama's senior adviser for Internet, Innovation, and Privacy, issued the official response:

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.