A Quick Guide to the Current Phone Unlocking Bills
A Quick Guide to the Current Phone Unlocking Bills
A Quick Guide to the Current Phone Unlocking Bills

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    As you probably know, there are currently three different proposals to make sure that you can unlock your phone, despite the Library of Congress’s thoughts on the matter. We’ve made a handy chart that runs through some of the pros and cons of each, and hope to add more columns as more bills get introduced.

    So far, we have the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, introduced by Senator Leahy, with a companion bill by Representative Goodlatte; the Wireless Device Independence Act from Senator Wyden; and the Wireless Consumer Choice Act from Senator Klobuchar.

    (click the image for a larger version)


    As you can see, they each have strengths and weaknesses. What we need now is a permanent fix to the phone unlocking problem, and one that provides as few loopholes as possible for carriers, software makers, and hardware manufacturers to slip through. We hope that these bills, or others, can improve on these aspects as they progress. Ultimately, we want to see broader changes to anticircumvention law that can prevent these sorts of abuses not just in the cell phone market, but others as well.