Great news! Cell phone owners can now unlock the software on their phones, thanks to a new copyright rule approved by the Library of Congress.
Cell phone owners will have the ability to take their phone with them from wireless carrier to wireless carrier. Thank goodness! Under the new copyright rules, cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books. In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs.
Providers of prepaid phone services, in particular, have been trying to stop entrepreneurs from buying subsidized handsets to resell at a profit. But even customers of regular plans generally can't bring their phones to another carrier, even after their contracts run out.
The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years.
