Gadgetory

this episode of technobuffalo is brought to you by netflix welcome back to the episode of rettinger schrantz I'm your host Jon wrenchers to show a rant and rave on anything for all the technology and sometimes outside of it up this week I want to talk about cell phone unlocking it's been causing quite the kerfuffle in the news recently I want to talk about what's legal what's not legal to find a lot of things that hopefully help answer all the questions you've got with cell phone unlocking so first let me define what cell phone unlucky is in case you're not familiar with the term and all this stuff is the context of here in the US you buy a phone from a carrier and it comes locked to that carrier meeting you can't take that phone you bought from AT&T go to tmobile pop at a tmobile sim card have it work right out of the box so an unlocking essentially means it gives you the ability to take your phone from one carrier to another traditionally you've been able to get an unlock code or a phone you bought from a carrier meeting you pop in another carrier sim card you enter a four or five digit code into the phone and boom your phone is unlocked you take it to another carrier you take out of the country pop in a sim card and presumably be able to use it just like you would on your own carrier seems pretty simple right carriers were unlocking phones if you ask them after two-year contract was up sometimes they would do it a little bit earlier and it wasn't that big a deal you could buy phones unlocked from third parties and take them to any carrier that you wanted to use but now unlocking phones is kind of a legal and it seems like everyone the country is throwing up their collective hands in a WTF so what are your rights as a consumer laws of this January it was a crime to unlock your phone let me say it again it was a crime to unlock your phone even after your contract ends without the consent of the wireless provider you could still buy an unlocked phone from the carrier a third party vendor you have to pay the full retail price for its you're not gonna get a subsidy it's number two don't carriers already unlock your phone the answer is yeah when you complete a two-year contract most mobile carriers will agree to unlock your phone so you can switch to another carrier if you want and travel abroad the catch is though there aren't legally required to do so so you can call them beg pretty pretty please what they do not have to do that for you which is quite unfortunate based on public statements by the White House they you too want to lift the unlocking man for consumers only after finishing a contract period so if the goal is that people unlock the phones at any moment at any time then yeah you can probably expect to see mobile carriers raise the price of all their handsets even if you would agree to a two-year deal so what happened here and what we do spell to call asked unlock your phone really anytime you could pay to get an unlock code through a ton of websites and services you could pay ten twelve twenty thirty bucks get an unlock code for your phone even during your contract and be good to go a lot of folks were thinking that this is a presidential decree actually the White House agrees with us that you should be able to unlock your phone there's a petition to actually make phone unlocking legal again it's made its way to the White House and appears the president pretty much agrees with us on the White House website official response the administration says and I quote they stand with the 114,000 of you who believe consumers about unlock their cell phone without risking criminal or other penalties bricking criminal penalties for unlocking your phone assuming you've paid for the contract you've gone through the full to you shield unlock it anytime you want without any worry like we have Congress who we owe the pleasure for this kerfuffle earlier this week mentioned that they are only authorized to establish or eliminate exceptions based on a request submitted to librarian of Congress they eliminate this exception from the original digital millennium copyright act based on the request so the Library of Congress say that they are bound to these protocols which appears to be asking for more definitive legislation action on a part of Congress to pass laws stating one way or another which is a huge mouthful the Obama administration agrees that legislative action should take place along with the FCC and carrier involvement the FCC under julius genachowski announced that they are going to urge Congress to overturn the ruling last year by the copyright office of the library of congress that made it illegal for tumors to unlock their cell phones opening the software that restricts most phones from working on another carrier's network so that's a huge mouthful essentially the Digital Millennium Copyright Act screwed for all of us here in my opinion if you own a phone you paid for this up to be on the contract you should be able to unlock it when you buy a phone for discounted price from a carrier they are essentially taking a loss on that they'll make up to the two year duration your contract so I understand not unlocking it mid contract now the exception that I take bit of umbrage with if you want to terminate your contract early you can pay an early termination fee essentially repay that subsidy and should be able to unlock your phone at any time I also think that if you buy a phone from a carrier and you agreed to pay the terms that contract throughout the total two years of it you should also be able to unlock it if I bought a new phone from AT&T next month I unlocked it and i moved to t-mobile for example I would still be paying that money to eighteen t at all so we pay a contract with t-mobile's everybody wins this is mind-boggling it makes no sense I know I just got all kind of legal and mumbo jumbo on you but essentially it got written in from the Library of Congress that this is a new thing and I can't really take it out overly easily hopefully we're looking at either presidential decree or some sort of legislative action it's going to remove that line from the law that was enacted in January at least I'm hoping so so we take a minute from our ranta to thank our friends and sponsors at Netflix you know them you love them they stream TV shows and movies directly to your home didn't your time money and most importantly hassle if you subscribe to netflix you've instantly watch TV episodes and movies directly to your pc mac or write to your TV using the next box 360 ps3 nintendo wii or a nintendo wii u console watch many movies as you want anytime you want and even cancel anytime come on give it a whirl you get a free 30-day trial membership go to netflix.com slash Buffalo and sign up today should use that URL though the novi center so what do you guys think of my off base do you read the unlocking the issue that's happened here I want to hear your thoughts leave your comments down below thank you guys for watching an episode of rettinger schrantz i'm your host jon rettinger we have three new shows every week we've got rettinger rants we got asked to Byfuglien we got rumor roundup so be sure to stay tuned every monday wednesday and friday for those for now i'm jon rettinger from technobuffalo see you next video