“Americans should not be subject to fines and criminal liability for merely unlocking devices and media they legally purchased,” said Rep. Lofgren in a press release. “If consumers are not violating copyright or some other law, there’s little reason to hold back the benefits of unlocking so people can continue using their devices.”
Lofgren’s bill attracted enthusiastic support from activists and advocacy groups that had been lukewarm about previous unlocking bills.
“This is the only piece of legislation so far introduced that legalizes both cell phone unlocking, but also the underlying technology for cell phone unlocking,” said Derek Khanna, a conservative activist who was fired from his job on Capitol Hill for advocating copyright reform.
“This legislation is exactly what the digital community was asking for,” he told us in a phone interview. “It’s exactly what the small cell phone providers were looking for. Unlike the other legislation, it actually solves the problem.”
Sherwin Siy, an attorney at the advocacy group Public Knowledge, also praised the bill, which he said “addresses a longstanding problem with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For too long, the DMCA has been a barrier to consumers, educators, researchers, and others, in ways that don’t even protect artists.”
“We intuitively understand that if we buy something, we should have the right to modify it, unlock it, or repair it,” said Sina Khanifar, the activist who started the White House unlocking petition (and the founder of the activist website FixTheDMCA). “But the DMCA denies us those rights, and it’s critical that we push Congress to pass a bill like the one proposed by Rep. Lofgren and her co-sponsors.”