AT&T and Apple may face an uphill battle prosecuting hackers who untether the iPhone from the AT&T wireless network, says BusinessWeek. While in USA legal problems might arise, in Canada the scene is alive and well. We received word that PureMobile will offer unlocked iPhones to its customers, and will soon be hosting a competition to give some away for free.
Why Apple Can’t Stop iPhone Hackers
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So I’m confused. I thought legislation was passed in December 2006 to allow cellphone owners to unlock their cellphones. If so – how can Apple & AT&T be allowed to lock the iPhone to AT&T’s network?
If someone could clear this up it would be appreciated
pac
No one can clear this up for you because it’s simply not black and white. Read Engadget’s article here:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/know-your-rights-is-it-illegal-t…
Result: not clear what can happen in such a lawsuit.
The legislaton doesn’t force wireless carriers to provide lock codes for the manufacturer hardware sold on their network. What it does is allow the customer the option to legally use a third party solution to unlock the phone. Sort of like up here in Canada where wireless carriers Rogers, Fido, Telus and Bell all lock the hardware to their network. They can’t stop customers from paying third parties to unlock the customer’s hardware because even on a term commitment the customer now owns the hardware. It’s not leased hardware so neither the carrier or the manufacturer can stop you.
By the way manufacturers sell the phones to carriers unlocked. It’s the carrier that’s entering a lock code and reason why it’s difficult getting lock codes for new released phones. The reason being there’s no law either in Canada or the USA to force wireless carriers to provide customers with the lock code. The laws in both countries in this regard need to change to force companies to at least provide the lock code for a fee or after a certain time length (ie: when your term expires).
It’s not in Apple’s interest to stop the hackers. AT&T on the other hand should be concerned, but they have even less power and control over this situation around the world.
“It’s not in Apple’s interest to stop the hackers”
Surely this is incorrect?
The reason it is in Apple’s interests is they are the only phone supplier who is collecting a percentage of the call revenue. If this can be hung onto it is worth having. Whether people like this is a different matter, of course.
-Have to unlock iPhone every time you sync with iTunes.
-Visual VoiceMail will not work.
-Future Apple Applications may not work.
-$600 for an unsupported iPhone with no warranty.
-Current applications may stop working when updated.
It’s just not worth it.
Time will tell…
Time will tell – true. But why are you so sure Apple will pursue stopping this. Though Apple will not admit it (because of AT&T), unlocked iPhones are in Apples interest. More customers = more $ for them. AT&T can’t say anything because Apple isnt unlocking the phones themselves.
Lets not forget that only Apple can change your battery.
Off topic I know, but in the UK many exam boards require you to remove the battery from your phone in addition to turning them off and leaving them at the front
I wonder how they will deal with iphones 🙂
You give it to the teacher, then cheat all you want as he spends the exam period playing with it 🙂
It just goes to show that vender lock in’s only benefit the multimillion £/$ coorperations.
I am sure that there is a market for unlocked iPhones. Now I am not sure if American version could work on a GSM network in Europe. But if it could and someone unlock it then it could be surly sold at least here in Serbia in a minute. You would probablly get a varanty also. A lot of people here is using unlocked phones so people don’t mind buying them.
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There are iPhone users that have travelled to Europe. It’s no dfferent then using my Blackberry which support quad band frequencies to travel on other GSM carriers networks. The only thing that iPhone users can’t use in the Europe is the widely used 3G (HSDPA/UMTS) and this is only due to lacking the 3G chip.
Is the person attempting to sue Apple because they used the phone down in Mexico, and claimed they didn’t know it was restricted to AT&T’s network, and as a result ran up $2,000 in charges
It seems customer stupidity is endless. Surely they signed a contract that had AT&T’s name written all over it, that also stated they were restricted to only using that network, and (perhaps) other affiliated networks of their choosing, for… a small fee (where “small” is a relative term).
Yah.. That fine print will get ya every time. I don’t think the law protects you from yourself.
The whole idea of restricting a customer to one particular mobile network is completely stupid. No costumer with a sane mind can under any circumstance grasp the concept of locking people to a network. It’s something so insane that it beats me why it even exists.
USA, the Land of Freedom – Freedom to enslave you… hmm… seems to me that people have forgotten the wars and the words of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson, was he alive today, would be leading a revolution against this stupidity of companies.
And then there’s the class action lawsuit over Apple requiring you to return the entire phone to them, so they can replace the battery (and wipe the memory too).
Yes, it’s dumb and should be changed… But at the same time, this was known before the iPhone was released, and is a good reason to avoid the iPhone. Yet these people didn’t.
A company founded by a phone phreaker sueing people with the phone company for breaking their hold over the system. Now that’s irony.
I hope this doesn’t mean people lobby for a broken but dangerous law like the DMCA in Canada now. The DMCA is like spilling broken glass all over your kitchen floor because you don’t want someone to use your stove.
technically they can try, its just a matter of time until the hacks arrive.
legally? laws can and will be manipulated…
Apple, admittedly, creates a great product but then ruins it by tying it to AT&T for 5 years. If the American consumer was SMART, they would not have bought the iPhone and then Apple would have realized they can no longer pull the wool over our eyes.
Instead, Americans bought ~275,000 of these things and justifies Apple’s business case. So, the average American now needs to rely on hackers to unchain them from AT&T. Now we start to see Apple take steps in software updates and invalidating warranties to combat this.
We can’t forget that Apple makes a pretty penny from royalties off an AT&T activation so don’t think for a second that they don’t care about this.
Americans should have used their wallets to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place. We’ll see what the new iPods look like next week. If they come out with an iPhone w/o the phone, then we’ll know that Apple was paying attention to what people want. Let’s hope anyways…
~C~