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Comment by postfuturist | Hacker News Reader

This is a basic freedom issue. The freedom to run software I control on devices I own allows me to be free in how I share and protect my own private information. Apple and Microsoft are trending toward making it more difficult and less legal to run alternative operating systems or unapproved 3rd party software on their platforms. It has to be fought tooth and nail. Fight it legally, and fight it with your pocketbook.

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This is the war on general computing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc

You also have the freedom to curtail your freedom when you sign a contract.

Sure. An actual contract, not "by reading these words you agree to do whatever I say".

Of course. You have to accept in some fashion. You can't just put a contract on a billboard.

In many countries, the law states that many things cannot be signed away or agreed to, no matter how much you want to.

Your freedom to own your smart phone will disappear eventually when Hollywood figures out you didn't actually buy your phone, you are paying a monthly service which pays down your phone, an unspecified price. A percentage of which should go straight to Hollywood.

Where I live you can walk into a shop, buy a smart phone, then pop in a sim card and be off. Can you not do this in the US?

You don't pay any monthly service and I don't see how the carrier you have chosen to buy a sim card from has any basis for claiming that the phone I'm using is somehow not owned by me.

Since I purchased my first mobile phone around ~11 years ago this is how I have always done it.

You can do that in the US, but it isn't common because of carrier subsidies. Even worse, sometimes when you pay full price for a phone you still wind up with something that is carrier-locked anyway. Plus there are all sorts of technical incompatibilities (e.g. AT&T vs T-Mobile 3G bands) even if your phone is otherwise unlocked. And so on...

Surely when you get a contract for your phone & service you pay X for Y months and this should cover the cost of the phone anyway. So even if you switch the phone to a different carrier you're going to be paying the contract amount anyway.

I could unlock my phone and use a different carrier (considered doing this after the o2 fiasco yesterday) but it wouldn't make economic sense to me.

It's a neat theory, except I did buy my phone.

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