Either way, I don't think that the DMCA was designed to ensure a telecom oligopoly.
But this also means losing customers, and losing that predictable 2 year revenue. They know their own services and prices and customer service is utter crap (at least here in US), I don't think any of them are delusional, so they don't want people to leave on a whim, because (gasp!) they might have to actually start competing (lowering prices, better customer services etc.).
If you cancel your contract, you get hit with the fee.
I don't think phones should be locked to any carrier. Instead change the contract rules. If you cancel after the cooling off period and in the first 30 days you pay (blah), and every month there after it's (blah) - (something)*number of Months. Only if the phone was subsidized by the contract, of course.
I say this as someone who needs to be able to change out sims when I travel.
Amusingly, I'm also paying for much more data than I use - I use maybe ~200-300 MB/month, so there's no way they're losing money off of me. But then again, we've learned time and again that the data caps have nothing to do with costs....