It Is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone

There was much earlier discussion of this (not all very aware of the legal background in the United States) three days ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109847

The earlier discussion got off to a bad start, in part because of bad reporting in the submitted source, an annoying problem here on Hacker News.

i) How is unlocking a phone circumventing copyright protection measures?

ii) Most people do not unlock their own phones, but take their phones to a service to be unlocked. Thus, they are breaking a law, but the service is more likely to be breaking the "commercial advantage or private financial gain" clause.

I'd love to see some more information on this but can't seem to find much. This feels pretty wrong.

It's also a huge prison sentence to change the IMEI on phones, or be in possession of IMEI changing software in most countries.

Only phones I use are unlocked samsung phones like Nexus S and Galaxy so I can custom build android source I refuse to buy a locked phone anymore