Imagine a pawn shop that loans money on cell phones. Now imagine someone comes in and pawns their phone. It still has service and all, but he thinks he will come back next week and redeem it. A few months pass and he never comes back. Now the phone is legally (the pawn contract says one must completely own the collateral, so carrier subsidies etc. shouldn't be a problem) the pawn shop's property. Mr. Defaulter calls the phone company and has the IMEI blocked. Now the pawn shop is out the money and owns a useless piece of metal and plastic.

I've seen this problem with phones, tablets, and even tasers. The company will not activate them if they've been reported lost or stolen. But "finders-keepers" is legal and people can lie about theft. Of course the company also has a second interest not to help create a used market. Just like encrypted firmware schemes, this erodes personal control over our property. The legal owner with physical control should be able to use the device. Period.

There are also concerns over government or corporate disablement. Aside from obvious government malice during e.g. protests, does anyone really think either the government or the phone company can run a blacklist without false positives? Obviously not. Nobody can when your population size is >300 million. And the customer service grunt is just following the rules when your device is disabled and he cannot re-enable it.

The argument for this law is that it will reduce thefts by making the phones worthless. I understand this. I just don't think that is worth losing control over our property and devices.