[citation][nom]bucknutty[/nom]Why the hell would we need congress to pass a bill about what we can or can’t do with our private, rented or leased property in the first place? Furthermore why the hell would the punishment for using the device incorrectly be half a million dollars or 5 years in prison? I know a guy at a used car lot that got arrested and charged with like 15 counts of fraud for turning back the odometers on cars. His fines were about equivalent to the value of all the cars he sold fraudulently. But I guess a phone is a much bigger purchase, and much more of a safety concern than a car, so the $500,000 sound fair……Stupid.[/citation]
I sort of agree with your point, but this is a terrible example to illustrate it. If I as a consumer was defrauded by a used car salesman, he probably deserves some sort of punishment. Likewise, to have a punishment that is unsuitable for the crime is also ridiculous. If I simply want to unlock my device so I can get updates to an OS that is given out for free, but the carriers are too lazy to do so, then we should be able to unlock the device, regardless of payment or contract status. Also, to set the fine at $500,000 for that is a bit ridiculous. It should be no more than twice the value of the contract in my opinion. So somewhere around $2,400 would be a fitting punishment.
I do think that this new legislation is actually a good idea, but would not be necessary if our copyright system/DMCA wasn't as badly broken as it is.
A good idea would be to vote with your dollars and simply buy a Nexus branded device that actually gets software support, doesn't come preloaded with junk apps that can't be removed, you can actually use NFC if it is included on your device, unlike verizon's effort to block that service etc. The only reason left after that is the switching carriers issue. That one is why we need this legislation.