The Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 is a new bill winding it's way through government bureaucracy that basically says that companies cannot throw you in jail for up to five years and fine you huge sums of money while hiding behind copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Basically what this is about is companies like Apple computer, Samsung, and Sony don't want you doing such nefarious things with the product you buy from them as Jail breaking them. Or god forbid that you take one of those products to a new perhaps cheaper carrier and cut off their cash cow. Now they are using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to say that simply jail breaking a phone is breaking their copyright. That is simply wrong. The Beginning
In the beginning of the personal computer age in the time of the TRS 80 and other computers of that time and day you were given the code and some simple programs to master to help you learn how to code. On the TRS 80 it was BASIC and one of the first things I did was I coded some games and I took out the original coders name and put in my own. It was simple to do and it was cool for a kid who was twelve and it taught me to love what you could do on a computer. So here we start out where they give you all the code and teach you basic programming and the computers are always in need of working on and you just have to work on them they are made for the owners to work on all the time. Basically remove 4 screws and you can get into your Personal Computer anytime you want now what do you want to upgrade and make better or faster? Then DMCA comes along and these companies are saying whoa stop there don't change a thing. After they taught us hey you need to keep working on this machine to keep it going and keep it up with current technology. Now they say stop. Not only do they say stop but they say you bought this from us but we still own the copyright on it so you can't touch it and if you do you will go to jail. Many people did anyway and some got in trouble with law. That's how we have come to the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 To stop these abuses of regular people just trying to make to phones that they spent their hard earned money on work better for them.
Comparisons
So what is you bought a table from www.ikea.com and it was beautiful, the best table you could find. But then you found out that everyone in town had virtually the same table as you? So you said to yourself hey I will buy some paint from www.homedepot.com and paint my table. But then you get the call from Ikea, don't paint the table because if you do you are breaking the law and you will go to jail for a long time and be fined so much money you will never be able to pay the bill. Sounds pretty stupid right? I know it totally makes sense about this table. But for some reason these phone companies just don't want to let go of this control they have on all of us. I know you are thinking why is this type of post of a green living blog? Well, part of green living is being able to choose and live a life in the easiest cheapest way. The Unlocking Technology Act Of 2013 will help to make our lives a little easier and cheaper. If we want to unlock our phone to get more features or to take it to another cheaper carrier then we can. More power to you.
Spotify, a photo by Johan Larsson on Flickr.
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