The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill today that would let consumers unlock their cell phones. It’s strange that we need a law for this, but, as a reminder, in the United States, it’s considered illegal to unlock a phone tied to a wireless carrier such as Verizon or AT&T and take it to another carrier, no matter how much you’ve paid for it and how long ago your contract expired. Doing so would break the phone’s encryption, and that is considered illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998.
