No unlocked iPhone for you!
The unlocked iPhone has been the holy grail since Apple released it tethered to AT&T. Engadget reported this week that a company had unlocked the iPhone to work with any network and the software to allow owners to do so would be released today. Not surprisingly, the company has been contacted by a California law firm on the behalf of AT&T and the software release is on hold until the validity of the AT&T demands can be assessed by the software company.
iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary ofUniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com). was poised and ready to releaseremote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST.The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received atelephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).
After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firmpresented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal softwaredissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whetherAT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legalaction. The logistics of different continents as well as it being aweekend factors into how the situation develops.
Until an assessment is made of the potential of legal action,Uniquephones is unable to release the unlocking software for sale. Thecompany spokesperson also said that the company would also beevaluating what to eventually do with the software should they belegally denied the right to sell it. A substantial delay caused by anylegal action would render the unlocking software a less valuablecommodity as well as creating unforeseen security issues for the company.
From what I have read, unlocking a phone to be used on another carrier is totally legal in the US, so I’m not sure what the basis for this claim from AT&T might be. However, I have read that since the iPhone is not just a phone, is in fact an iPod that is designed to only work with Apple’s iTunes Store, that Apple could make a claim on that basis. The soap opera will no doubt be played on the interwebs for all to see.
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I saw that coming. White unlocking your phone is not illegal creating the software to modify the ROM it’s and making money out of it is illegal too.
And please, do not kill me, that’s what the law says. It’s not what we all want but things are not always like we want.
Sorry, replace white by while in my previous post.
Actually, the company that was contacted was a 2nd company that said they had an unlock solution. I have some doubts about this 2nd company even having a solution though, since the timing coming one day after a valid solution, verified by Engadget, is a bit too coincidental.
There is no word yet on whether AT&T or Apple have contacted the first company, iphonesimfree.com, that actually has a working solution. I hope it is released so I can pop my T-Mobile SIM into it and use it with my family plan.
Maybe there’s some clause in the EULA about not reverse engineering iPhone? (A clause like that is, unfortunately, pretty standard.)
Apple hasn’t gone after people who make replacement firmware for the iPod (e.g., Rockbox), so it’s not a slam dunk that Apple would go after these people. After all, they’ve already gotten their money. (OTOH, I read somewhere that Apple gets a share of the calling plan profits too.)
Finally, the iPod is not designed to work only with the iTunes Music Store. My 60Gb iPod is completely filled with absolutely legal content and I’ve never bought anything from iTMS. You can rip the CDs you’ve bought. You can buy music from any of the on-line services which don’t impose DRM (e.g. Emusic). iTMS is one of many choices. (Of course, Apple makes sure that iTMS is the most convenient choice.)
The unlock had to be planned for by AT&T and Apple so why set the hook before the big fish is on? – Unless the plan all along was to be heavy handed.
There were probably more lawyers involved in the iPhone development than actual industrial experts so all the bets may not be covered (just got through reading the Psion saga), but enough probably are so that any for-profit unlock company is going to get some kind of spanking before all is said and done.
Is it legal to unlock a phone as a third party, or only a legal requirement that a carrier unlock your phone if you ask them to?
Perhaps a mehtod like this would be less likely the ahve legal problems? http://thenewsroom.com/details/633981?c_id=wom-bc-js
I’m with Matthew Miller on this. iphoneunlocking.com promised an unlock only days after the phone was released. A week or so later they claimed to be testing their unlocking solution successfully with a number of phones and were going to release it very soon. Once real unlocks became available they made another announcement of an imminent release, and now they are claiming a delay.
I think their strategy is to get as much Google-juice for unlocked iPhone related keywords as possible in the hope that at some point they’ll have something to offer, even if they are only buying someone else’s solution wholesale and turning around and reselling it.