For the first meter ever , someone ’s been convicted of violating the DMCA for unlocking cellphones . But do n’t freak out ! Mohamad Majed was doing two things you are n’t : unlocking M at a time , and allegedly funnel the lucre to Hezbollah .
At first blush , news that someone was convicted of assault the Digital Millennium Copyright Act sounds alarming , give that unlocking and jailbreaking phones was explicitly allowed by the US Copyright Officejust this summertime :
2 ) estimator program that enable wireless telephone set handset to execute package applications , where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications programme , when they have been de jure obtained , with computer program on the telephone French telephone .
The Register find that the exemption should be limited to admit only “ used ” wandering headphone . The condition “ used , ” as apply in this context , refers to a mobile phone that has been aerate with the flattop or provider that sold the sound at a subsidized toll and that the person activate the sound must really have used on that carrier ’s internet .
In other words : you ’re free to jailbreak your own telephone , but jailbreaking or unlocking for majority reselling is still verboten .
Which bring us to Mohamad Majed .
in the beginning arrested in Philadelphia by the FBI in 2009 on a33 - count indictment . Implicated as part of a gyp that resulted in26 terrorist act - relate stop . And purchaser , along with several accomplices , of over 10,000 purportedly stolen mobile phone from an undercover officer over the course of two years , according to the superceding indictment file against him on November 22nd .
It ’s anyone ’s guess as to how Majed went from facing literally dozens of charges to pleading guilty to one improbable count of copyright infringement , but there seem to be two purpose achieved : he bargains down to a lesser charge , and the Feds get a case law on the books that will help process bulk phone reselling in the future .
The scope of the latter will be more clear once Judge Mary McLaughlin decides a sentence and issues her opinion . But Jim Baldinger , a attorney who ’s been extremely active in bulk reselling litigation , say me that he “ did n’t think the individual consumer needs to be concerned , ” for the most part because this summer ’s DMCA allowances still bear . As long as it ’s your earphone , you ’re free to do with it what you will . You know , seize you ’re not perpetrate human action confederacy . [ Marketwire , Original images by Shutterstock ]
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