Meet Congressional Librarian James Hadley Billington
Who he? From
TechHive:
Phone unlocking ban could hit you in the wallet
As of Saturday, your options for owning an unlocked phone become far more limited. You can ask your carrier to unlock it�and good luck with that�or you can pay a premium to manufacturers like Apple or Google for a new unlocked phone. You just can�t unlock your phone yourself�at least, not legally.
That decision was made not by voters, the courts, or even Congress. It was made by one man, 83-year-old Congressional Librarian James Hadley Billington, who is responsible for interpreting the meaning of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Billington decided last October that unlocking your phone yourself is a violation of the Act, which was originally written to prevent digital piracy.
When Billington made his decision, he also granted a 90-day exemption period in which people could still buy phones that they could later unlock, but only after asking their carrier to do it and getting �no� for an answer. That period ends Saturday. After that, the question of whether or not the smartphone you buy is truly your own gets a little fuzzy.
The idea that a decision that will affect so many, and involves so much money, could rest on a single unelected person is bizarre at best and absurd at worst.
But indeed, the law reads in Section 1201 of the DMCA: �Upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, the Librarian of Congress may designate certain classes of works as exempt from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works.�
Odd that so much power can reside in the hands of one unelected person.
Shame that he is wielding it so poorly -- proprietary systems always get hacked. This has never been proven wrong...
Posted by DaveH at June 13, 2013 2:23 PM