Unlocking Phones Becomes Illegal In The US This Saturday

If you were planning to unlock your phone, and you live in the US, you will want to do so very soon, say, within the next two day. Why is that? Well, because it will be illegal to do so after that.

That’s right, the Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress “90 day period” stated in the above text ends this Saturday, January 26th, and after said date, it will be illegal to unlock your phone for use on other carriers.

At least, here in the US it will. If you think the terms “unlock” and “jailbreak” go hand in hand though, you are partially wrong. For those of us on iOS, jailbreaking is still legal, as per a 2010 ruling. It is the unlocking that is illegal.

iPads are the exclusion to that, as it was deemed illegal to jailbreak tablets, but not phones. These laws are beginning to confuse people, I bet. Another thing to note is that unlocked phones aren’t illegal, so you can still purchase those, it is actually unlocking the device after purchasing it. That’s the illegal part.

What do you think? Are you unlocking your device? Have you already? Let us know in the comments.