Obama pledges he will sign a bill to legalize cellphone unlocking. Obama to sign cellphone unlocking bill

President Barack Obama pledged Friday to sign a bill passed by the House and Senate to legalize cellphone unlocking, in a rare example of tech policy advancing in Washington.

The House passed the legislation just hours earlier, and the Senate approved the measure last week. The bill reverses a Library of Congress decision that made it illegal for cellphone users to unlock their devices to be used on other networks.


“The bill Congress passed today is another step toward giving ordinary Americans more flexibility and choice so that they can find a cellphone carrier that meets their needs and their budget,” Obama said in a statement.

Cellphone unlocking — the act of changing settings on a mobile device so it can be used on a different wireless network — was legal until the Library of Congress declared it copyright infringement in 2012.

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The Obama administration announced it supported undoing that decision, after 114,000 people signed a petition in favor of cellphone unlocking on the White House website last year.

Lawmakers led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and his House counterpart Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) jumped on the problem soon after, seeing it as a simple fix that consumers were demanding. Their bill went through several iterations — with some lawmakers unsuccessfully trying to turn it into a vehicle for broader copyright reform — before finally clearing Capitol Hill this month.

The White House had no immediate comment on when the president would sign the bill.

Separately, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler inked a voluntary agreement with the nation’s major wireless carriers last December that guaranteed companies like AT&T and Verizon would allow users to unlock their phones once their contracts are up. But lawmakers still sought a permanent solution.]

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Consumer groups cheered the legislation.

The cellphone unlocking bill will “make it easier for consumers to switch from one provider to another, improving competition in the wireless market,” Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Laura Moy said in a statement. “It will improve the availability of free and low-cost secondhand phones for consumers who cannot afford to purchase new devices, and it will keep millions of devices out of landfills.”

The bill restores the legality of cellphone unlocking under an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But the issue isn’t likely to die completely since the Library of Congress has to make another decision by the end of 2015 on whether to continue or expand that exemption. That proceeding is likely to begin later t