Like everything else in the practice of law, the devil is always in the details. Almost everything is dependent on the particular facts of the situation. For example, if a person has a driver’s license, she can drive a car. However, the driver’s license does not allow her to drive the wrong way down a one-way street.
Similarly, as we discussed in our earlier article “Copyright Law Gives Mobile Users New Freedom With Legally Unlocked Cell Phones,” the Librarian of Congress recently made it possible for consumers to unlock cell phones without violating copyright law. Exemptions exclude from 17 U.S.C. �1201(a)(1), inter alia, “computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.”
