Instead of requiring carriers to unlock devices, he could just announce that the DOJ would fail to prosecute anyone who does choose to do it. It's possible to right a wrong without asserting additional executive powers.
The illegality of it stops approximately nobody as it stands, so this would do approximately nothing. The problem is not that it's illegal to do an end-run around the carriers, but that it's technically very difficult. Their locking mechanisms are constantly improving. For example, I'm not aware of any recent iOS release or iPhone version that has been unlocked without somehow involving the carriers or Apple.
There are SIM interposer devices ("a thin microprocessor that sits between your network SIM card and the base-band hardware") that can unlock an iPhone 4S on iOS 6: http://www.applenberry.com/gevey-ultra-s-gsm/ - that's the latest that I know of. I have no idea whether the DMCA applies to them though.
Oh yeah, I was aware of those but hadn't kept up with them and forgot to check on that when posting my comment. Nice that they've kept up with OS releases, although they seem to still be a bit hit-and-miss as to whether they support a given OS release and iPhone model.
Selective enforcement of laws is trouble in the long term. It transfers power from the legislature to the executive, and tends to yield situations in which everyone is guilty of something.
it already happens. Drug laws, etc. I'm sorry, but you have your causality backwards. Official (or unofficial) selective enforcement of the laws is a symptom of questionable laws, not a cause.
I disagree with respect to causality. If selective enforcement were not possible, then it couldn't happen. Imagine a (flawed, but fair) system in which, if an executive selectively failed to prosecute anyone for violating a law, then the law is nullified, just as (approximately) in the arena of trademark. An executive bound to enforce the law would result in more citizen/legislative/lobbying effort directed toward implementing better laws and fixing those that were broken or out of date.
In practice, executive (and judicial (and in general!)) discretion is important. As an example, mandatory minimum sentencing has attracted criticism. An adaptive front-line response is a good thing, but only to a point. Leaving vague or unenforced laws on the books has the potential for both abuse and compassion (see national monuments and the Antiquities act, for a non-judicial example).
>An executive bound to enforce the law would result in more citizen/legislative/lobbying effort directed toward implementing better laws and fixing those that were broken or out of date.
Or, the executive could choose not to enforce those laws (and screw people's lives over in the process) and take the initiative to scrub them from the books by introducing bills, etc. But you're right. Politicians are not usually decent people, and it's unreasonable to expect them to not play politics with people's lives.
Even if it was never prosecuted, carriers can make it a royal pain in the ass to use devices not sold by them by refusing to activate them, make their devices not even accept SIM cards for the devices, never sell SIM cards and only let preregistered IMEIs from devices sold by them to use their network. That was the Telus & Bell Mobility CDMA carriers back when I was in Canada, and it probably can still be like that.
That's Verizon and Sprint. The phones are mutually compatible but are unusable on the other network because they refuse to activate phones they didn't sell.
This is one of the nice things about GSM (as opposed to CDMA, which Verizon/Sprint use). GSM carriers can't block you from transferring SIM cards from one phone to another.
It's for this reason that people had iPhones on T-Mobile long before the iPhone was officially available on T-Mobile.
Well, they could stop you if they really wanted; they could IMEI sniff. AT&T does it to detect "smartphones" so they can helpfully add 'mandatory services' to your plan without your consent - it'd be easy for T-Mobile to block Apple's IMEI ranges from registering on the network regardless of whether your SIM worked or not.
The FCC should have implemented some actual common carrier regulations/a Carterfone-equivalent for the mobile industry. Instead, they're so mired in regulatory capture we get nothing.
