Mobile Phone Owners Allowed To Break Software Locks

Mobile phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules. Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books. All told, Librarian of Congress James H Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years. In granting the exemption for mobile phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren’t able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones’ underlying programs