Government criminalise consumer choice and property rights

How bizarre that an act called the Violent Crime Reduction Act should contain within it new laws which will make it a criminal offence (from tomorrow) to offer to or agree to (or offering or agreeing for a third party to) re-programme (also known as unlocking) a mobile phone and the offence will carry a maximum penalty of five years in prisons.

What this has to do with Violent Crime Reduction I have no idea but there is a wider issue here. Essentially what the Government are doing is restricting consumer choice in the market and messing with the property rights of legitimate mobile phone owners. In fact, it is similar to the way that owners of downloaded music have been locked into DRM wiping out conventions on fair use.

As it stands, when you get a mobile phone on a contract the phone will be "locked" so that it will only work with sim cards from that operator. The result of this law is that, if for example you decide your operator is rubbish with coverage in your area, you cannot simply purchase a new sim card from another operator, unlock your phone, and carry on using it.

You will, under these laws, be obligated to pay the operator whatever charge they like, or purchase a brand new mobile phone, either on contract or pay as you go if you want to swith network. You could of course buy a totally unlocked phone, but the unit price of a handset is usually above £200 (the operators give them away at a loss by making their money back in airtime).

Essentially your consumer choice and ability to enact your property rights over your mobile phone have been criminalised by the Government from tomorrow. I imagine the phone operators and retailers are very pleased though given they will remain exempt under the rules and will be able to charge whatever they like for unlocking, and have effectively been provided a monopoly of the market by the Government.