[deogeo]

Not as large a difference as you might hope. Replace "guns" with "phones with freely unlockable bootloaders", and "I" with "7/10 manufacturers" (made up statistics, but it's in the ballpark I think). If that 7/10 trends up to 10/10, then their right to control their own devices effectively disappears, even though the government didn't get in the way. I wager those who value the right to bear arms, don't want to wait until they are barely able to buy guns, at a dwindling handful of companies, before taking action.

[scarface74]

You’re really comparing “unlocking bootloaders” to the right for a gay couple to get married, make end of life decisions for each other as the next of kin, be on family insurance, etc?

Trust me, I live in the south. If the chains don’t sell guns, there will always be some local shops that will.

[deogeo]

> You’re really comparing “unlocking bootloaders” to the right for a gay couple to get married...

I'm making a comparison to show you don't need the government to restrict rights - a handful of corporations that control a market can do so just as well. Thinking the government is the only threat to your rights is myopic. The specific activity I chose to illustrate this is utterly besides the point. (Though it is worrying that anyone on this site would think control of your own computer is unimportant.)

> Trust me, I live in the south. If the chains don’t sell guns, there will always be some local shops that will.

It is precisely the passionate pro-2nd-amendment attitude (the same attitude that directed ire towards Dicks) that assures this. To repeat myself - they don't want to wait till their backs are against a wall, to start pushing back. "Don't worry, you still have N-1 computing devices not locked-down by the manufacturer. N-2. N-3. N-4..."

[scarface74]

The government can legally take away my property (eminent domain), my liberty by putting me in jail, they can force me to join the military, etc. Corporations have none of those powers.

[deogeo]

None of that conflicts with what I said.

[scarface74]

Thinking the government is the only threat to your rights is myopic.

The government is the only threat to my legal rights. Not made up “rights” that a corporation won’t let me do something that I am allowed to do.

What law or part of the constitution says that I have a right to an unlocked phone?

[deogeo]

> What law or part of the constitution says that I have a right to an unlocked phone?

Maybe you'll be happier if I call it an "ability", not a "right", since I am not interested in a debate on what rights are.

To answer your question - none. That's what makes it so easy to lose. But do you not see the problem? Suppose all computers, not just phones, become so locked down. Your computing would be completely under the control of a handful of giant corporations - all without any legal right getting infringed.

Of course I don't need hypotheticals. Lets look at another example: Before the Civil Rights act, no rights were being infringed on by segregated businesses either, and people were free to choose non-segregated businesses. The government wasn't stopping anyone - yet it was still a problem.

> The government is the only threat to my legal rights.

If 100% of the phones on the market automatically censored mentions of Tiananmen Square, are your legal rights still not under threat? It doesn't matter if you're able to exercise your rights, as long as you have them?

The Civil Rights act doesn't cover sexual orientation, so in many states, you can still be fired for being gay. Hypothetically, if 10% of businesses refused to hire gays, would your answer still be "The government is the only threat to their legal rights"? What if it was 50%? 90%? 100%? How high would you let that % go before acting?

[speedplane]

> What law or part of the constitution says that I have a right to an unlocked phone?

The constitution is an important part of the legal system, but it's not the only part. There are also laws that legislators pass in service of the desires of the people the government serves.

For one, anti-trust law can potentially provide an avenue for challenging locked down phones. Providing a platform and then inhibiting open competition on that platform to the detriment of consumers is often an antitrust violation (see, for example Microsoft antitrust battles in the 1990s).

But even if current laws do not provide for unlocked phones, society can make new laws that require them. That's the beauty of democracy, we can choose how we want to live.