[dwild]

> They really have no way of knowing that you're selling/giving away the phone, so they can't have the phone tell you to unlock.

They have a way to contacting the owner to remove the lock. Why don't they do allow that? That would even allow to get back the device for the original owner.

The issue here is that Apple doesn't works toward making it harder to steal, they works toward making it harder to resell.