Comment by eadmund

It's actually your telco's phone. They're the one that has the license to run the baseband computer and RF transceiver. The 'pad' computer device is sort of yours. But there's no legal way to have ownership of a cell phone unless you yourself bid for and get the RF spectrum and set up your network in a way that accomplishes the FCC coverage and timing requirements. Then run your own telco for your phone. Basically, impossible.

Smart phones try to limit and firewall the interface between the two but tight integration is required for energy efficiency. So a smart phone, or a cell phone, can never be yours. They aren't good choices for doing computing and this legal reality is becoming more and more obvious with time.

Looking at what's been going on in the E.U. vs. the U.S., it seems pretty clear that one of the only things companies this big, with this much control over the markets fear is regulation.

Maybe people live in a country where adding new regulations is difficult at the moment. In that case, push at for it at the state or province level. Push for it wherever you can. Suddenly these companies have to figure out how to work around 50 different state level laws? Painful. Good. Make it hurt to be evil.

People need to come together and push for regulatory roadblocks to things like this at every level. I think that's part of how you keep control of your own property and stand up against it.

You paid for the phone with the OS as a contributing factor (alongside the hardware) to the purchase no doubt, so the OS in itself must be compelling to you for some reason.

You didn't fund the development of the OS, contribute to it (presumably), you didn't market it or position it alongside your brand.

I'd agree with you if you said you have a right to run anything on the hardware under a different OS, but you have no god given right to run whatever you want on the OS.