As stated out by another user this not an accurate metaphor. With yours Shell loses out on potential revenue if you go to another gas station. To buy a subsided phone it is in contract that you must stay with that said company for a period of time. If you break that contract you have to pay full price for that phone. Unlocking a phone does not in anyway alleviate you from your obligation to abide by that contract and pay your bill. Unlocked or not unlocked you still have to pay.

You're making unwarranted assumptions about AT&T's revenue model. Who says staying on the contract for two years is the entirety of the benefit AT&T bargained for? They also benefit from the control over the secondary and overseas market that locking the phones gives them.

Also, you're ignoring the fact that people don't necessarily pay what they owe on contract. AT&T has to deal with this statistically. Some percentage of people will take the discount and not pay the termination fee. It costs money to go after those people and they take a big haircut selling the debt to a collections agency. Maybe they found that locking the phones is a cheaper way of enforcing the contract because most people can't figure out how to get past the lock.

I'm not arguing that unlocking your phone should be a violation of the DMCA. But it's also unfair to leave out the fact that you didn't buy an unlocked phone--you bought, at a huge discount, a locked phone tied to a contract.

Any secondary income is assumed income. A user can not be held liable or to contract for assumed income.

For your argument how is a user unlocking his phone and the user just stop using their phone different? As far as i understand your argument this should yield the same result as far as assumed income. (yes i know this is ridiculous but thats the point) Should it be illegal for a user to simply stop using his phones?

I'm not defending making it illegal, I'm defending AT&T's locking of the phones they sell.

It's not secondary if it's contemplated by the contract. I haven't read AT&T's contract, but presumably it prohibits modifying the software on your phone that way.

Overseas phone usage is expensive because the overseas networks have free reign to decide what they charge. The cost that your carrier charges you per minute/sms/MB is almost exactly the same as what the overseas carrier charges them. AT&T don't make money off overseas usage (which incidentally must be a very, very small portion of phone usage - enough to make it inconsequential).

Here in Europe the EU regularly reduce the maximum price that a network can charge overseas (EU) visitors for calls and texts. The networks are very willing to tell us why european phone usage costs what it does - because of overseas network charges.

You can see why a network would want to charge stupid amounts to visiting networks for usage - the more they charge, the more they make. There's no recourse because you're charging the customers of someone else.

Imagine not being able to buy cheap gas because some economist got it in his head that people were more easily fooled by cheap cars subsidized by marked up gas with an implicit 20%+ interest rate so that you had to buy the gas and car that way even if you were perfectly willing to pay up-front for the car rather than the implicit financing fee via marked-up gas.

There, that's the analogy we should be using.

That is, in fact, almost exactly the model used for razors/razor blades.

The difference is, if I pay full price for an unlocked handset, I still pay the same monthly bill as someone who doesn't. Explain that one.