Thanks to a whitehouse.gov petition reaching 100,000 signatures Thursday, the administration must respond publicly about a recent decision by copyright regulators making it illegal to unlock mobile phones purchased after January 26.

What’s this all about?

Unlocking enables a phone to operate on a compatible carrier of a consumer’s choosing.

Four months ago, the U.S. Copyright Office ended the practice of granting an unlocking exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA makes it illegal to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access” to copyrighted material, in this case software embedded in phones that controls carrier access.