> Thieves don't always get the news right away, but when you work hard to steal a bunch of phones and can't sell them for anything, you don't get your fix and you find something else to steal and sell.
Thieves figure that out pretty quick, and they still seem to be stealing plenty of phones.
> Regulations have made it pretty hard to sell catalytic converters
This is the equivalent of having a list of stolen phones.
> A strong lock system that prevents stolen phones from being used is better than a global IMEI denylist because phones that can't be connected to a cell network but are otherwise usable still have value
It's pretty likely that this value is lower than, or approximately the same as, the value of the phone as individual parts.
> some networks won't participate in a global list
Thieves want to sell phones in rich countries where people can afford to buy them. Get the rich countries to use the list and nobody is going to be stealing iPhones so they can pay $10 to ship them to sell in Somalia for $5. For that matter it's going to make a huge dent even if yours is the only country using the list, because most thieves are not going to use an international fence.
> some phones can have their IMEI changed if you can run arbitrary software on them
So the manufacturers who want to do something like this should prevent that rather than preventing people from running arbitrary software in general.
It seems like you're trying too hard to defend the premise. Having a list of stolen IMEIs would be significantly effective. "What about this marginal edge case?" is like, preventing the thieves from selling stolen catalytic converters would be significantly effective, but they could hypothetically ship them to Somalia and sell them there, so we need OEMs to lock down everyone's cars instead.
That seems more like an excuse to lock down everyone's devices than an actual concern about the marginal edge case which itself could be addressed in various ways without doing something with such high costs to competition. Assuming the edge case was even significant, which it probably isn't.
Thieves figure that out pretty quick, and they still seem to be stealing plenty of phones.
> Regulations have made it pretty hard to sell catalytic converters
This is the equivalent of having a list of stolen phones.
> A strong lock system that prevents stolen phones from being used is better than a global IMEI denylist because phones that can't be connected to a cell network but are otherwise usable still have value
It's pretty likely that this value is lower than, or approximately the same as, the value of the phone as individual parts.
> some networks won't participate in a global list
Thieves want to sell phones in rich countries where people can afford to buy them. Get the rich countries to use the list and nobody is going to be stealing iPhones so they can pay $10 to ship them to sell in Somalia for $5. For that matter it's going to make a huge dent even if yours is the only country using the list, because most thieves are not going to use an international fence.
> some phones can have their IMEI changed if you can run arbitrary software on them
So the manufacturers who want to do something like this should prevent that rather than preventing people from running arbitrary software in general.
It seems like you're trying too hard to defend the premise. Having a list of stolen IMEIs would be significantly effective. "What about this marginal edge case?" is like, preventing the thieves from selling stolen catalytic converters would be significantly effective, but they could hypothetically ship them to Somalia and sell them there, so we need OEMs to lock down everyone's cars instead.
That seems more like an excuse to lock down everyone's devices than an actual concern about the marginal edge case which itself could be addressed in various ways without doing something with such high costs to competition. Assuming the edge case was even significant, which it probably isn't.