Don't expect anything to happen in July, and since no concrete steps were announced in June, it's August at best for anything. Sad, really, as by then most of the people who upgrade will have done so, so any goodwill gesture or technical change (I'm not saying there will be any) risk being put in the too little too late category.

Excellent idea. I completely agree: that would get high opt-in rates and be perceived by most people as a very fair exchange for providing the information.

Personally, I still wouldn't register, even with that incentive, so the opt-out would still be needed but this is still a very good idea.

In fact, if Nokia will open source cherry, and the SMS libraries it depends on, I would be very happy to contribute to a community project to provide this feature. I already mentioned, in my bugzilla request to open source cherry, that the community might be able to help Nokia make the process acceptable and legal while still providing them with high opt-in rates.

By the way, slightly off-topic but this paper might be of interest to those discussing the different types of openness. He even includes a section on "communities"!

http://deposit.depot.edina.ac.uk/230/
The Open vs Closed Debate.
pp. 30-47 of Vol 30(3) Journal of Information and Management (ISSN 1882-2614).
Published 2010.
Professor Andrew A Adams
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan

(Bringing this here as it's off-topic for the bug report)

What would be the best contact channels to discuss such a change, and would such an effort have any realistic chance of success?

Note that the current terms ("This is an Ovi service device. Registration via SMS required." on the back of some retail boxes) and Ovi privacy policy (written mainly with the website in mind) are clear as mud. We still don't know what information is being transmitted and what it will be used for. Does "registration required" refer to the use of the Ovi service or is it mandatory for using the device and someone is effectively breaking a contract by simply not inserting an SMS-capable SIM in it? How does Ovi also imply MyNokia registration (is someone buying an Ovi service device automatically opting in to any and all other Nokia services)?

I hope I don't sound too antagonistic (speaking as a former, and hopefully future, customer who would love to finally see something worthy of replacing my ageing N8x0s), but these are important questions that do influence purchasing decisions and are still unanswered. Take it or leave may be a valid answer, but It'd be nice to know exactly what "it" is first.