S60 Open to new features

I think yes, this is a wrong move.
As you said the Us have this kind of law, and it's not a coincidence that in terms of mobiles they're the less advanced market.

This is clearly a pressure made by the operators to the government. I live in Portugal which is a less developed country than Finland, but I think that a government can't make laws to "encourage" the act of buying new phones just so the people start using new services. It's forcing not encouraging.

What government want is people spending more money in things they don't need. If one needs than, it will search for it, not the other way around.

The UK is the other end of the scale, we've got expensive phone contracts (generally 12-18 months) with almost free phones.

They effectively paid me to take a 6680 (70GBP minus about 100GBP in various rebates).

The deals offered if you don't choose the subsidised phone route are generally unattractive too (no data, expensive calls, no roaming etc).

But lots of companies bundles things together. Why should the government give special protection to handset sellers?

I agree with Alexandre, forcing people to have contract might be the wrong move.
We have seen so many "unlocking" services. It shows that many customers don't want it.
Well, there are still some customers who want cheap phones, of course.... :)

The worst results of bundling phones with contracts are doubtlessly the fact that some companies insist on branding phones (e.g. Vodafone) which means they adapt the style of the menues and icons and even remove some functionalities (e.g. send pictures via Bluetooth directly from the camera menu)... I heard in the U.S. they go even further. And then there is that whole topic concerning locking a phone to the operator from which you have bought it. In the end prices with 'subsidies' are the same as without (due to high monthly fixed charges) but phones are crippled...