Is it legal to copy a GSM SIM card. There are products that allow you
to copy multiple SIM Cards to a single SIM card which means one
handset--many lines

I am certain that the expectation is that there is a ?one-SIM,
one-phone" rule in effect; thus, if you copy the contents of several
SIM's onto one card, isn't that giving you access to those other
person's phones?  The only legitimate use I could see for this is if
one person had several different phones (and thus several different
SIM's) and wanted to have one SIM that he could interchange between
phones.  But that seems like an odd fact pattern to me.  Seems more
likely that one would perhaps want to be able to clone a SIM and then
make calls using the other person's identifying information and thus
avoid being charged for the call.

Ethical issues aside, SIM's contain copy-protection technology (for
the aforementioned reasons) and in the United States the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent anticopy
technology.  So yes, if, in the US, you make a copy of a SIM using a
device or algorithm that defeats the copy-protection resident on the
SIM, I am fairly certain you have violated the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.

Dear Ipfan,

Thanks for your insightful comments. Being the originator of this
question, what I had in mind is for users who want to use SIM copy in
an "ethical correct" manner; That is, the user is the rightful owner
of a SIM card, but due to the fact that he owns RIGHTFULLY several SIM
cards, and he wishes to use all of them on one handset, The only
logical thing to do is to copy these SIM cards to a MAGIC SIM CARD. In
this manner. this sounds ethically correct, though I am not sure if it
is legally right. MAGIC SIM card when used right makes life easy.

A seller gives a caveat as below:
"This value pack is only for personal usage. Prohibited to be used in
illegally copy or back up others' SIM Card data. People should take
their own responsibility for illegal action"

Please read this legal interpretation backing from an Asian goverment official:
 "Mr. Gao Kaisheng the Deputy Director General of Administration of
Telecommunication stated that it is no problem if the user just copy
his/her own numbers and not for making profits. If the
telecommunication agencies or website owner copy the numbers for users
without licenses, that will be illegal. In according to the opinion
that if selling multi-number reader is illegal, then the computer
dealers that sell CD-RM must be illegal too. If the multi-number card
is illegal or not? Mr. Gao Kaisheng stated that there are no
regulations about only setting one number on one card in
Telecommunication Law. The mobile phone numbers must be issued by the
legal telecommunication agencies to keep the order of
telecommunication market. The laws do not covering the multi-numbers
card if it is reproduced by the user himself/herself and that it dose
not infringe the copyright. But if the telecommunication agencies or
websites reproduce multi-number card for users, it is a illegal
business and will be punished by laws. So this product is just like a
common CD-RM and no legal problems;"

Further comments from the public welcomed..............

Dear biodunm,

Thanks for clarifying.  I agree that making an archival or backup copy
of a SIM card you lawfully own is likely permissible under US and
other Berne Convention country copyright laws.  See, e.g., 17 U.S.C.
Section 117(a)(2) [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=17&sec=117].
 That, I think, is what Mr. Kaisheng was referring to.  But there is
an odd paradox at work in copyright law--although you have rights to
make an archival copy as a backup, if you have to defeat copy
protection in order to do it you may be violating the DMCA.  See
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/chapters/12/sections/section_1201.html.
 In other words, Section 117 only avails you if you are starting with
a non-copy-protected original.  I will have to do some more reading on
this--I vaguely recall some recent legislation or cases dealing with
this seeeming paradox.  Also note that Section 117 only works if the
copy is truly archival, i.e., you shouldn't be running both copies at
the same time.

I assumed in my first post that the SIM was indeed copy protected--is that correct?