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The Only, Lonely Protester at CES (Video)
CES is not a political show, so it only drew one visible protester: Kelly Chong, who is mad at camera manufacturers for (he says) destroying his camera repair business. He managed to get mentioned in Forbes, in an article headlined CES: One Man's Protest Against The World's Camera Makers. And now he's getting three minutes and five seconds of fame on Slashdot. Is his protest justified? According to a 2012 article headlined How Nikon Is Killing Camera Repair, at least one major camera manufacturer now refuses to sell parts to independent repair shops. So Kelly Chong seems to have a legitimate beef. Will anyone listen to him? Will major, multinational camera manufacturers start selling parts to independent repair people again? And what about those of us who do (at least some of) our own repairs? Labor charges aside, it's often lots faster and easier to do a simple repair yourself than to box your camera up and send it somewhere, not to mention the waiting time for it to get back to you.
Who really needs a TV that will never be moved to be less than an inch thick?
Well, to show that I paid my "taxes" this year and replaced my 3cm thick TV with a 2.4cm one (same screen size).
Since actual innovation is expensive and in some cases slow (TVs are currently limited to HD, because the signal is limited to HD) the manufacturer resorts o changing the appearance of the device so the consumers can throw away the old one and buy new.
We really need to impose a tax on manufacturers to encourage them to design repairability into their products. I suppose availability of service parts would be another input to the formula for this.
Make the manufacturer responsible for recycling the thrown away device and charge an additional tax for that so that it becomes more economical to design the device to last (or be repaired). And extend the mandatory warranty to 5 years for devices that are more expensive than, say, 100EUR...