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The Videogame Industry Is Fighting 'Right To Repair' Laws (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
The video game industry is lobbying against legislation that would make it easier for gamers to repair their consoles and for consumers to repair all electronics more generally. The Entertainment Software Association, a trade organization that includes Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, as well as dozens of video game developers and publishers, is opposing a "right to repair" bill in Nebraska, which would give hardware manufacturers fewer rights to control the end-of-life of electronics that they have sold to their customers...
Bills making their way through the Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Wyoming, Tennessee, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Illinois statehouses will require manufacturers to sell replacement parts and repair tools to independent repair companies and consumers at the same price they are sold to authorized repair centers. The bill also requires that manufacturers make diagnostic manuals public and requires them to offer software tools or firmware to revert an electronic device to its original functioning state in the case that software locks that prevent independent repair are built into a device. The bills are a huge threat to the repair monopolies these companies have enjoyed, and so just about every major manufacturer has brought lobbyists to Nebraska, where the legislation is currently furthest along... This setup has allowed companies like Apple to monopolize iPhone repair, John Deere to monopolize tractor repair, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to monopolize console repair...
Motherboard's reporter was unable to get a comment from Microsoft, Apple, and Sony, and adds that "In two years of covering this issue, no manufacturer has ever spoken to me about it either on or off the record."
Bills making their way through the Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Wyoming, Tennessee, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Illinois statehouses will require manufacturers to sell replacement parts and repair tools to independent repair companies and consumers at the same price they are sold to authorized repair centers. The bill also requires that manufacturers make diagnostic manuals public and requires them to offer software tools or firmware to revert an electronic device to its original functioning state in the case that software locks that prevent independent repair are built into a device. The bills are a huge threat to the repair monopolies these companies have enjoyed, and so just about every major manufacturer has brought lobbyists to Nebraska, where the legislation is currently furthest along... This setup has allowed companies like Apple to monopolize iPhone repair, John Deere to monopolize tractor repair, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to monopolize console repair...
Motherboard's reporter was unable to get a comment from Microsoft, Apple, and Sony, and adds that "In two years of covering this issue, no manufacturer has ever spoken to me about it either on or off the record."
ok, so you're going to require manufacturers to make repair manuals and parts available to the general public. What's to stop them from writing in the manual, "purchase and install Comprehensive Assembly #012934" and selling that part which is basically a replacement for the entire unit? Who's to contradict them if they say that the unit is not serviceable?
...is why you are not required to only have the dealer repair your vehicle. Consumers must have the same freedom with electronic devices.
When you make HUGE price tags to repair items, people are going to repair it themselves. I previously worked for Lenovo/Asus repair depot. To replace an LCD was over $300. Part on eBay is about$60 takes maybe 10 mins depending on the model. So when you flease the customer long enough, they attempt it themselves because the $300+tax or buy a new one for $400. Most think I'll give it a shot for $50.
Yes it is. If you own the item, then all of the rights of ownership are to be afforded to you. You get to do with it as you please, and that includes repairing it.
It's a derived right, to be sure, but it is a right, nonetheless.
The point of the law is to make it so that farmers can repair their tractors and other equipment. In the past decade, big tractor companies have been locking down their machines using the DMCA. Since it could take days or weeks for a repairman to come by and fix it, and that time lost without the machine could cost the farmer their livelihood, it has put them in an impossible position. That this affects pretty much every other market besides farm equipment and vehicles is an unintended side effect of the computerization of everything and application of the DMCA to lock down all those things.
MS used to ban people for useing there own hdd's (much cheaper ones) in the 360. And the 360 used Ext case ones. At the same time the ps3 was open to any 2.5 one.
Want to know the actual difference between a "legitimate" HDD, and a not-legitimate one?
A small PNG image file loaded onto some magic sectors, and an 8 byte magic number written directly afterward. The drive's firmware was default factory, but only a small handful of drives were supported.
That image was of the microsoft logo.
Yes. The presence or absence of that little png file is SO TOTALLY going to change how a game is played online. /s
No-- Microsoft KNEW that they were vastly overcharging for a COTS component that was not special in any way except for the data stored on the platter, which is very inexpensive to replicate. They did not care. They were the gatekeepers, and were milking people dry by purposefully selling base systems without HDDs, or with very tiny ones, while pushing digital downloads.
Know what else? When it came to the "USB" storage options, I put various very high speed USB2.0 devices that I had PERSONALLY TESTED the raw performance of and verified that they were bitching fast, on my 360 to see if MS was full of shit when the console did its own testing-- Sure enough, it was premium bullshit. It would consistently say the device did not meet recommended speed requirements. Know what I did? I went out and bought one of the shitty USB memory sticks MS was hawking, and tested it myself. It underperformed compared to the units I had been attaching. The magic? The USB string-- For real.
Bullshit. Premium bullshit all around, and people just ignore it, because there is no alternative. Fuck that noise.
Now shut the fuck up and send more money.
Signed - Microsoft, Apple, Sony
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
USB2.0 is faster than many optical disc drives, AC.
For reference, the max bandwidth of USB2.0 is 480mbit, or about 60MB/sec.
A typical DVD drive (we will even say that this is a fancy 12x drive, just to give it the benefit of the doubt), such as found in an xbox360, has a max potential bandwidth of 132mbits. (16.5MB/sec)
So YES, AC. A "Fast" USB2.0 device is one that favors the top possible speed allowable by the bus, which mechanical disk drives have no problems whatsoever providing.
The drives in question were capable of sustained sequential reads in excess of 40MB/sec, and arbitrary random reads of about 20mb/sec.
The Microsoft branded flash module? about half that.
That was because you had to mod the console to use your own HDD originally, you weren't banned for using your own HDD, you were banned for breaking the online service terms and conditions of not using a modded console.
Those terms and service were illegal right on their face, because the Magnuson-Moss act prohibits voiding a warranty for a repair if the repair uses compatible parts. And the video game companies already lost the legal battle to prohibit people from using their trademarks as an unlock; if you make that the unlock, then you simultaneously give everyone permission to use it for that purpose.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And the video game companies already lost the legal battle to prohibit people from using their trademarks as an unlock; if you make that the unlock, then you simultaneously give everyone permission to use it for that purpose.
Specifically, in the case Sega vs Accolade.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Gameboy uses a similar trick - I mean the original one, the first. The firmware in the device (such as it is, it's really tiny) checks for the presence of a certain byte sequence, an encoded image. If the bytes match expectations, it gets displayed. If they aren't there, the firmware locks the device. That's why if you power it on without a cartridge in you see a scrolling blank box: The image is the Nintendo logo.
The intention was to use trademark law to prevent unlicensed publishers selling games: In order to make a game cartridge run on the Gameboy, it had to include the Nintendo logo, and thus any unlicensed publishers would get sued by Nintendo for trademark infringement. I understand that a later supreme court ruling determined that a trademark could not be considered a trademark if it was incorporated into a functional element, but that was post-Gameboy.
I'm guessing Microsoft pull the same trick. Perhaps it still works in some countries.