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Big Tech Lobbying Is On the Verge of Killing Right To Repair Legislation In Minnesota (vice.com)
Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: Statehouse employees in Minnesota say that lobbying efforts by big tech companies and John Deere are on the verge of killing right to repair legislation in the state that would have made it easier for consumers and small businesses to fix their electronics. According to two of the bill's sponsors, the bill, which would have introduced "fair repair" requirements for manufacturers in the state, will not get a hearing that's necessary to move the legislation forward. Minnesota Senate rules automatically kills any bills that do not have a hearing scheduled by a certain date (this year, it's March 10). Last year, tech industry lobbying killed a similar bill in New York. "Unfortunately, it's not going to make deadline this session," Republican Sen. David Osmek, one of the sponsors, told me in an email. Osmek would not give additional specifics about his colleagues' concerns with the bill, but a legislative assistant for the bill's other sponsor told me that electronic manufacturer lobbying is likely to blame, while another source close to the legislature told me that tractor manufacturer John Deere -- a long time enemy of fair repair -- helped kill the bill as well.
Start our own equipment company, with full parts availability and no lock-in. They'll be selling like hotcakes!
AC comments get piped to
If those companies don't want to have customers being able to repair their equipments/electronics, these should be the conditions (I read this on another site):
- 5 year minimum hardware warranty
- 3 years phone support on software (included or embedded)
- Security updates for as long as the hardware is expected to last*, and if not provided, company must provide a new 'current product' replacement free of charge (with full warranty)
(*)"expected to last" means that if the product would normally continue to function, but been designed to fail/have its life shortened prematurely, then a replacement is also warranted. Example given was limiting the battery charge cycle to 3000 cycles when the battery could do 7000 cycles, limiting the useful life of the product (because the battery couldn't be swapped out because the device is a sealed unit).
AC comments get piped to
and how much ?
Apple or the tech companies that are the targets it's the farm equipment manufacturers and auto manufacturers who want to lock down diagnostic and repair.
Movement ever so gently. Soon you will lose your last 4 or 5 freedoms you still have. He who has the money makes the rules. Bring on the robots and dump us in the sea.
I used to like John Deere until this shit happened. Now they're right up there with Apple and Disney on my Fuck You list.
The lobyists, that is.
It's high time bribery was punished like the crime of government corruption it's supposed to be.
Red states' wet dreams involve small independent farming families sustaining themselves by the sweat of their brow independently.
If it helps pass good laws, sure. But it's worth pointing out that such people are myths now if they weren't always. There are two million farms in the us, and they're mostly mega corporation farms now. In a nation of 300 million people, that's really an insignificant part of the US.
I would guess that there are orders of magnitude more people who would be interesting in being able to fix their iphone screen than there are small farmers who are just trying to replace the parts on pa's old tractor with money and parts from under the old feather mattress.
Pass a bill saying "except for farm equipment." John Deere lobbyists will back off, the vast majority of Minnesotans will be able to fix their electronics, everyone wins except for some mega farm corporations who can afford it anyway and big tech. Not the most satisfying outcome, but seriously, give it up with the small farmer bit. They're not worth worrying about even though the right wing acts like they're the only true Americans.
exercise it, before this one goes too.
Works great, and if you're profitable you can go public. Once you are public you'll have a board. And if John Deere offers your board $1B to buy them out, they can undo the original purpose of your business. It will all be perfectly legal.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm fine with everyone having a nearly unlimited amount of rights, as long as they don't interfere with my rights.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Blame the politicians who took their money to kill the bill, and ultimately blame the people who reelect them. There is no hope unless they are voted out.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why can't we blame all of the above?
This is a good example of our corrupt political and economic system.
We have corporations who find it profitable to restrict customer access to the products they make.
Customers want to be able to fix the stuff they've bought so they try to get the politicians to pass a law.
Corporations don't want this law so they pay off the politicians who promptly forget about their constituents and pocket the money.
Corporations and politicians working together to increase profits... screw the citizens.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Appliance makers are transitioning to 3-year built-in obsolescence designs. That means you will have to repair or replace 50% of your appliances every three years! And of course it will almost always be cheaper to replace. In fact, that is their excuse for why this is better -- initial prices will be lower. See how clever they are?
:T:R:A:N:S:
You can still repair anything you want, and you can pay anyone you want to repair your device, you just can't expect the company to warranty your device afterwards.
Wrong. See the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975.
Manufacturers can only refuse to honor warranties if they can prove that your repair is what caused the problem.
Though I HATE Wired, they have this to say:
Last Friday [Oct 28, 2016], a new exemption to the decades-old law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act quietly kicked in, carving out protections for Americans to hack their own devices without fear that the DMCA’s ban on circumventing protections on copyrighted systems would allow manufacturers to sue them. One exemption, crucially, will allow new forms of security research on those consumer devices. Another allows for the digital repair of vehicles.
TFA
Just goes to prove yet again that America has the finest democracy money can buy.
Call it what it actually is with these ridiculous anti-consumer rules. If I can't do what I please with hardware I *bought*, I didn't really buy it, did I?
Looks like more and more issues (Medical insurance, Right to repair, ) should be brought forward in the form of constitutional amendments. Power to the people!
You can still repair anything you want, and you can pay anyone you want to repair your device
DMCA - no exception even for personal use. If they use any form of soft protection, encryption, or obfuscation, it's protected from your hands by law.
you just can't expect the company to warranty your device afterwards.
On the other hand, Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
This is not about smartphones and computers, although right-to-repair would benefit every owner of these devices. It's a battle going on in every farm state over being able to repair farm equipment.
You don't need constitutional amendments for each and every issue. To need a single constitutional amendment to limit influence of the massive amount of lobbyist and donor cash that has flowed into government since 1980.
The amount influence corporate cash has on the system is the problem that is behind every major problem we have, whether it is health care, right to repair, or massive amount of money we are spending on national defence. The situation looks a whole hell of a lot like we have no representation... that is we have representation in name only. My Congressional rep sure as hell doesn't care about his constituents. It's all about the donor culture now. If we are smart we would working to change THAT.
Rights are a very human concept. In reality, you have the rights you take and can defend, and that is the law of nature. It's a dog-eat-dog world and survival of the fittest, and the universe owes you nothing. Your right to life extends only as far as your ability to defend your life. If you are prey it's because you are not strong enough to be predator.
While you're right on one level, on another level you're wrong.
People are a social animal and we can act as a group and defend each others rights. As a group, our right to life actually extends as far as the group has the ability to defend members of the groups life. Other rights are similar, if the group decides that freedom of speech should be defended, the group can defend the individuals right to speech. Of course there are still conflicts such as this article where the right to profit is up against property rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Those humans who form into cooperative groups, let's call them communities, have out lasted those humans who did not. (or precursors to humans)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The GOP now claims to be the party that represents rural America. In MN they have the majority of both the state house and state senate. If the state senate committee was divided up to match the division of the chamber itself, then the GOP only needed to convince one or two democrats to approve the bill past committee in order to get it up to a vote in the chamber.
If they couldn't bring themselves to work with the democrats enough to get just one or two senators to approve the bill to go past committee, they have nothing to bitch about. This should not have been a difficult bill to get moved forward. More likely they are getting their wheels greased by the farm implement industry just as much (if not more) than the democrats and as a result they couldn't be bothered to put any real effort into seeing this bill go through; it was in their interest to just make a statement by saying they wrote and proposed it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
rental so the landlord needs to pay for repairs and maintenance
This is not about smartphones and computers, although right-to-repair would benefit every owner of these devices. It's a battle going on in every farm state over being able to repair farm equipment.
The problem is, the bill won't be crafted finely-enough to place a distinction between classes of devices, such as cellphones, which just CAN'T be repaired by most people with commonly-available and relatively inexpensive tools (who wants to buy an SMT rework station to replace that BGA-packaged SoC?), and a John Deere tractor, which can.
This will result in a bunch of idiots suing Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc. for a DECADE to try and force them to publish Service Manuals and provide "Spare Parts" for the (still unrepairable for most people, no matter what the law says) smartphones and other asininely-complicated embedded products, and to no real eventual outcome other than making some lawyers rich(er).
Believe me when I say that I agree that, what John Deere and other farm equipment companies is as dickish as it gets; but there really IS a vast-difference between repairing a tractor with a 10 mm Socket Wrench, and repairing a smartphone with a bad Flash chip. Yes, fundamentally, they are both "repairs"; but that is about ALL they have in common.
A couple of years ago I undertook to read the complete output of the science fiction writer H. Beam Piper, who died in 1964. For most of his career he was a bottom-of-the-pack pro-writer, managing to get published regularly but never quite making enough to quit his job as a laborer in the Altoona PA railroad yards.
That's because for the most of his career he was a technically mediocre writer. His stories, taken on their own, were adequate for the most part. But if you look at his stories as a body, they're quite spectacular, envisioning a consistent history stretching thirty thousand years into the future (and some direction laterally if you count his "paratime" stories).
We take this kind of "world building" for granted in the post-LotR era; many aspiring writers start by creating elaborate historical backstories. What set Piper apart from these naval-gazing wannabes is that his future history is built around a single, central idea: nothing ever works for long. Sooner or later some people stop doing the things that system needs to be done because they've forgot why it should be done; or other people figure out ways to game the system; or both.
His stories always end on a happy, hopeful note, but if you fit it into the timeline with the next story it turns out that everything must have gone to hell in the end.
In many ways what we are seeing looks like the Piperian historical senescence of American small-r republicanism. Some people have stopped doing some of the things the system needs (informing themselves and dealing with opposing viewpoints). Others have figured out how to game the system (buying politicians without legally appearing to do so; flooding the mediasphere with bullshit).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yo jackass, this affects repair shops. People who repair electronics. Moron.
You're confusing Corporate Statism with Fascism.
Fascism is simply an authoritarian government that asserts the superiority or rightness of a national identity, and strives to take power away from anyone that does not fit their ideal blueprint. Usually the platform for a fascist is positioned as a way to protect the country from outside enemies. And to bring a nation back to the culture and tradition that liberalism has destroyed. Of course the narrative might be imaginary, but it is always presented as a firmly understood fact.
Some fascist leaders may choose to nationalize businesses (socialized economy), others may choose to privatize services and establish panels of industry leaders that are placed under the fascist government. But how that goes down isn't necessarily particular to fascism. And you can end up in similar situations with class based Leninism or any number of Oligarchies, such as Plutocracy or Military Junta.
PS - Nepotism with a little Kleptocracy is how I'd describe the ill defined "crony capitalism"
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Um, MANY cell phone repairs can be done with nothing more than a replacement part, the right screwdrivers, and a spudger. Add in a soldering iron and you can do even more. Admittedly, they're not repairs of the rework-station-needed type, but once you hit that point it's probably cheaper to just replace the damned phone.
It doesn't take all that much brain power to watch an ifixit teardown and replace a cracked screen/digitizer, or replace a battery.
As for "This will result in a bunch of idiots suing Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc. for a DECADE to try and force them to publish Service Manuals and provide "Spare Parts" for the (still unrepairable for most people, no matter what the law says) smartphones and other asininely-complicated embedded products, and to no real eventual outcome other than making some lawyers rich(er)." that will be Apple/Samsung/HTC etc's fault for not publishing the fucking manuals in the first place and instead trying to create monopolies on repair as well as planned obsolesence..
Yo jackass, this affects repair shops. People who repair electronics. Moron.
Been there, done that, moron. So I actually do know a bit about this topic.
95% of the "Repair Shops" have no more SMT rework equipment nor expertise than my dog. This does NOT affect them from being able to replace a display module or battery on an iPhone; but most of them (fortunately!) will not even attempt to go much deeper than that in a smartphone. The risk of "collateral damage" is just too high.
But those aren't the people who will file lawsuits and drag this out in the Courts for years. No, that will be the stupid Slashdotters (and their ilk) who THINK they know how to reflow a BGA package because they once soldered an 8-pin SO-8 SMT Op Amp package successfully, and who get all full of (un)righteous indignation that someone would (wisely) tell them that what's on the mainboard of their smartphone is a whole 'nuther matter.
There is a difference. But the law won't be written that "smart", I can assure you.
Um, MANY cell phone repairs can be done with nothing more than a replacement part, the right screwdrivers, and a spudger. Add in a soldering iron and you can do even more. Admittedly, they're not repairs of the rework-station-needed type, but once you hit that point it's probably cheaper to just replace the damned phone. It doesn't take all that much brain power to watch an ifixit teardown and replace a cracked screen/digitizer, or replace a battery. As for "This will result in a bunch of idiots suing Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc. for a DECADE to try and force them to publish Service Manuals and provide "Spare Parts" for the (still unrepairable for most people, no matter what the law says) smartphones and other asininely-complicated embedded products, and to no real eventual outcome other than making some lawyers rich(er)." that will be Apple/Samsung/HTC etc's fault for not publishing the fucking manuals in the first place and instead trying to create monopolies on repair as well as planned obsolesence..
First, I wasn't talking about the average "ifixit"-level repair. Of course there will be a continued and burgeoning class of shops and individuals that will be able to pull-off that sort of thing.
But it's the people that THINK they can go FURTHER with a heat-gun and spudger that will get all indignant and call things "unrepairable" and start filing lawsuits (haven't we already had a few of those?). THOSE are the people that will make it so the rest of us can never have anything nice...
You don't seem to know very much about the topic. Right to repair means that the manufacturer can't lock me out of repairing the device. That's a pretty reasonable ask: I spent the money on the device, it's very much against my interests for there _not_ to be a market for repairs on the device. Might this result in Apple getting sued? Sure, if they lock me out of repairing my device. How is that a bad thing?
You don't seem to know very much about the topic. Right to repair means that the manufacturer can't lock me out of repairing the device. That's a pretty reasonable ask: I spent the money on the device, it's very much against my interests for there _not_ to be a market for repairs on the device. Might this result in Apple getting sued? Sure, if they lock me out of repairing my device. How is that a bad thing?
They can't lock you out in any practical sense. They can TRY; but they can't actually do it and still make the device repairable by THEM, too.
Besides, weren't these mfgs. Trying to use the DMCA to prevent people from repairing cars and farm equipment, or publishing repair manuals? The doctrine of First Sale applies. So, NO ONE can keep you from doing anything other than making something into a bomb, etc. And it is not illegal to publish a tear down or repair guide for anything that doesn't involve National Security.
Way to go for calling names. It really helps the conversation along.
-- Cheers!
Dear fellow citizen:
Don't you think it is time that governments actually SERVE THE PUBLIC?!
Then why the fuck are you voting these assholes into office?!
And, if an election was stolen, then why aren't you participating in the revolt about it?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.