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The US Government Wants To Permanently Legalize the Right To Repair (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In one of the biggest wins for the right to repair movement yet, the U.S. Copyright Office suggested Thursday that the U.S. government should take actions to make it legal to repair anything you own, forever -- even if it requires hacking into the product's software. Manufacturers -- including John Deere, Ford, various printer companies, and a host of consumer electronics companies -- have argued that it should be illegal to bypass the software locks that they put into their products, claiming that such circumvention violated copyright law. Thursday, the U.S. Copyright Office said it's tired of having to deal with the same issues every three years; it should be legal to repair the things you buy -- everything you buy -- forever. "The growing demand for relief under section 1201 has coincided with a general understanding that bona fide repair and maintenance activities are typically non infringing," the report stated. "Repair activities are often protected from infringement claims by multiple copyright law provisions." "The Office recommends against limiting an exemption to specific technologies or devices, such as motor vehicles, as any statutory language would likely be soon outpaced by technology," it continued.
Silly valley will chip in too:
The USPO has stated they want this for all the things, this includes the things made by silly valley. The moguls of silly valley will not like that. It does not matter that Ford and John Deer are not part of silly valley culture, their interests will coincide.
Expect the likes of Google, amazon, Microsoft, etc to be against this, because many of the things they do to "secure" their products (Xbox, home, Alexa, etc) introduce technological locks to prevent modifications, which also precludes service and repair. Things like the DVD firmware being tied to a specific xbox, etc. This move would shake things up in that kind of model. Microsoft and pals would have to start relying more on contract law instead of copyright law, and could not abuse the DMCA the way they gave grown accustomed to.
The logical next step is to allow jail breaking of repaired devices that the OEM refuses to provide service for, so that alternative services can be provided, which would undermine the position of power enjoyed by abusing contract law--, if you don't agree to their terms and conditions, you can use an alternative service provider. Naturally, that is very undesirable to Apple, Microsoft, and pals.
It does not take a genius to see how silly valley will react with horror to this announcement, and seek seemingly unlikely alliances to squash it.
But you were too busy trying to paint everything with Ds and Rs, now weren't you? Money does not really care about those things. It has no allegiance to anything but itself. Remember that.
I've posted one post to https://www.ifixit.com/ and every month I get 30+ thanks for it (all one e-mail).
It was how to get an Acer Switcher (tablet attached to keyboard) to work. You take off the bottom and disconnect the connection to the battery, reconnect and good to go.
it's just not silicon valley.. it's all big companies.
that's the problem.
the car industry is a lot better legislated about this than the electronics industry though! like, you can get tools and docs to fix cars.
otoh, the only people who have apple diagnostic tools for current apple products are apple themselves and apple has a policy of NO REPAIR - if the diagnostic tool tells them that a single resistor needs to be changed, they will change the entire board and that will mean repairs that are worth more than the device for anything older than 2 years for apples products. it's planned that way.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Potus has no dog in this fight, given his business model. He will sign anything that gets him a photo op, as long as democrats are either livid or apathetic. And right to repair is a very pro small business, pro small government concept. You can spin it as added regulation, or removing teeth from patent or other IP laws.
Your knee jerk reaction is a small minded goon talking, and your positive moderation indicates likewise simplistic thinking.