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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.
The Republican congress and the POTUS have way too many connections to big business to allow such a thing to happen. Expect the U.S. Copyright Office to be set straight as soon as tomorrow on this job killing philosophy.
What ever happened to the populace deciding the direction of society rather than the Government or US Corporations?
--(the REAL) Beau--
Uummmmmmmm, last time I checked the "Government" IS the populace. So nothing happened to it. It's right there doing what it's supposed to do.
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.
If you really drill down into the story and the linked documents, you will find that the official statement from the USPTO that wants to permanently legalize the right to repair was prepared by the previous head of the patent office Michelle K. Lee (Obama appointee) and signed by Karyn Temple Claggett (Obama appointee) who became acting head of USPTO after Lee resigned on June 6.
Trump hasn't appointed anyone to head the copyright office yet, since he's too busy being awesome to do any actual presidenting, and he hasn't gotten a list of possible candidates from the Russian ambassador yet. But if his executive actions so far are any indication, you can bet there won't be any Obama-era "right to repair" left in the USPTO when he's done, since his entire raison d'être seems to be making sure to reverse anything done by the black guy before him. Even if only superficially.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Trump will kill this, but only if someone tells him about it. It's not something that he cares about, and it hasn't been heavily politicized, so it is not likely for one of his aids to mention it.
If we stay quiet, he probably will not be aware of this happening until after the agency passes it's rules.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
this has nothing to do with glued together devices.
It's the copyright office saying they want to to be clear that hacking the software on your device to repair it doesn't violate copyright, even if you have to hack the DRM.
It's more to do with Apple's "Error 53"
Obama had the leader of Google into the White House about once a week through his entire 8 years. The Obama admin was completely in bed with Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc and Obama was elected and the re-elected using a mind-blowing tidal wave of corporate cash. Hillary tried to get elected using an even bigger pile of corporate cash than Trump.
Honesty Test:
Name just ONE high tech company that might be affected by this policy that gave more money to the Republicans and/or Trump than to Democrats and/or Obama/Hillary.
[crickets]
The line has been clearly drawn since the first caveman traded his rock for a sharpened stick.
"If you trade for MY sharpened stick, you can harden it at my big fire for free, for the life of your stick."
If you wanna bundle value added services on your sharpened stick, and trade for my two rocks instead of just my one, just remember, you don't control my stick anymore, it's MINE. If I can come up with a way to take advantage of your value added stick services for the 2 smaller sticks I made by "hacking" my stick, well, you should have thought out your value added plans a little more than you did.
You don't get to tell me what I can and cannot do with my stick(s) unless you give me back my rocks, and if I'm happier with my sticks than I was with my rocks? Tough shit for you. You also don't get to control what fire I choose to use to harden my sticks, or who can re-sharpen them. Even if I've used your fire a few times before.
If you slot your stick for just the perfect rock, I'm still allowed to put my own rock on the top, even if your rock is just the best rock out there for sticks. You don't have to sell me your rocks, but you absolutely do not get to dictate what rocks I choose to use.
Cavemen figured this shit out a long time ago.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
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.
now if a resistor on the charge circuit on your apple board goes bad you're much more screwed over since there is no schematic available and apple is actively trying all it can to hide what is broken with it and is trying to make it so that if it has an unauthorized fix it will brick itself.
Well fortunately, Android phones are all fixable, and have been since the first phone.
It is a question of what you want. And the solution is illustrated by my silly example of the Atwater Kent.
The Atwater Kent uses seriously large components, and if hard pressed, I can make a lot of them - there are even some intrepid makers who are producing vacuum tubes in their shops.
But there is a big catch in there. The Atwater Kent is pretty big. A large part of that is because of those big replaceable parts.
So if we are to make that iPhone or Android smartphone repairable, we're going to have to do something about the construction. Not all that many folks are equipped with SMT repair setups, and even though I have the microscope and super tiny soldering devices, the component size and density in a phone makes the job so daunting I would only attempt it if my life depended on it.
Next up is troubleshooting. If we are going to find and repair these things at the component level, it will take time. Which is charged out. We are decades into the concept of swapping out whole assemblies because it's less expensive than the repair process. So now we have one board in a phone and many other modern devices.
So with making the modern smartphone at best the size of the old bag phones, and the extremely limited number of people who are going to repair individual components at the SMT level, yeah, I'd just as soon get a new phone.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.