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Why We Must Fight For the Right To Repair Our Electronics (ieee.org)
Kyle Wiens and Gay Gordon-Byrne explain via IEEE Spectrum how people in the United States can preserve their right to repair electronics, and why people must fight for the right in the first place. Here's an excerpt from their report: So how can people in the United States preserve their right to repair electronics? The answer is now apparent: through right-to-repair legislation enacted at the state level. Popular support on this issue has been clear since 2012, when 86 percent of the voters in Massachusetts endorsed a ballot initiative that would "[require] motor vehicle manufacturers to allow vehicle owners and independent repair facilities in Massachusetts to have access to the same vehicle diagnostic and repair information made available to the manufacturers' Massachusetts dealers and authorized repair facilities." Carmakers howled in protest, but after the law passed, they decided not to fight independent repair. Indeed, in January 2014 they entered into a national memorandum of understanding [PDF], voluntarily extending the terms of the Massachusetts law to the entire country. The commercial vehicle industry followed suit in October 2015. Now we need right-to-repair legislation for other kinds of equipment, too, particularly electronic equipment, which is the focus of "digital right to repair" initiatives in many states.
Similar to the Massachusetts legislation for automobiles, these digital-right-to-repair proposals would require manufacturers to provide access to service documentation, tools, firmware, and diagnostic programs. They also would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair facilities at reasonable prices. The bills introduced this year in a dozen states have some variations. The ones in Kansas and Wyoming, for example, are limited to farm equipment. The one most likely to be adopted soon is in Massachusetts, which seeks to outlaw the monopoly on repair parts and information within the state. If it passes, electronics manufacturers will probably change their practices nationwide. Consumers would then have more choices when something breaks. The next time your smartphone screen cracks, your microwave oven gets busted, or your TV dies, you may be able to get it fixed quickly, affordably, and fairly. And you, not the manufacturer, would decide where your equipment is repaired: at home, with the manufacturer, or at a local repair shop that you trust.
Similar to the Massachusetts legislation for automobiles, these digital-right-to-repair proposals would require manufacturers to provide access to service documentation, tools, firmware, and diagnostic programs. They also would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair facilities at reasonable prices. The bills introduced this year in a dozen states have some variations. The ones in Kansas and Wyoming, for example, are limited to farm equipment. The one most likely to be adopted soon is in Massachusetts, which seeks to outlaw the monopoly on repair parts and information within the state. If it passes, electronics manufacturers will probably change their practices nationwide. Consumers would then have more choices when something breaks. The next time your smartphone screen cracks, your microwave oven gets busted, or your TV dies, you may be able to get it fixed quickly, affordably, and fairly. And you, not the manufacturer, would decide where your equipment is repaired: at home, with the manufacturer, or at a local repair shop that you trust.
I bought it. Itâ(TM)s mine thatâ(TM)s the end of it. We shouldnâ(TM)t need new protections. How about 500 years of common law on property? Isnâ(TM)t that enough?
If more people have access to the right tools and parts, more people can offer the service of repairing, thus increasing competition, enabling people with the skills and knowledge to do so to open a business and earn a living.
Not allowing it would create monopolies that can dictate which and how many places offer the service, much like in a planned economy. That reeks of Communism!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have a 9 year old LCD TV that has failing capacitors in the power supply. It takes multiple tries to power on, where it turns itself off and on and shows weird things on the screen. I know exactly what the problem is and I spent a dollar or two and got the caps I need, although I don't want to actually do the work until after the World Series is over just in case I do something stupid and break it.
But I'm sure Samsung would much rather have me go out and spend $500 on a brand new 'smart' TV that I don't want.
Regulation like this would be wholly unnecessary if we instead allowed small manufacturers to compete honestly in the market.
Through regulation and taxation, of which this is only a small part of, only really big companies can afford to bring products to market.
If this were such a problem, people would be buying more repairable machines. I myself havenâ(TM)t needed a âoerightâ to repair anything and I work with Apple products almost exclusively. I know how to repair MacBooks, iPads and even iPhones, where to get spare parts. Iâ(TM)m not a mechanic but I have a fairly modern VW, I bring it to an independent, small business garage and he can fix it in less time and cheaper than the dealership.
I donâ(TM)t know what people are whining about, we have protections in place nobody is enforcing. If you want a right to repair of Androids, sue the manufacturer for violations of GPL - Samsung, Amlogic, ... all of them are grossly violating your existing right to the existing code under existing protections.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
>> Why We Must Fight For the Right To Repair Our Electronics
In my day, we fought, for the right, to Parrrrrrrrt A!
You took out the tubes, went to the Drug Store, and used their tester, then bought replacements?
If you did that before you smelled burning Bakelite or dielectric, chances are you got to watch the entire World Series. If you didn't have to work in the afternoon.
Once autonomous vehicles become the norm, liability and legislation will work to prohibit owning the vehicle, due to the fear that consumers won't maintain the vehicles properly (software or hardware), putting others at high risk on the road. Car ownership will become obsolete.
Electronics ownership is already becoming obsolete due to the general risk and liability of insecurity. Manufacturers won't offer more than 2-3 years to cover the hardware, and security updates usually stop by then as well. We already essentially lease smartphones these days, placating to some form of forced upgrade every other year due to anything from a lack of support to irreplaceable failing batteries that inevitably mandate replacement. Desktops were something you could actually turn a proverbial wrench on, but no one buys desktops anymore. Repairing portable electronics? Are you kidding me? Wafer-thin designs and sealed chassis aren't easy for anyone to try and work on these days. Often times, it's not even worth the effort.
SaaS models are consuming our digital lives. We don't own DVDs or CDs anymore; we perpetually rent the ability to stream content. Same goes for many larger software suites that you now pay a monthly fee to simply maintain a usage license.
It's not the Right to Repair we need to be fighting for. It's fighting to preserve the Right to Ownership and get the fuck away from everything in your life being consumed at the "bargain" rate of only $9.99 per month.
Go look at a modern car, so much electronics that it'll get to the point where the only thing we can replace are the tires. A local mechanic tells me that the automanufacturers are putting him out of business because every few years he has to buy a ton of new electronics diagnostic kit to keep up with the new cars. As the mfg knows that the repairs are where the money is at.
I had a 2010 BMW, and you couldn't just go to the local auto-parts store and get a new battery and swap it out yourself. You had to program the car to accept the new battery.
Outside of the tires windshield wipers, on a pure electric car, what can you repair yourself?
The problem with modern electronic devices is that the repair shop needs to make a substantial investment in equipment and training for the repair staff as well as documentation/parts approved/authorized by the device's manufacturer.
A $10 soldering iron and a tape of resistors from Radio Shack being wielded by a well meaning amateur (er "professional") ain't gonna cut it, like it did in the '60s, '70s and a good part of the '80s. I'm not being facetious - there were a lot of products (TVs, VCRs, Computers, Microwaves, non-mobile/cell phones) were this was a reasonable option. Right now, not so much.
With this legislation there is a great opportunity for somebody to develop a chain of localized repair shops - and, no, I don't consider "Geek Squad" to be a good start at this.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Do everyone a favor, and shut the fuck up. Christ, you are a whiny fucking asshole.
I find "right to repair" proposals to be super disingenuous. You already have that right. These "right to repair" laws are really "right to job security" laws by forcing manufactures to supply them with parts, technical support, and a blind eye towards shoddy or dangerous workmanship.
I think this problem had occurred from the ability for people who tried to "Fix" their beige box PC's.
During the 1990's we had a glut of generic PC's that hit the market, or you can get named brands that were just the same. These devices were given parts of various quality, and "Upgrades" to parts may not have been as dependable as the old part.
So say in 1995 someone got a Brand new 486 Gateway 2000 computer. In 1997 they wanted to get a bigger drive, so they had replaced their quality drive with a Death Star drive, which fails often, this is messing up timing on the system so Windows is BSODing all the time. But because the drive in general is working, but is failing every so often, the user doesn't realize that his fix was the problem, and it must be those people at Gateway 2000 who sold you that POS Computer. So when you get your next computer you will switch to Dell or some other brand.
Apple has a history of keeping its devices locked down and being fairly preventative towards do it yourself repairs. Now this means when your bring your Apple device to get fixed by certified repair places, they use the components that have been vetted correctly. That means the fix more often then not fixes the problem, and you keep the device for the rest of its expected life.
So if I were to open up my iPhone, and replace the battery with a some cheap knockoff battery that happens to fit the form factor, which causes my phone to get on fire, It will get posted on Social Media and go viral about exploding iPhones and how dangerous they are. We had this problem a little while back when some people got a ripoff power brick that in essence just wired the AC current straight to the phone, Causing the phone to catch on fire. This went viral and caused problems for Apple until they found out the truth.
In short, with social media, it is way to easy to spread hate, and fix it yourself, means you can screw up your device, thus make you feel justify spreading hate for the product that YOU had messed up.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It has been illustrated countless times through the years given unchecked power companies behave in ways contrary to any form of common good. A free market can not exist without regulations.
"hard won freedoms that our men in uniform fought and died for"
So our military fights for the rights of corporations? Yeah, I can see why you voted the way you did in the last election.
Electronics repair you!
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
"hard won freedoms that our men in uniform fought and died for"
So our military fights for the rights of corporations? Yeah, I can see why you voted the way you did in the last election.
That's totally unfair! You can't guess that he voted for Clinton from such scanty evidence, merely because she's a Wall Street and Beltway Insider!
10 years ago, the first iPhone was released. The release of the first Android was in 2008.
10 years ago, the majority of computer displays were CRTs.
10 years ago, Netflix was only sending out DVDs.
10 years ago, when "Meet the Robinsons" came out there were only 600 digital movie theatres in the world.
10 years ago, the cost of putting 5 tonnes into orbit was $150M, now it's less than half.
10 years ago, there were no mass-produced electric cars.
10 years ago, the first HIV retrovirus "cocktails" were being tested on human patients.
Personally, I would say the pace of technology is moving along at a pretty good clip and I would argue it's moving and changing the world at a rate that hasn't been seen since World War II.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
> Tech hasn't "moved fast" in the last 10 years.
You are not looking. Tech is moving at an astounding pace... towards network-bound services and away from isolated gadgets. Ten years ago, no tech could understand spoken word or recognize your pet. Nowadays Microsoft is touting a service which looks over your shoulder while texting and offering to text for you.
This, if anything, accentuates the dependency problem to the extreme.
..you don't really own it. At best it's a lease, at worst it's a brick.
Think of a better economic system, because open capitalism is way too easy for large corporations to game in their favor.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
... and moonneeyyy (Beasy Boys)
When I heard about farmers whose tractors (John Deere) stopped working because they repaired it with a non-OEM part and the tractors telematics shut down because it didn't recognize the new part (non-electronic part BTW). I knew a shit-storm was coming. Then when I saw how John Deere responded to the outcry I knew it would be a protracted battle to get companies to do the right thing.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Because that's how you can make us feel old. /MaloryArcher
#DeleteFacebook
You are an idiot if you voted for either Clinton or Trump. Both are 0.01% elites from NY.
Actually, people *do* force you to buy these devices. Let's take the extreme example: one consumer exists that wants to repair their device, the rest don't care. Do you believe businesses will erect to support demand of that one consumer? No, they won't and if they did, they'd operate at an extremely higher cost (many orders of magnitide) of repair than replacing the item all together.
Now, that's an extreme case, so let's scale that demand out from one consumer to thousands or tens of thousands of consumers. Ok, there's a bunch of people who want to repair said device but the number of people who do want to repair their device (and care enough about this philosophy not to cave in and follow the trend), although more than the extreme case of one person, still amount to only a tiny fraction of the entire market for said devicd. Now, will businesses erect to support that demand to repair said device?
Well, paer of that depends on the number of consumers who demand that repair service as opposed to the number of consumers who don't buy in (that push the price of a new device down).
At some point, there's an equilibrium where larger group of a market make it infeasible for the smaller group of demand to be profitable for a business to enter.
Because of this, yes, you and many others "force" people to buy into certain design choices by opposing them financially. You may argue the option exists to not buy any such product at all. That's not the same as offering an alternative, that's giving a non-choice.
Do not buy electronics which can be repaired only by the manufacturer.
Electronics are a whole different kettle of fish. Much less expensive, more competition and dismal reliability after repair. This "Right to Repair" sounds like RMS [Stallman] in the hardware arena. IMHO, not worth the trouble -- let the market decide. When you buy an Apple device or laptop, you know it has limited lifetime (battery, software) and decide accordingly. Mostly I buy Linux open hardware because I know how to fix it, and I like replacing batteries on Android phones.
On the one hand I think this is foolish because somethings can be built more compactly and less robustly if the manufacturer knows they wont' have to insure against some fumble fingered tech breaking their gear trying to repair it. Some items arenaturally better when built that way (cell phones) but some are not (tractors). So a blanket restriction on the use of DRM or lack of parts sourcing to lock in repairs in some case is logical and some cases underhanded.
On the other hand they might embrace it if there were toothy laws that prohibited any import that was not backed by documentation and parts sourcing to reapir it.
all of a sudden only major manufacturers could sustain that burden at a minimal change in the cost of the product. This would disavantage the small run fly by night cell phone makers for example.
But they'd only do it if it was backed by import laws with force.
And in the end prices would have to go up probably more than you saved on repairs for disposable items.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Exactly. I voted for Trump to STOP the erosion of our liberties and that is exactly what he is doing and yet here we are AGAIN finding ourselfs having to defend this simple common sense stuff aganist the well paid clinton astroturfers who are pushing this stuff endlessly across the internet. Without the clinton backed astroturfers, there would be massive support for rolling back net neutrality and you'd never see or hear anyone talk about these so called "right of repair" laws. Once again we see how a well organized and well funded globalist astroturfing campane can be used to manipulate the world.
Right to repair electronics ended with move from transistors to integrated chips. Even if manufacturer freely provides parts and manuals, a single chip can be a large part of device cost and replacing it can lose stored data. If device is subsidized by a deal with a wireless career or ongoing revenue from selling content, a standalone component can actually be more expensive than the whole device. And "delicate parts floating in hardened epoxy" may well be the best design for the user, but not a repair shop. What we can start with is repeal anti-circumvention laws, at least for the purposes of repair, so that people can at least try. Also charge seller the cost of clean recycling of the device during initial sale and therefore make repairs and upgrades by replacing small parts more lucrative than planned obsolecene.
...that we even need a law to pass for something like this, but here we are.
People might not realize this, but repair shops will be there, doesn't matter if these laws pass or not. They have been playing very important roles for sometime now, like finding out design flaws, being a major part in class action lawsuits for problems that manufacturers fails to admit, and pointing out major issues that big brands keep trying to hide from consumers.
Then, of course - as pointed out in the article - serving as competition to the overly inflated offerings of extended repair and other forms of ripping clients off from manufacturers.
I fixed a couple of my own smartphones, a washer/dryer machine and a vacuum cleaner myself... official options, when they were even available, were all priced too high to justify the fix (being a better option to just buy a new one) for most of those. Then there are grievances of authorized/official repair places taking ridiculous ammounts of time to fix some of them. You end up a victim of the worst monopoly practices.
I just came to the realization that it was worth investing in tools and time to learn just a little bit of how these electronics work, it ends up saving a whole lot of money and time. It's also great to educate yourself better on how these things actually work.
For the LG washer dryer in particular I'd need to either somehow take it to the shop, probably needing to pay for transport and all the hassle that it means, pay for probably a month worth of dry cleaners if it even got fixed, and then pay for the service which would certainly be priced waaay over what it really cost.
All it took was buying the faulty part myself and install it pretty easily. Fixed in a week, and only because I had to wait for the part to arrive. Total time spent actually fixing it? An hour at most. It'd be far more work just to take the damn thing down 16 floors, let alone all the rest.
It's important for the law to pass though because it forces manufacturers to provide schematic and parts for it to be done. Right now, we have to rely on shady sources and grey market pieces.
And then there's the entire eWaste discussion. One piece of electronic that you fix instead of buying a new one is one less device that will end up in a warehouse somewhere to be shipped to some foreign country with no human rights with people living in the middle of trash and pollutants.
The single argument that I always see thrown around against the right to repair is always about intellectual property and whatnot. If you ever hear it, it's bullshit. Restricting access to schematics and parts are not enough to stop competition from stealing tech if they want to, because it's extremely easy these days to just disassemble and copy the design if anyone wants to. There's no secret sauce in consumer electronics these days anymore. In fact, most manufacturers uses very common parts that are often not even made by the main brand anymore... it needs to be done that way because of mass production.
The deterrent for stealing intellectual property has always been lawsuits for violation. Yes, electronics these days are way more complex than the time in the past when electronic makers even included schematics with the product out of the box, but even if complexity has increased, methods of production are more or less the same. Smartphones in particular uses a whole bunch of components that are not proprietary and freely available in the market, and the parts that are proprietary you won't be able to reproduce with simple schematics anyways.
So definitely agreed. Right to repair is ultimately better in several fronts for consumers in general, and it's also a way to prevent brands and manufacturers to stop exploiting costumers.
Uh huh. Let me guess: you are "grassroots" and everyone else is "well funded globalists"? And Trump is just a common working guy just like you. He isn't part of the 0.01% elite from NYC either. Unlike Clinton, right? What a joke.
Why would you want to repair it when you could throw it away and buy another?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
What's environmental impact of more people repairing their stuff on their own? Everybody can now buy parts directly from sources that have unknown environmental policies and unknown reliability. What are we going to do about more people throwing away used parts with the trash instead of recycling them?
You won't be repairing this on your kitchen counter, unless the manufacturers change a LOT about their products.
It's not about access to parts and information. My HTC M7 would not come apart without damaging trim parts. These were available, but then I destroyed the screen trying to get it apart to dry it out. And putting it back together? Adhesives were the key part, and very, very difficult to reassemble. The M8, worse.
An iPhone X? Disassembly? Ha. It's glued up. Galaxy S8? Curved glass = virtually unrepairable. Not many high end phones can be repaired by you and me.
My Surface Pro 3 isn't coming apart easily, even for a simple SSD replacement.
The myth of repairability can be stamped out now for a variety of products. Mind you, for many, even BMWs, access to the computers is practical - I watched a guy mod an E36 and an E64 in an hour, with map changes, marrying radios, and resetting antitheft that would have cost $700+ at a dealer. All with a laptop and $35 dongles bought off eBay. If only my '98 Saab could have been handled so easily. Heck, the 04 Impala is impervious to BCM programming, needs the Tech II, blowing $300 for a box, and more and more every time you leap into a new generation of systems. I spent less on my Selectric tools.
Repairability is becoming a myth for entire types of products. replacing caps on a flat panel TV is possible, but desoldering surface mount chips? Those cute little parts in the power supply? Diagnostics would be a start, but even the best still leave you needing tools. No, we are losing the battle to technology that just cannot be fixed by amateurs.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Wow. I had no idea. Could you please provide references showing where there was the ability in the mid-1970s to send GBytes of data per hour to tens of millions individual users.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
In this video Louis Rossman explains some of the ways Apple uses to make their products hard to repair for NO good reason apart from their own profit. He tells of his colleagues (independent repair shops) having their posts deleted when all they were saying is that such and such CAN be in fact repaired. Apple will not repair most damages even if it involves the user losing his/her data, and even if they are perfectly repairable.
Moreover, Rossman explains how Apple uses dirty tricks to terminate the warranty even when the user did nothing unauthorized.
Just watch it and be angry. Be very fucking angry.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
They make each piece of equipment check in with the software. So you have to change the software to make it run.
That means you have CHANGED the software - DMCA violation!
As far as complexity: your grandfather was not going to crack open his TV and solder in new circuits.
Your grand child will think nothing of rebuilding your iPhone.
It should NOT be a violation of your terms or the law to fix your own stuff.
Maybe it can void some parts of the warranty, but that is all.
This battle started with farm equipment and is moving down to cars and phones.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/04/30/john-deeres-digital-transformation-runs-afoul-of-right-to-repair-movement/#10f734c05ab9
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/a25780/black-market-john-deere-markets-are-thriving/
... It's [also] about the right to perform user-installable upgrades.
If we look at the developments in the markets of personal consumer electronics [computers, tablets, phones, and so on] then what we see is that companies have realised that they can sell products more frequently, thus creating much greater profits, if they build in obsolescence to their designs.
If you look at the evolution in say tablets as an example... There have been 7 generations of [for example] the Apple iPad since the introduction of the device in 2010. Gradually, over that time, we've seen the maximum memory capacity increase. In the model range for today's 10.5 inch iPad Pro, there are 3 different memory capacities available: 64Gb, 256Gb and 512Gb. In the UK, these are priced at £619, £769 and £969 respectively. How many people think that the difference in the cost of the parts and the assembly of a 512Gb iPad is £350 *more* than the cost of the 64Gb version?
Electronics companies are fighting the right to repair legislation not just because currently they can be guaranteed a new sale if your existing appliance or device dies, but because they know that through designed-in obsolescence, they can *force* you to upgrade. They do this by stopping support for software updates, and/or bloating the size of an update so that it no longer runs on older, limited capacity models, or that it runs so slowly as to render the older unit impossible to use...
Companies with the funding and resources of Dell, HP, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and others - especially those which are vertical integrators with complete control over their supply chain - can and should be able to design and build products with at least 5 years of reliable, supportable life built in to them. The only reason that companies are *not* doing this is because they would rather you threw away the product you bought last year and buy another one.
Just as an exercise in validation, go take a look at the current state of laptops, and for any model that you like the look of, ask yourself if you can upgrade the RAM, upgrade the HDD/SSD and/or replace the battery yourself. The default answer to these questions has become "No". The manufacturers would like you to fall into their sucker-trap: "Because: Reliability". That's rubbish. The truth is: "Because: profits"
The problem with the current state of affairs is simply that there is nobody to speak up for the rights or interests of consumers. Our role in society has been relegated to that of a profit centre for corporations.
Volvo sells its DiCE and VIDA diagnostic suite to anyone who wants to buy it. There are no subscription charges unless you want to download new firmware for the car, in which case you can buy a 3-day subscription for cheap.
The VIDA software is free and the DiCE adapter is a few hundred bucks, and gives you complete manufacturer view of every on-board system in the car. You can modify a surprising number of parameters in the car, perform self-tests, diagnostics, and so on.
I don't know why all manufacturers don't do this.
There's a subtle distinction here that's often lost - I see it muddled together a few places in TFA and also in the comments -- between the right to repair a device and the right to demand (?) redesign of a device in a way that makes repair easier.
The former seems quite reasonable, and the auto manufacturers got it done so that dispels the feasibility complaints, even for technology-stuffed modern cars. But I don't see MA (or anyone else) going so far as to say that car manufacturers should be required ex-ante to change the way cars are designed, built and assembled.
For electronic devices, however, there seem like there are real engineering tradeoffs between repairability and legitimate design goals such as parts cost, assembly cost, weight and size. Replacing all the glue holding a tablet together with screws might improve repairability while adding $0.14 to the cost and a few grams to the weight. A removable battery might be the same cost but add 3mm to the thickness. In some cases, it might be heuristically worth it, but I struggle in vain for any intellectually sound way to make those things commensurable.
And as an engineer, I surely shudder in fear of someone with no domain expertise in a problem that I spent years solving second-guessing my tradeoffs. Especially since they have no accountability to produce a workable design that can be actually shipped on time. At the same time, I recognize that the engineers with domain expertise are hardly neutral deciders of what tradeoffs are legitimate and which design elements serve no purpose other than to impede repairs.
So there I have it -- I don't see a scientific way to judge whether it's worth it and my choices for who to ask is either someone impartial with no idea of the specifics or someone that knows but has no incentive to impartiality.
[ Actually, the latter is kind of a pervasive problem. You can have folks with a ton of experience, or you can have folks that are neutral with no preconceived biases. But you can rarely have the same person with both. ]
We shouldnae be surprised thata there's a wee number here!
YES! we should have the legal right
Unfortunately, the technical ability to do so is rapidly disappearing. I can rework fine pitch surface mount parts with a microscope. BGA is beyond my skills
We are the last generation of electronic engineers who are able to build our own prototypes and fix our stuff
some IP trolls sell rom / restore images at high prices and other places use copyright laws to shutdown download sites.
Why should I have to pay $30-$50 + shipping for a SD card? when for free you can just download an image? or pay $30+ for a eprom.
Is this yet again some weak "vote and write to your representative" bullshit?
Why do we need to "fight" again and again reminding them the same thing: you represent us, you don't represent anyone else.
DMCA also let's them shutdown sites with software for techs only / even restore images.
Why should some need use the Piracy labeled rom download sites to say get an HDD image for there owned arcade game needs the hdd replaced?? You can even load that image on an CF card in a IDE to CF adapter.
Vs buying an old stock HDD or buying a loaded CF card + adapter with big markup from some vendor that says the IP owner wants to paid again for the software that you own so we need to change that much.
This is not about the right to repair our electronics. We already have the right to do whatever we want with stuff we own, including trashing it, burning it, running over it with a car, and - yes if you want to - fixing it or modifying it.
This is about the hypothetical "right" of manufacturers to mess around with and disable stuff they made after they've sold it to you. Because you're not using your equipment the way they want you to. Saying this is about our right to repair implies that manufacturers have this right to meddle with stuff they don't own, when they clearly don't.
erect
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Either that, or you are typing with an Asian accent.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Your company's rights end where they interfere with mine. When I buy a physical good, I have the right to do whatever I wish with it including repair it. Why should companies have the right to have the government step in and at the point of a gun force me to comply with whatever profit-enhancing scheme they've decided to use to drain money from my wallet?
Most repair shops did just fine dealing with the transition from discrete transistors to integrated circuits, which took place slowly beginning in the 1970s, and was pretty much complete by the 1990s. Even the advent of surface mount technology in the 1980s was dealt with by shops that wanted to work on items like camcorders and other portable gear.
But once standards like analog audio and NTSC video went away, and signal processing was being done in copyrighted firmware rather than analog ASICs, manufacturers figured out that they could hide behind IP laws, multiple layers of DRM, and crap like the DMCA to justify withholding repair manuals, schematics, and even components.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
force companies to make their products less secure, less usable and less innovative
If you that's what this is about then you should get yourself a clue. Read a book or god forbid click the links in the summary.
Okay. I agree with you in spirit, but I think you need to really think about what you mean by "ownership."
How can you define ownership in a network of heterogenous devices that must share abstract protocols in order to function? The phone that you "own" (for whatever definition of "own" you care to invoke) is functionally useless without the underlying network, so "phone ownership" (whatever that is) must also include the concept of the network that the phone is part of, and not just the hardware that represents one node on the network.
The question becomes, Do you also own the network? If not, who does? What does "owning" a network even mean? Where does my ownership of a node in that network stop, and where does ownership of an adjacent node begin? If I can select a subset of nodes to interact with (e.g. a LAN) is my "ownership" with regards to the rest of the unselected nodes affected?
You can see where this is going. Before networks, ownership was a relatively simple thing to define. Networks make a consistent definition of ownership pretty difficult, because networks allow emergent phenomenon that didn't exist prior to the formation of the network, and thus were not captured by any existing legal framework. You can look at law as the evolving attempt to constrain definitions of ownership as new phenomenon emerge from our existing networks. For example, think about the ways the modern media industry created laws to redefine ownership in an era where creating and distributing exact duplicates of a valuable item (a movie, a computer game, a song) is trivial thanks to computers connected to a planet-spanning network.
FWIW, I think you are on the right track when you suggest that liability is what is going to define ownership in the future. Making a node owner liable for damage to the network, and not just to another node owner would be a good step in that direction. It is still going to be arduous and complex, but it becomes tractable at that point, because you are addressing more than just individual nodes and not ignoring the underlying network that connects the nodes.
I want to live in a world where all electronic products are sold in bubble packs on hangers next to the cash register. You'd use them until they stop working, and then throw them away and buy a new one.
No, sorry, got that wrong, I *don't* want to live in that world.
I've never understood why this irony isn't more apparent to people -- that certain "boutique" electronics are every bit as consumable and non-repairable and throw-away as the cheap crap in plastic bubbles on the impulse buy rack. I was going to say "cheap foreign crap" but then I realized that a lot of it is made in the same place and perhaps the same factory as the "boutique" cra-- I mean products.
Personally, and for as long as I can hold out, I won't own a phone or laptop or tablet where I can't easily replace that top consumable, the number one part that wears out, the battery. This means I don't buy certain product lines at all. In other cases it means I can buy up to version X, but with X+1 they glued the thing closed, so it's no longer a consideration. (I mean, seriously -- would you buy a car where the hood was welded closed at the factory?) But I'm not the demographic they're selling to, as I tend to use a product until it stops working and I can't fix it, which breaks the 18 month latest-and-greatest product cycle that makes so much lovely money.
There will probably come a time when I can't find a damned phone anywhere that has a battery I can replace when it stops holding a charge. (To use just one example.) But until then, and for whatever effect it probably doesn't have, I will vote with wallet.
This goes for cars, too. And refrigerators. I'd rather own something a few years older that I can actually repair or get repaired.
I think it's Ghandi who said something like, what you do will make no difference. But it's very important that you do it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Fuck the law.
Fuck the courts.
I will do whatever I damn well want with my property, PERIOD!
Funny how people seem to understand this in some contexts but not others. Talk about software freedom enabling self-repair and commercial repair services or commercial admins who can really know what they're running and the nonfree software advocates come out. Fighting for the right to repair is important and necessary but still weaker than what's really needed: software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software.
Digital Citizen
Is to get rid of emissions being tied unintelligently to manufacturer electronics, and allowing the installation of third party electronics if they can pass smog/basic NHTSA/DOT lab testing for equivalent purposes to the original. Hell, maybe enforce that 15-30 year vehicle exemption like Canada has that California and other states were supposed to have a few decades ago. Once a vehicle is past 15 or so years old and no longer popular it should be legal to make any modifications to it that can pass smog and safety inspections. Personally I would further request the option to replace drive by wire throttle, clutch, braking and steering systems with mechanical equivalents where the vehicle would allow (many cars today for smog or engineering reasons don't even give the driver 'real' physical control of the vehicle, meaning control could be compromise by software, or hardware failure without the vehicle driver being given tactile feedback to provide time to even ATTEMPT to respond and mitigate it.)
Our 'legal commons' has grown so big that it is actually compromising people's safety rather than helping ensure it. But as the Britain that lead to the American revolution shows, that is simply what happens in a 'mature society' that needs to be shaken up.
Has the idea of repairing software ever come up? Because that would be a whole other can of worms, but, considering the pervasiveness of software in almost every device, the ability to fix simple bugs (especially security bugs) would be good to have. But then you'd have to access the source code. But how many devices do we all have that are next to useless because we cannot update the software when the manufacturer is not willing to do so (for instance, phones that cannot be rooted..)..
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
It's not like the good old days when you could replace a busted vacuum tube with another one off the shelf.
True, but many items are repairable. My wife's Toshiba laptop had screen flicker responsive to pressing on the lid. Suspecting a loose ribbon cable, I looked on the net for a repair manual to find the Toshiba didn't offer them and had sued people who put the manual on line. Finally found a do-it-yourselfer Youtube video of how to open the case (the big problem in any laptop repair) and immediately found and fixed the problem. Wanted to put a SSD in my HP laptop, found that HP put their manuals online. No worries. Guess which brand I will never buy again?
Another case: had the light in my Kenmore microwave go out. The light was not accessible from inside the microwave (should have been...) One had to remove the cover, which is dangerous - many ways to fry yourself with the cover off, even if unplugged due to large capacitors. They attempted to make it unopenable with proprietary screws. After considerable effort to get the screws out, I changed a $1 bulb, otherwise the repair costs would have exceeded its value.
The people really screwed by manufacturer-enforced repairs are John Deer equipment owners - look it up.
Ok, my LG dumbphone (a flip phone) and that's why I don't currently have a smartphone. (Well that and the fact we use my wife's smartphone when we travel...)
Another, related thing that we desperately need is to outlaw any attempts to "lock" or otherwise restrict what an end-user can do with their own device they have purchased. Such locks are only acceptable on devices being leased or that the end-user does not own outright. This goes beyond just mobile phone modifications, but all IoT devices—anything with on-board firmware, basically.
After that, the next step is to require manufacturers to release source code to all of their binary firmware packages. Sadly this goal is much farther off, but we still shouldn't loose sight of it.
eh, a free market can exist with competition. If any of the players start to become dominant, or they all start colluding together, that's when competition dies, the market becomes locked-in, and the only thing stopping abuse is.... benevolence?
I mean, we need to stop them from.... murdering each other and blatantly thievery. But past the basics, anarchy is actually a pretty nice state for business. The problem with anarchy is that it's unstable as hell and eventually someone wins the rat-race. Late-stage capitalism has a lot in common with feudalism with markets instead of land-ownership. And eventually all the conglomerates will eat each other and we'll be left with just one, or a handful that refuse to compete with each other.
Matters of sovereignty shouldn't be in the hands of business from the get-go. No corporate armies. Natural monopolies need regulation. Any other monopolies need Shermans hammer to bust them up. But otherwise? Hey, capitalism works GREAT. At least better than the alternatives
I guess Honda missed that memo. A replacement windscreen can be fitted to an MY17 Honda CR-V for around $300-$400 depending upon who you call and current pricing (glass is a "commodity" after all). Ask Honda for a replacement windscreen, however, and they want $2,600.
Trump suckered you. The best joke of the last election was Donald Trump managed to somehow convince a large number of people that a super-elite upper end fat cat is one of the common people with the common person's interests at heart, and not the interests of the super-rich. The person who, his entire life, has been projecting a sense of wealth, acquisition, and opulence. What a sad joke. And you're still carrying his water, you're STILL defending the trickle-down bullshit that if we allow the rich to siphon more and more and more money from everyone, they will somehow make life better for the rest of us in return.
I see you are not a touch typist.
just do it ... there's a certain statistic that says they can't put everyone in jail since they will run out of taxes if they do so ... even your americans in movies get the duty to disobey unreasonable orders from what i hear from tv-watchers
so don't be a bitch ... and just do it xD
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?