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Appliance Companies Are Lobbying To Protect Their DRM-Fueled Repair Monopolies (vice.com)
Electronics companies Dyson, LG, and Wahl are fighting right-to-repair legislation, Motherboard reported Wednesday, citing letters it has obtained. From a report: The manufacturers of your appliances do not want you to be able to fix them yourself. Last week, at least three major appliance manufacturers -- Dyson, LG, and Wahl -- sent letters to Illinois lawmakers opposing "fair repair" legislation in that state. The letters were written with the help of a trade group called the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM). All three letters are similar but include slightly different wording and examples in parts. The letters ask lawmakers to "withdraw" a bill that would protect and expand the ability for consumers and independent repair professionals to repair everything from iPhones to robot vacuums, electric shavers, toasters, and tractors. Here are links to the Wahl, Dyson, and LG letters.
This sounds to me like a contrived trade organization that may be serving the purpose of conspiring not to compete on repairability. It's a shame the government doesn't look into these things anymore.
Just kidding
Repair shackling is clever but should be illegal.
hell Linus Tech Tips can't even pay for repairs after opening the imac pro. so we really laws before car manufacturers say that you went to a non dealer place to get an oil change so no repair for you buy a new car.
Sorry Trumpies, your traitor has a lifetime of prison cell boredom ahead and there's not a thing you can do about it.
This is intriguing! I had no idea that my shaver and vacuum had digital content! Here I thought that they were a simple battery connected to a fancy tiny motor that either connected to a worm drive or made this fancy cyclone effect. The idea of playing music on my vacuum while I perform house chores is an interesting concept though. Saves me from having to figure out where I put my Walkman and which CD I want to play. OP please enlighten which models offer DRM?
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Fuck them and their unrepairable junk. They have competitors.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
All these manufacturers that want to ban right to repair laws should be forced to provide a minimum of five years warranty repair on any hardware, and seven years guaranteed continuous software updates.
And any planned obsolescence that falls before either one should guarantee a brand new device to the consumer, which includes full warranty on that product as if it was purchased new.
AC comments get piped to
Ordered parts on Amazon and repaired my LG washing machine myself just this week.. What's the problem with repairing appliances?
I suppose that a 10 year old washing machine with a bad water inlet valve is not exactly like fixing your 72" OLED TV or finding parts for the latest Apple device that doesn't get deactivated by the next software update, but do we really need laws for this?
In my experience, most "appliances" phones, tablets and laptops are pretty much throw away consumer devices that you toss and replace on a regular basis anyway. It's also my experience that most "durable goods" (Like kitchen appliances and such that go 10+ years) usually last long enough to be worthless before they break. It's also my experience that most non-durable consumer devices like phones, TV's and laptops last long enough that by the time they break I want to replace them, assuming you take reasonable care of them.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Open software and hardware for all the various appliance controllers to bypass these @#%@# and their lobbying.
One-size-fits-many general purpose UI/sensor/control I/O boards, kind of like a hybrid between a ruggedized PLC and a flexible microcontroller board.
Washing machines, ovens, fridges, microwaves, furnaces, etc are not so complicated that one general purpose board could not be used for all of them.
Yeah, but the insurance companies won't like you very much.
Meanwhile for last 3 decades or around there the drum mantra from technical literates has been "do not buy DRM products! it will be used against you!"
And what has the public done? In every domain it can imagine? Bought the DRM. Games, media, tractors, phones, you name it.
Gee, however could we have seen this coming? Oh wait, we DID. And we warned, and were ignored.
I've an uncle who was an appliance repairman. He explained that the manufacturers deliberately build and design the components to be non-standard. Then they'll get a patient on the part so that 3rd parties can't build them. Then they raised the price for the parts to be so high that it's often cheaper to buy a new item then to fix the one you have.
This is why, he explained, that my parents had the refrigerator they bought with their house for 30 years while my brother was on his third in 15 years. When I showed him 3D printers he went to a tech school and is now a machinist.
I'm fine with the manufacturers requiring authorized repairs while the item is still under warranty. But once that warranty is out then it should be repairable by anyone. What I hope will happen is that open communities like https://www.ifixit.com/ will continue to flourish.
This mentality extends to almost every company that makes physical products. I worked for a medical devices company that was all in a tizzy because their system was set up so anyone could order service parts with just the standard service markup. The third parties would then undercut the company on repair costs. They couldn't have someone preventing them from screwing customers over on repair costs, after already screwing them over on the device itself, so they went to great lengths to figure out how to stop this given the relative inflexibility of their ERP software.
That it's actively being discouraged by some manufacturers by making repairs as difficult as possible if not impossible.
Not just that they don't make parts available they go out of their way to sabotage use of the parts people can get.
Yes. Yes we do need laws
Do we own the device or are we just renting it?
Because the receipt says we own it.
Most phones, tablets, laptops can still be repaired although some make it much more difficult than it needs to be.
I've heard some of the windows tablets are epoxied together so even the manufacturer can't repair them.
Usually they last a long time but they are also usually pretty expensive so most would prefer not to have to chunk a $700 device for a $0.50 part.
IMHO the right to repair should extend to software so being able to load your own os on your phone when the manufacturer decides there is no longer any money in it should be possible.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
WTF?! From what orifice did you pull those arbitrary numbers from?
If they're going to use copyright law to make maintenance illegal, then the free warranty should be 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation. That is how long they are demanding that it be illegal for you to repair your items. Once the copyright on the firmware (or whatever bullshit it is) expires, then circumventing the DRM ceases to be prohibited by DMCA and the warranty can end.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I fixed
I suppose
In my experience
I want to replace them
so the whole world really is all about you and your fucking appliances, nothing else is relevant to the conversation
This is why I've held on to my 12 yr old Mitsubishi DLP TV. It's 65" and still a great 1080p image. Yeah, I have to replace the lamp maybe every year for about $90. Who cares? I can still get parts, it can still be repaired. I was chatting with the tech at the TV repair place I get my lamps from and he told me most of the newer TV's are pretty much either unrepairable, or the cost of repairing a TV more than a couple of years old is nearly as much as buying a new, larger TV. Next lamp replacement trip, I plan to ask him what the most common parts failures are on my TV and see if it's worth the cost to get spares now. I'm sure with my luck, some other part will break.
Appliances are a little bit different. Other than electronics, you can get affordable replacement parts for appliances that are older than you'd expect. My 20yr old wall oven went out last year, circuit board failure. A replacement was available, for $600. New oven time... Had it been any other part, I could have gotten replacements despite the age.
So you posted the tractor story again, so you could get some more ad views. I know we don't usually read TFA, but there usually is a TFA!
To all the companies that fight this. FUCK YOU.
I will repair my stuff whether you like it or not!
TRY AND PUT ME IN JAIL FOR IT. I DARE YOU!
In my experience, most "appliances" phones, tablets and laptops are pretty much throw away consumer devices that you toss and replace on a regular basis anyway.
I see that all of the time and effort that has gone into training consumers to expect precisely this hasn't been wasted then. For myself though I find that such devices break long before I've finished with them and often resist repair any attempts at repair (or even opening) them. I replace grudgingly when forced, but ideally never.
you fight my ability to repair your broken crap, I reserve the right to not buy your crappy stuff.
The Rich don't give a fuck whether something can be 'repaired' by 3rd parties or not, because they just pay whoever and not worry about the cost or the hassle.
The Poor care because they can't afford to pay for things being repaired by only the dealership or only the manufacturer. They need to be able to get repairable things repaired wherever they can -- or repair them themselves if and when possible.
The Rich unfortunately are also the ones who own or control these manufacturers who are fighting for protectionism of their repair monopolies.
The Rich may very likely get their way, especially under the current 'administration', which doesn't seem to give a fuck about common, private citizens (lip service not withstanding) and cares more about making The Rich richer -- on the backs of The Poor, of course.
Here's what I think will happen:
If manufacturers get their way, then nothing changes, and expensive things stay expensive and inconvenient to get repaired -- if they are allowed to be repaired at all.
If consumers get their way, then manufacturers may just go back to the old way of doing things: built-in obsolescence in the form of less durability. Maybe even low quality on purpose, or a built-in 'expiration date' that bricks things when they get old enough. Don't sit there and tell me it hasn't all happened before, either, because it has.
Here's why:
Companies that make high-quality, durable products, that stand the test of time seem to invariably end up going out of business due to no repeat business. They sell to everyone they can sell to, everyone is thrilled with their products, which never seem to wear out, therefore they never need to replace them.
Meanwhile other shittier companies make half-assed products that may be flashy and popular, but that don't last forever. Eventually they have to be replaced.
Then there's 'built-in obsolescence' in the form of 'standards' that keep changing (on purpose) to make what you have now obsolete.
I suppose a middle ground might be manufacturers being forced to allow anyone to repair anything, but jacking up the price of 'proprietary' parts to compensate for their 'lost revenues' (Waaaah!), or 'licensing' of proprietary repair information, or who knows. Really, it's all capitalism gone bad.
There is a lot of middle ground on such bills. The bill could require companies to sell spare parts for everything they sell for a certain number of years. Manuals might be required to be offered on the market, and documentation for the firmware also required by law.
Alternately, it can merely make it legal to reverse engineer the firmware, and manufacture, and sell compatible parts.
Most phones, tablets, laptops can still be repaired
I repair when possible. The hardest part is often getting the device open without causing damage. Once you've located all the plastic catches, prized them open without breaking too many, figured out how to disconnect that cable/circuit board/socket that's getting in the way (blind, because you can't actually get the bits apart to see what's going on inside) and avoided losing any bits held in by the case alone then the repair itself tends to be comparatively easy.
People are upset over nothing. No rights are being infringed.
You have the right to give as much money as you want to get it repaired, an unlimited amount of times!
There is no limit to the amount of money you can spend!
We don't limit the amount of money we can charge!
The consumer has the choice! They can spend an unlimited amount of money on repairs, or on a new product! We do not limit consumer choice at all!
When this topic is discussed, not just on forums like /., but in the media in general, it is often characterised as "the right to repair". It's *way* more than that...
First, it's also the "right to upgrade"... It gives us the chance to buy a piece of generic technology and then adjust it to suit our own requirements. For example, to buy a generic laptop and then add extra memory and/or a large hard drive - if that's what we need. Or buy a second battery so that we can double our time away from a mains outlet for those of us who really do use a laptop when we're out and about...
Second, it's all about the right to continue to use our devices for a reasonable amount of time. Imagine a scenario where you took your car in to a dealer for a mechanical fault and were told, "Sorry, this vehicle is three years old - we can't get the parts any more. But we can sell you a new car..." It's all too easy to dismiss this as scare-mongering, but when the only source of parts is a manufacturer, the moment they stop providing replacement parts for something you've bought, you're dead in the water. That will force you to make another purchase and keep their profits rolling in.
And of course it fuels a tendency to "buy up" - to purchase a machine with more capacity or storage than we might want - at hugely inflated prices - because we know that if we run out of space there is no opportunity to upgrade.
It's a shameful thing to have to say, but I think we're getting to [or have reached, or maybe even passed] the point where we need a "Code of Ethics" for manufacturers - for example in the consumer electronics sector it would be reasonable to expect that vendors will continue to stock parts for devices for 5 years after a particular model is withdrawn from sale. Motor vehicles might need a longer support window; other devices might survive with less.
But the bottom line is that without this, we're not consumers, we're victims. Maybe the approaching mid-terms is time to get some support for legislation...
It's also my experience that most non-durable consumer devices like phones, TV's and laptops last long enough that by the time they break I want to replace them
Most new-car buyers trade them in for something new after 3 years, but would you buy a car with zero resale value after 3 years? Maybe you can afford to trash older stuff, but many people sell them for, like, money. Obviously, making repairs cost-prohibitive kills that secondary market.
It's also my experience that most "durable goods" (Like kitchen appliances and such that go 10+ years) usually last long enough to be worthless before they break.
Speak for yourself. All the "durable" appliances I've bought in the last 10 years have needed out-of-warrantee service before 10 years. Well before.
.... your stories are about previously covered stories.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They did that with CRT's as well. There was a circuit board at the base of the TV set, held in place by screws at the bottom. Above that, the CRT and the top of the case, The top of the case also had screws that held it to the lower part of the case, but there were also another couple that tied it to the motherboard. These were hidden inside a panel.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Bullpussy. It costs $55 to program a key from the Chattanooga TN dealer. Your dealership may have told you different (if you are actually from Austrailia), but that's because they could see the old and stupid written all over your face. You were getting gouged.
John Deere is doing this with their tractors.
Don't fool yourself that newer washing machines won't have ID chips in the water valves, so they can ensure genuine parts are used to repair it from authorised repair agents.
I'd take a servicing large CRT any day over trying to unclip a stupid LCD bezel, hell even laptops have some screws holding it, why can't a TV have some screwholes in the back?
Then throw it out til we have huge mountains of slowly decaying, toxic and radioactive waste everywhere. Buy more applicances and when they break throw them on the pile and buy more and so on.
I'm convinced they have two marketing systems (may be more). The first sells the products with full warranty to people with more money than time to shop. The second sells "refurbs" through discount outlets with reduced warranty to cheapskates who don't want to pay full price.
Either that, or they have huge quality control problems and the refurbs really are refurbs. I doubt they could stay in business if their quality was that bad.
Unfortunately it is a proven time saver on the assembly line when the parts just snap together.
I bought a Bissell 5 years ago. It started smoking, etc. Repair shop around the corner $100, the motor on eBay for $20. Removed 6 screws and the motor, put in new one. Works like a charm. Of course, they don't want the regular guy to be able to fix their vacuum for so cheap, they want to collect for the repeat service
???
Léa Gris
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...it requires 2 existing keys. Insert key #1, turn to 'on', turn off, remove, insert key #2, repeat, insert new key #3, vehicle will program the key. The sequence varies slightly by manufacturer...but with 2 keys you can usually program a 3rd key no problemo yourself.
The Youtuber/Mac owner is Canadian.
As the founder of the Association of Home Equipment Modifiers ( AHEM ) I'd like to object to their use of a very similar acronym for a much darker purpose.
We have some countries like Sweden giving tax benefits to small companies for repairing appliances. We have a huge push to replace incandescent lighting with solid state lighting, with an attendant increase in lifetime as well as efficiency. (so much so, I have trouble finding a bulb that works for my lava lamp). We are now looking to reverse the global trend away from reusable containers to PET plastic bottles. Is this not a very badly timed initiative to help manufacturers sell the same products to the same customers, forcing them to dispose of the old ones?
I work for a Fortune 500 company and we DO do this with software. When we employ a new enterprise software we make the company send all of the source code, etc. to an escrow that holds it for us indefinitely. Should the company that wrote the software go out of business, we legally get full rights to maintain and compile the code ourselves. We have a giant legal department that does all kinds of cool shit like this (that individuals could never pull off themselves.)
Meh.
In that case, don't remove the broken valve. Leave it hooked up to their stuppid computer, but no longer connected to water. New generic valve gets connected to water pipes, and it actuator connected to the actuator drivers on the old valve.
The actuator itself is nice analog tech, so just bypass the fancy DRM chip. It will still authenticate - not knowing that the old valve is broken and disconnected.
Are we all just going to ignore the admission of owning a lava lamp? ;)
Buy better stuff and take care of it maybe.
#1 And exactly how to "better... take care" of a washer, dryer, fridge, etc. aside from plugging them in and keeping 'em clean? Maybe play Mozart for them? Massages? Subliminal pep talks? Playdates with Alexa?
#2 "Better" stuff? Top-rated Maytag fridge failed within warranty. I commented to the factory tech (an older guy) that maybe I should have bought an expensive Subzero or Viking. He just laughed! Said in his experience those are the most failure-prone of the lot, that they tend to require the most extensive (and expensive) repairs.
#3 Glad your washer only needed $70-worth of parts, but others' mileage may vary, e.g. my 1.5-year-old washer recently needed $175 in carefully price-shopped parts + 3 hours labor. Now, 6 months later, a new & unrelated problem: the water inlet valve is leaking. If I were forced to use factory-authorized service and pay their full-retail-price parts, those 2 repair visits would cost significantly more than a (probably crappy) new washer -- all within the first 2 years of service.
Americans are so out of the loop about manufacturing these days (and even for computers and semiconductors) that they don't really understand WHY there is this push-back from vendors. It's honestly NOT always or even usually about wanting a monopoly or providing repairs!
More often it's because NO REPAIRS ARE EVEN DONE BY THE VENDOR. Most mechanical and electrical devices have LONG since stopped being repairable at all AS A DESIGN FEATURE. Repairability creates design costs, it cuts off design options and it adds warranty and service costs. For this reason the repair strategy for MOST modern products today is disposal/recycling without any per unit repair whatsoever!
So laws like this will primarily force companies into uncompetitive product designs or force them to take on costs and liabilities that don't add any value to them and none to the majority of their customer base.
This fundamental fact is completely ignored by legislation like this. It's no longer possible in many cases to even make something repairable. Even if you are handy with a soldering iron! This is because you can never bring a repaired unit back to original specs or reliability without costs that exceed the original value of the product.
Soldering lead-free solder, for instance, has such small margins of error that you can't re-solder anything without damage to the PCB or parts. Even for the manufacturer, their repair strategy and design is to replace the board. Anything a mere mortal could do WILL damage the product worse than simply replacing the board in the first place.
Mechanical stuff is similar; you can't repair things that can only be built such that repair isn't possible. This isn't saying it was intentionally designed to be unrepairable but rather many things today can not even be made without incidentally being unrepairable. To achieve a market competitive design, you have to trade away repairability. This was a decision made by most manufacturers nearly 30 years ago. That choice was made and it's water under the bridge now!
This is where all the outsourcing and dumbing down of America has led to people still thinking it's 1960 when everything was user-repairable and generally quite easily. That was >50 years ago! That's NOT reality today and if you think it is, you don't know anything about modern manufacturing technology. And it's made worse by how much manufacturing has been outsourced since 1990.
Here's current reality for you: >90% of all electronics is manufactured and even designed in Shenzhen, China now - the only people who really still grok anything about manufacturing electronics or often mechanicals are 1) old-timers like me who are still in the business, 2) companies like Apple who keep their fingers in the details and 3) Chinese employees in Shenzhen. Shit for American is when I retire, there will only be a few companies like Apple and then there will be no one - the US will have about has much grasp of manufacturing as the Sudan!
That's NOT you or your neighbor or any legislator proposing laws like this who know anything! You are "out of the loop" and have been for 20 years or more.
The trend is away from such repairability. You were able to repair a machine made 10 years ago, but you might have been out of luck if it had been 2 years old.
Imagine how annoying (to say the least) it would have been if that inlet valve did a cryptographic handshake with the main board and instead of the machine working again, it displayed "E35" and shut down. That may seem far-fetched, but some very expensive new devices will do something very much like that.
As for the other devices, accidents happen. Why should cracking the screen on a $500 device after 2 years require a new device when a $40 screen should take care of it? It's not as if society has a need to fill up the landfills faster. And why should the manufacturer be allowed to force you to pay $200 in labor for the 5 minutes work it should take to replace that screen (that is, $2400/hr) assuming it can be repaired at all.
Just to add to the fun, you get to pay more for the device in the first place to cover the cost of making sure you won't be able to fix it later.
All this and at the same time, the quality and honesty of "authorized service" companies is going WAYYYYYY down. Just this week, I had an "authorized service technician" for my mom's heat pump try to convince me to let them charge $259 to replace a perfectly good $12 capacitor. Last year, they wanted $100 to zip tie $2 worth of foam insulation onto a refrigerant pipe. They won't be coming back.Imagine how much they would have demanded for the work if I actually couldn't just buy the parts and fix it myself (or for the less technically inclined, hire someone else to do it).
In other words, YES we do need such laws now when it is still possible to address the problem.
"Usually they last a long time but they are also usually pretty expensive so most would prefer not to have to chunk a $700 device for a $0.50 part."
It's been like this for a long time though. Nissan has a problem with Sentras/Sunnys back in the 80s where a 5c part failure deep in the gearbox wrote the car off because the labour cost was higher than the replacement gearbox (and usually higher than the value of the car when the part failed - wouldn't have been so bad but not having reverse is kind of limiting)
"so much so, I have trouble finding a bulb that works for my lava lamp"
40W controllable heater, no problem.
Can't help you with the matter of your personal taste though.
Not everything is intentionally designed to be difficult to service/replace some things like the head gasket (another dirt cheap part that costs a ton in labor to replace) are overly difficult to get to just as to how they have to be made.
Plus I'm assuming that if you had the hours to burn you could actually replace the part yourself without having to break anything in the car to do so or risking that the car's brakes would stop working after a software update because you got them replaced at a local mechanic instead of shipping your car back to the factory for repair.
In short having a crap design that makes servicing difficult while annoying and it should be discouraged I don't feel it is the same as companies that are securing their equipment to prevent outside repair.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
you were able to source the replacement parts
The other trick they've implemented is that replacement "parts" are available... as entire expensive subassemblies. Any Right to Repair laws will have to prohibit unreasonable pricing of parts, but their trick is that you can't accuse them of gouging if the subassembly is not unreasonably priced for what it is.
Clutch on my washer burned out. Though easily removed, part is not available separately but no problem: there's an entire new transmission unit which includes clutch. It's $150 if you shop carefully on eBay, $250-300 full price from a factory-authorized tech. $150 for a clutch would be unreasonable, but $150 for an entire transmission is not.
Embedded circuit boards seem to be the ultimate excuse to sell entire insanely-expensive assemblies. 'Coz you can't expect anyone to component-level repair those, can you? And of course custom chips seal the deal since they're never sold.
>>Do we own the device or are we just renting it?
Because the receipt says we own it.
Not according to Microsoft, which is the huge problem with software. Old PC's that ran Windows XP well yet when M$ discontinued XP, your options were limited, continue to use it at a greater risk to whatever data is on it or upgrade to a Linux version. Personally, I have that t-shirt that says "Box said Windows 98 or better, so I installed Linux" and that is what I did. Granted the hardware is old but some versions of linux work perfectly fine on it, even today.