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Lobbyists Demonize 'Right To Repair' Legislation (securityledger.com)
"New Hampshire lawmakers got an early taste last week of the arguments that manufacturing, technology and telecommunications lobbyists will use to try to hobble and defeat right to repair legislation in 16 states this year," writes long-time Slashdot reader chicksdaddy.
The Security Ledger reports: Curious children could find themselves dismembered by run-away washing machines. A phalanx of illegally modified lawn tractors and leaf blowers will belch pollution in defiance of the EPA, darkening the sky... At least, that's the scene painted by representatives from some of the U.S.'s biggest industry groups. At a hearing before the New Hampshire House of Representatives Committee on Commerce and Consumer Affairs February 5, they painted a dire picture of the consequences of passing a proposed Digital Fair Repair Act, HB 462, saying the proposed legislation would stifle commerce, leave New Hampshire consumers vulnerable to cyber crime and even physical harm at the hands of clueless owners and inexperienced or unethical repair professionals.
"There is a lot at stake when it comes to Right to Repair, and you could feel those stakes in the room," wrote Nathan Proctor, the head of the right to repair campaign at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), in an email statement. "Legislators have their work cut out for them sifting through all the frantic opposition and their deceptive, and at times bizarre, arguments," he wrote.
HB 462 would require original equipment manufacturers that do business in New Hampshire to make the same documentation, parts and tools available to device owners and independent repair professionals as they make available to their licensed or "authorized" repair professionals. Similarly, documentation, tools, and parts needed to reset product (software) locks or digital right management functions following maintenance and repair would also need to be made available to owners and independent repair professionals on "fair and reasonable terms."
The Security Ledger reports: Curious children could find themselves dismembered by run-away washing machines. A phalanx of illegally modified lawn tractors and leaf blowers will belch pollution in defiance of the EPA, darkening the sky... At least, that's the scene painted by representatives from some of the U.S.'s biggest industry groups. At a hearing before the New Hampshire House of Representatives Committee on Commerce and Consumer Affairs February 5, they painted a dire picture of the consequences of passing a proposed Digital Fair Repair Act, HB 462, saying the proposed legislation would stifle commerce, leave New Hampshire consumers vulnerable to cyber crime and even physical harm at the hands of clueless owners and inexperienced or unethical repair professionals.
"There is a lot at stake when it comes to Right to Repair, and you could feel those stakes in the room," wrote Nathan Proctor, the head of the right to repair campaign at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), in an email statement. "Legislators have their work cut out for them sifting through all the frantic opposition and their deceptive, and at times bizarre, arguments," he wrote.
HB 462 would require original equipment manufacturers that do business in New Hampshire to make the same documentation, parts and tools available to device owners and independent repair professionals as they make available to their licensed or "authorized" repair professionals. Similarly, documentation, tools, and parts needed to reset product (software) locks or digital right management functions following maintenance and repair would also need to be made available to owners and independent repair professionals on "fair and reasonable terms."
I am pretty sure they already figured this out in NY. I would just copy the legislation word for word.
Did they pay the appropriate royalties to Stephen King and AC/DC for their wild claims?
Right to Repair advocates always get named in the news.
The anti RTR side is usually anonymous.
It's time to name the people and companies fighting RTR.
Let them destroy themselves with their own words and greed.
Anyone who doesn't know what they're doing could injure themselves in countless ways. But I still have the choice to change the brakes on a car myself, if I'm confident I can do the job. Otherwise, I can go down the street and pay a mechanic to do it. In no event do I need Ford or GM's permission to touch the brakes. If I own a car I can do whatever I want with it.
Too many companies want to make everyone a renter instead of an owner, and use the government as a weapon to enforce their shitty business models.
So the predictable actions of a small percentage of consumers should be extrapolated to the general population? Ask the lawmakers if we should ban:
....
gasoline because everybody will put it in baggies and huff it
bananas because everybody will dry the peeling and smoke it
automobiles because everybody will use them as weapons of mass destruction
electricity because everybody will use it on salt water to make chlorine gas
yada yada
It's so blatantly obvious that the lobbyists are not lobbying for the health and well being of normal citizens that even a politician could see it.
Wait
I remember growing up, our washing machine occasionally wandered around the utility room. It also didn't stop if you opened the lid. Somehow, I never even got a bruise from it, but I did get a good laugh once when my Mom tried and failed to stop it from wandering.
On the other hand, I also remember reports a few years ago about some brand or another violently disassembling itself due to a manufacturing defect and the maker swearing it wasn't at all dangerous.
Dogs and cats living together.
God Forbid they ever understand Gasoline!
Good lord! How many of us didn't screw around and modify crap when we were kids? I did! I took pretty much everything apart I could get my hands on when I was a kid. Gee, LOBBYIST don't want US to repair our OWN things. Granted, if you buy something on a lease/loan, "technically" it is still their device or product, but by God, if I buy it, own it, I'll do as I please!
I want the software equivalent, which is the right to root. If I want to root my phone and uninstall all the bloatware, that's my business, and the vendor should be required to let me do so. And if they've put in technical measures to prevent that, they need to provide a way for me to bypass them.
Electric razor. On my third, the others needed a blade replacement before the battery crapped out. Current one? Blades are fine, battery is dead. $40 I could have saved had I only known.
phone. My last phone had a replaceable battery, and I replaced it. Got years out of that phone before it got too slow to be useful.
ebook reader. Bought a Kindle Fire for, I dunno, $180 or so? 2 years ago. Battery is dying, took to an iFixIt store, they can't find the battery and tell me it will cost at least $130 for a $180 device. Faruck that.
You want to reduce the trash heading into a landfill? Let me buy a device with an easily replacable battery.
Lobbyist: One of the lowest forms of life that crawls across the surface of this planet.
How dare any mere mortal make an attempt to circumvent the continuous revenue stream of these vendors! Send in the Lobbyists!!
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/a25780/black-market-john-deere-markets-are-thriving/
http://macdailynews.com/2019/02/15/allstate-buys-mobile-device-repair-company-icracked-becoming-powerful-proponent-of-right-to-repair-movement-against-apple/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170227/08013336795/sony-microsoft-lobby-against-right-to-repair-bills-yet-refuse-to-talk-about-it.shtml
https://longtailpipe.com/2018/08/02/rich-rebuilds-and-teslas-opinion-on-the-right-to-repair/
https://www.truckfleetmro.com/shop-management/right-repair-3-things-trucking-industry-needs-know
Do I have the right to modify the Autosteer software on a Tesla I buy? Would anyone want to be on the road with me after I do so? Would anyone want to buy the car after I made the changes?
No, really. They stir this crap up with no repercussions to themselves. It's time to set rules to sue and possibly incarcerate lobbyists when they do this sort of thing.
An honest right to repair would mean no legal repercussions for repairing something you own. However, these laws are typically about forcing manufacturers to change design decisions to accommodate tinkerers and third-party repairers, or to make schematics, guides, and tools available. So there's no legitimate right to repair being advocated; it's all smoke and mirrors in an attempt to give new obligations to hardware vendors.
People will try to repair/mod devices on their own regardless if the legislation is there or not. Wouldn't it be better to make the service documents available so people don't get hurt finding out the hard way?
These guys are purposely conflating repair with modification.
Manufacturers have to decide if they're selling a product (in which case they cede control over it the moment it's sold, including the power to thwart repairs), or licensing it (in which case they can continue to exert control over the product, but the product belongs to them rather than to the customer, and so the manufacturer has to pay for repairs). That is, either the customer owns the product they buy, and has a right to repair it. Or the customer is permanently leasing the product from the manufacturer, so the manufacturer needs to pay for any repairs, not the customer.
The in-between state - where the customer is responsible for paying to repair a product they've bought, but the manufacturer continues to exert control over a product after purchase - is illogical and nonsensical.
So, what if instead of legislating the technology, they legislated notification to the consumer. So a system that designates the repairability index, along with availability of parts might be appropriate. Like 1-1 not repairable without specialized equipment and the manufacturer restricts parts to their representatives only. To 10-10 where it’s easy to repair and the parts are available online or the corner electronics shop. An example of a 1-1 would be the electronics are bonded to the PCB and the case is injected with epoxy with Kevlar fibers after its assembled, and they use custom chips. 10-10 might be something that uses a raspberry pi and common tools can be used to disassemble the electronic device and it speaks to you directing the repair on itself. Maybe even offers to order the parts at the most discounted place it can find.
But if the most consumer desireable device can not be made repairable, let the consumer decide.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
A lot of their arguments seem to be that small companies are less ethical than large ones.
Table-ized A.I.
Manufacturers have harmed the individuals, from leaving security issues in place from day one to end of line, to documented cases of planned obsolescence, to the lost business from farmers with john deere tractors that require a multi-hour or multi-day delay for a service call to reset a computer module after a fault or out of service repair?
Hint: People have been repairing their own equipment for hundreds of years. Even the newer equipment is as safe repaired by a layman as by the minimum wage slaves they usually have handling the low margin equipment repairs. And even some of the high margin items are not having that well qualified of service personnel working on them, as my dad has discovered doing electronics repairs on equipment that had already been to well know 'service professionals' And he got the repair to the repair done for less than 1/3 of what they charged and often less than the examination fee was.
Sure. Enforce a lockout. Prevent me from changing the OS | upgrading to a more durable switch | putting in a more durable relay because the manufacture abandoned the device or purposefully engineered "planned obsolescence".
"BSD is about people pissing each other.." (Moid Vallat)
don't give them any ideas.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Sure electronics get all the headlines but as one post pointed out the farmers are the ones shafted the worst.
They're locked into a service contract when they buy new equipment. There's no choice, So if something breaks that they can fix the equipment still won't work until a factory tech shows up and enters the secret code that tells the thing it's OK to run. They don't do any more than that but the farmer is stuck without working equipment while his crops rot. And then he has to pay for the bill for this kid to show up to enter the stupid code.
There are always going to be repairs that are beyond regular consumers. That's what repair shops are for. There are no independent repair shops for John Deere or other locked-down farm equipment. It's the dealer or an expensive field ornament.
If it takes the Apple name to get this moving and passed then that's great. But don't forget that the people who grow your food are the ones who get hurt BAD by the inability to repair their own equipment.
Are you telling me that the standard practice of just giving a lot of money to politicians to get the laws they want is no longer working?
It strikes me as too much to hope that the typical voter gives a rat's ass about the cost of repairs at "authorized" outlets vs some local small business. So why bother with the scare tactics?
Any time companies get a law passed that allows them to basically generate more massive landfill waste (intentionally or not) they need to be on the hook for the environmental costs.
$100,000 USD per tractor. $1,000 per iDevice. Etc.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We have been fixing things we own for the history of the humanity. Only idiots or corrupted people would claim that all of the sudden is a bad idea. Just look at the history. The Joe mechanic down the road did just fine changing the spark plugs on my car. Don't see why that needs to change in the future.
And I'm still alive! When I was kid (I'm 51 now) I tore everything apart that I could get my hands on. Because of this I can repair almost anything I can get my hands on today. Hell, I even rebuilt a few Pontiac big blocks before the age of 18, all because I was curious enough to tear them apart (because it's lawful to do so) and learn how they work. I taught my own kids to repair, not dispose, and they in turn will teach theirs. F these lobbyists (and companies) for their Earth hating polluting ways.
Curious children could find themselves dismembered by run-away washing machines. A phalanx of illegally modified lawn tractors and leaf blowers will belch pollution in defiance of the EPA, darkening the sky... At least, that's the scene painted by representatives from some of the U.S.'s biggest industry groups
That will never happen unless an alien 'weather satellite' is in orbit somewhere..... SMH
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
I recently needed some info regarding a cheap amplifier that's developed some annoying issues - not broken, but not right. Past experience with US and Japanese gear suggested that I was SOL - taking it to a repair shop would result in a diagnosis charge at least similar to what I paid for it (it's out of warranty). So I emailed the (Chinese) maker's service email address. After a brief exchange with several good suggestions for troubleshooting, I asked for info about parts values in case I need to replace something. They promptly emailed a schematic back. NEVER would have gotten that from a US or Japanese company. NEVER.
did you forget you can tell them to fuck off with your wallets?
unethical repair professionals? like the dealership??
Some dealerships want a $100 min just to look at the issue vs other shops that will gave an free estimate
high cost restore disks / roms / software that some embedded hardware systems is an other. Why should I pay + shipping for an SD card and can't just get the image to load on my own card?
(...) would (...) leave (...) consumers vulnerable to (...) physical harm at the hands of clueless owners and inexperienced or unethical repair professionals.
In reality, it’s much more likely that granting easy access to “the same documentation, parts and tools [...] as [...] licensed or "authorized" repair professionals” would reduce , rather than increase, the odds of injuries and non-compliant modifications (a.k.a. hacked repairs by uninformed tinkerers or desperate owners). And perhaps not only by enabling better repairs, but also by promoting better/cheaper regular maintenance.
Well, if I'm not allowed to repair my machine on my own (if I'm so inclined), then I guess I don't have to worry about paying to have the broken product taken to the dump. I can just drop it on the sidewalk of these "authorised repair" facilities and get something else. They want to control the stupid thing that badly, they can take care of its disposal.
The other alternative is to jerry-rig a fix anyway. If they don't like it, too damned bad.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
https://creed-aventus-luxury.myshopify.com
At least nowadays.
And no, you can't vote them out of office, because you only get to vote for their pre-selection of lobbyists. ... Nevermind, let's carry on the narrative anyway.)
If you don't, he'll at best get the Sanders treatment, and at worst will suddenly find himself in some horrible scandal, made-up or not, and get the Assange treatment.
(Do you remember that the girl who accused him, later renounced it publicly, and said that she was manipulated into saying it by US and Swedish authorities?
You are even made to *want* to only vote for the same two parties. Or did you ever vote for a different one? ... Why not? ... See?
And yeah, your highest courts are also staffed with lobbyists playing judges. Aftet all, the lobbyist government decides who is put there.
And even if you tried a legitimate revolution, and deliberately made it your ultimate principle, to do it without harming anyone and by being nice, you would still get destroyed. ... The method was, to inject moles, to rile them up against themselves, divide the group with infighting, and act as an agent provocateur, to do stupid acts and make them do it, so they could be discredited in the press. ... Remember that what you think about them came from said propaganda, when you hear that Occupy, Anonymous [by definition not a group, I know], Wikileaks and even the Tea Party were among them.)
(According to NSA documents, they destroyed 43 organizations that worked towards big changes or revolutions in the USA in one year alone!! So no, it's not like nobody is standing up and trying to change things.
No, please don't stop fighting for the rights of us humans anyway. As long as you are not harming anyone, there is no more noble cause nowadays.
Just don't let them badmouth you with those tricks.
Charging for an estimate isn't necessarily unethical. You can't always diagnose a problem without doing some degree of disassembly and inspection. Personally, I'd RATHER pay someone a fair price to give me an accurate, detailed, written diagnosis & do a good job of carefully putting my car back together than get a "free" estimate that ends up causing even MORE damage because the pissed-off mechanic did a sloppy job of reassembly after I decided to get another quote from someone else.
With an accurate, detailed diagnosis, you can get repair quotes from other mechanics without having to pay THEM to repeat the procedure (though obviously, their estimates will have a disclaimer that they're based upon the accuracy of the diagnosis presented to them... you can't expect a mechanic who agrees to perform {x} for ${y} based upon specific diagnosis {z} to eat the cost of doing {other things besides x} that weren't identified by diagnosis {z}.
That said, I'd absolutely object to paying someone to say, "your repair will cost ${y}, take it or leave it" without actually elaborating in writing about what the problem is and what specific work they intend to do for ${y}".
Put another way, performing a thorough diagnosis is a valuable service that's entirely deserving of fair payment.
"A phalanx of illegally modified lawn tractors and leaf blowers will belch pollution in defiance of the EPA, darkening the sky..."
It happened already: mischievous actors modified diesel motors to belch orders of magnitude more NOx than allowed.
Oh, wait, it was industry itself...
The problem is products are not built to repair, which is by design and for multiple reasons:
The answer? As for so many other areas where a pure capital system leads to poor, unfair and overall sub-optimal solutions and practices, regulation is needed. Laws are needed, initially for the most problematic products, to force producers to make products repairable by 3rd parties, and guarantee the rights by others to perform such repairs - plus resolving what effects (if any) such repairs have on warranties.
Unfortunately, greedy industries, their lobbyists and politicians-for-hire continue to successfully manage to muddy the waters, and so I am not optimistic that this will improve any time soon.
Agreed. The diagnosis takes time away from other work, so I don't have a problem with paying for it. $100 for a diagnosis that I can follow up on myself later is still a bargain if it's something I can fix myself and would cost a substantial amount of my own time otherwise.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The lobbyists that not all people are moronic as they are.
The only (known) drug in Mello Yello is caffeine. It's the same drug that's in Mountain Dew, which also has a song named after it.
The Donovan song is about an intimate massage device.
The idea that we are not allowed to look inside and fix some device that we have purchased and own is insane, totalitarian, and antithetical to everything America stands for. Self-reliance? Uh-uh. We're all too stupid to touch the insides of our high-tech devices or, heaven forbid, reprogram the computers that control them. This should not be a matter of copyright or patent, as I am not considering copying the device and manufacturing it myself without paying royalties to the owner of the design. I just want to fix the damned thing myself. There is legal support in government now for the idea that consumers don't really own the things they buy. They are just purchasing some sort of limited "right to use". I am sure that this started with the software industry and their ridiculous user licenses. But does this apply to a car, or a tractor, or a lawn mower? The government should not be supporting the manufacturers in this situation. I will be taking my stuff apart no matter what they say. Will they kick down my door at midnight? Maybe. It has almost reached this point with farmers and patented seed from companies like Monsanto.
...a good straw man arguement from Industry Lobbyists.
put it together with gun laws.
if a tractor can be used to avoid EPA regulations and destroy the world, a gun can also be used to kill.
So put them under the same law. Either you allow guns, and modification of tractors. Or you ban both guns and modifications of tractors.
Thats your problem right there. Your corporate masters will never be either.
Put the Billionaires up against a wall.
Australia used to gave gun problems. Now they regularly bust people with millions of dollars of drugs & no gun because the gun would be REAL JAIL TIME.
Look at that.. they have way less kids killing kids than you Amerikuks.
But yer guns make you freeeeeee...
Moran.
>"Australia used to gave gun problems."
And they still do. Their "gun violence" was already going down, year after year UNTIL their confiscation. Then it stalled before returning to the previous downward trend. "Gun violence" in the USA has also been steadily going down and down. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Now they regularly bust people with millions of dollars of drugs & no gun because the gun would be REAL JAIL TIME."
Duh, "the gun" would be "real jail time" in the USA when EXISTING laws are enforced. That is exactly what happened in Richmond, VA when the Feds started a program there. 5 year mandatory for illegally having a gun. That didn't require ANY additional non-sense gun control laws. And it didn't affect ANY of the good armed people who were legal. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Look at that.. they have way less kids killing kids than you Amerikuks."
Per capita, the rate they had before and after the ratio didn't change hardly at all. And the decreasing rate didn't improve over the decreasing rate in the USA. 103 countries have a higher per capita homicide rate than the USA. And the USA has a violent crime rate lower than 12 of the 17 most-industrialized nations. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"But yer guns make you freeeeeee"
No, good people having guns GREATLY reduces gun crime. It can be both a very effective deterrent and effective way to protect yourself and those you care about. Up to a 2.5 million crimes are averted every year in the USA by good (non-police) citizens using guns defensively. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
The US. Whittling away your freedoms and liberty and dignity -- one device at a time.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
They will turn Right to Repair into Right to Despair.