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Right to Repair
Dedwrekka
MetalHell adjacentRegistered User regular
MetalHell adjacentRegistered User regular
There is a longstanding debate in the US over how much control the end user had over any device that they buy. Do they have the right to repair or modify it or not? Can they use it for other uses than intended? Are companies allowed to restrict the sale of repair materials to competitors or end users?
Many companies, like Apple and John Deere, prefer it if you're considered to by licensing an object rather than owning it, because that allows them control over quality as well as the data that's gathered by their products.
Customers want the right to repair anything that they buy if it's within their ability, and to be able to make money off of it if they can turn it into a business.
Hackers want to be able to take any device they buy down to its component parts and rebuild them in any configuration that they can.
There's currently a bill in Nebraska (LB 67)over the right to repair, ( Full bill text) but there have been many other legal battles over this before. The new bill requires companies to sell repair manuals and parts to third parts repair services and end users. The current assertion by the companies fighting this is that because the companies cannot be assured that repairs will be done right that they cannot provide these materials. While end users argue that requiring them to go to the major companies for repairs hurts local businesses and puts an undue hindrance on them because of the lack of official repair facilities nearby.
Whatever happens with this bill the discussion on the Right to Repair is unlikely to be solved by one law in one state, so let's discuss the ongoing debate regarding the Right to Repair.
Many companies, like Apple and John Deere, prefer it if you're considered to by licensing an object rather than owning it, because that allows them control over quality as well as the data that's gathered by their products.
Customers want the right to repair anything that they buy if it's within their ability, and to be able to make money off of it if they can turn it into a business.
Hackers want to be able to take any device they buy down to its component parts and rebuild them in any configuration that they can.
There's currently a bill in Nebraska (LB 67)over the right to repair, ( Full bill text) but there have been many other legal battles over this before. The new bill requires companies to sell repair manuals and parts to third parts repair services and end users. The current assertion by the companies fighting this is that because the companies cannot be assured that repairs will be done right that they cannot provide these materials. While end users argue that requiring them to go to the major companies for repairs hurts local businesses and puts an undue hindrance on them because of the lack of official repair facilities nearby.
Whatever happens with this bill the discussion on the Right to Repair is unlikely to be solved by one law in one state, so let's discuss the ongoing debate regarding the Right to Repair.
Dedwrekka on
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Personal opinion is that if i BUY it, its mine and i decide what i can do with it (without endangering public safety of course).
I agree, with the caveat that a company should be under no obligation to give you parts, provide you with service after you've modified it, or explain how a thing works. If you modify something, the warranty should not apply further. If I crack open my gaming console myself to replace the hard drive and it doesn't work any more, that's on me, not on the console manufacturer.
Full bill text
It doesn't say anything about warranties either way, so it's possible that the manufacturer could void the warranty for going to a third party repair place. But the argument is also made by the legislator that introduced it that it doesn't matter if your warranty is out if you can't get someone to come out and fix it under warranty in the first place.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a25246/right-to-repair-legislation-under-fire-in-nebraska/
If a person wants to make a third party repair company they will have to reverse engineer everything and find their own supply chains.
If you want to repair stuff buy a repair friendly product in the first place.
Is there a reasoning behind this strong anti-consumer, pro-corporation stance?
Because that's a bold belief to hold without explaining why.
Why? A company has the obligations we decide they should have. And if for no other reason than ecological ones, consumers being able to repair their own products to extend it's lifespan is a net positive. Rather than being forced to decide between uneconomical technical support, and purchasing a new one to replace one that is often only a minor component replacement away from returning to 100% functionality.
To be fair, though, cars are FAR FAR superior to where they were 30 years ago.
I see this sort of thinking all the time (not saying this is you) but the age old "well back in the day cars were better because i do do all my own work and it was easy to understand! You didnt need a software degree to fix it! etc etc etc"
Which fails to take in to account that vehicles are better in almost every way to cars of 30 years ago. Even 20 years ago. Sure, the nostalgia isnt there, but in every performance and engineering metric new vehicles are better.
Of course, this gets in to fuzzy territory with proprietary software now, and things far more technical than simple nuts and bolts.
Personally, i think a manufacturer SHOULD supply needed repair docs to authorized repair centers. But, centers that arent specifically under the corporate "umbrella". Which is sort of how things work now. You have a "Honda" authorized tech, Mazda, Ford, etc. They go to class to learn about the specific make/model and then test to get the certificate.
things get even MORE dicey with things like Tesla which is far fewer mechanical components though.
The flipside to that is when a market entity becomes so big that antitrust law come into effect (at least European antitrust law). A monopoly on a market is never a good thing for the consumer.
He's not being anti-consumer. You could say he's consumer-neutral or perhaps even pro-consumer.
The fact is, products these days are becoming more and more intricate in ways that make end user repairs impractical or even impossible. It is better for companies to focus on making products that will rarely need repairs vs making heavier, clunkier products that can be disassembled. And when one of these products does fail, it is better for the consumer to simply be given a brand new one than a repaired one if it can't be repaired. Repaired shit is never good as new, it is repaired, and you are only shortening the time until it completely fucks up with every repair.
You think cars these days are just complicated for the sake of being difficult to repair? Fuck no. You think Apple makes it's phones and notebooks sealed up just so the consumer can't access the internals? Ha... These design decisions are driven by olympics level engineering and the side effects of mass fabrication. Want to repair your Tesla's autopilot system? Better not fuck it up or you will surely crash and die at 70+ mph.
And please, the ecological argument is purely masturbatory. There is nothing wrong with throwing shit away if the materials can be recycled for use in something else down the line. I get that discarding expensive things seems wrong, but the frequency with which it happens makes it far less worse than the number of things people throw away everyday without even a second thought. Reuse your plastic cups over and over if you really care about the environment.
We may not yet be a society that has achieved maximum recyclability, but we will get there by encouraging corporations to create tightly integrated products that are designed to never be repaired. Know what won't get us there? Punishing those same corporations for not making their shit repairable.
And THAT's good for the consumer, in the end. The market has shown that aside from a few tinkerer nerds, people have little to no interest in repairing their own products.
If you really wanted to live in a world where anything and everything you own could be repaired and even understood, you should have been born, lived, and died within the heart of the 20th century. Those days are gone.
Even if someone did want to reverse engineer something and procure their own supply chains, they would then fall afoul of copyright laws.
And no one is suggesting manufacturers alter their designs to accommodate home repair, we just want to be able to purchase a single part from them if we so choose, or force them to disclose who/where they get their parts so we can purchase them from there if they dont want to handle the logistics.
MWO: Adamski
You say that like that's a choice we can make these days. Show me the smart phones on the market that we can buy from a store in the United States that's repair-friendly. This isn't just a matter of increased complexity in devices, it's manufacturers intentionally no longer caring about making devices that are durable and long-lasting, because all they care about is that the device doesn't break for 3 years before the next model is available and you are due a phone upgrade via your phone contract anyway.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Ahh, good old Planned Obsolescence
MWO: Adamski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act
Passed in 1975, it governs warranties.
Dang forums don't like dashes in links, so you may have to type it in to get the right page
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
It's not that bold really. Requiring corporations to make products repairable creates unnecessary hassle and slows development.
I'm not saying corporations can't do that or shouldn't, just that we should have NO requirement for them to do so.
There are corporations that could decide to make all their products repairable and make THAT they're differentiator.
How about this example.
You buy a $20,000 car, it has a 3 year warranty and you get it serviced/repaired a couple times.
5 months out of warranty the ECM dies.
Car manufacturer x doesn't want to sell you new one, they'd prefer to sell you a new car. It's also not available 3rd party.
So, this consumer friendly world allows you to choose to buy a new car, try to scavenge used parts (they don't work though since it's keyed to your vehicle, another consumer protection "festure"), or wait for a reverse engineered solution (which makes it so you can't get insurance because only the OEM or OEM certified parts allow safe operation of the vehicle)
Yeah, buying a new cell phone because it's a nightmare to repair is one thing, but the right to repair is about a lot more than someone's snapchat device.
And what is a reasonable lifespan for a device? 3 years sounds about right, hell that's even on the long side IMO. I upgrade my iPhone every 2 years and that feels like a bit too long. I bought an iPhone 7 last year and will probably replace it with the iPhone 8 this year.
Because, as it turns out, 3 years is a long time for phones currently. People aren't just replacing the phone because it's old, but because it's actually obsolete. And there's the fact that to get the level of power and size that we see now, it requires a level of integration that makes the devices harder to repair. And there have been attempts to make more repair-friendly smartphones - but it turns out they wind up sort of clunky and unattractive, for a few reasons.
So you're completely unfamiliar with anything but consumer grade stuff? Remember, this bill is partly prompted by repair of industrial grade farm equipment. That sort of shit you can repair pretty much indefinitely. Life times of a couple decades aren't uncommon on that sort of thing. For stuff that easily starts above 100k and climbs up into seven or eight figure price tags that's expected.
It's also not that they're unrepairable, it's that the manufacturer has a monopoly on the repair work. They try and do this through saying you're "licensing" the tractor indefinitely and so you can't work on it yourself. That's been roughed up in court a bit so now they just don't make any repair information available. Previously this sort of information would be readily available to customers.
This is more akin to Keurig tossing microchips into K-Cups so they've DRM'd a physical good than any kind of concern for the end user or the quality of the experience.
There's a shitload of other equipment in the world and manufacturers will absolutely continue to make it harder to repair or get repaired.
Because the latter is not the same as the former and as I read things it is the latter that is the proposal.
I am for it. But I foresee it being largely untenable given the integrated nature of modern electronics and the fact that custom boards and such like carry with them heavy burdens of intellectual property that would be a difficult thicket to untangle when it comes to the manufacturers supplying say iPhone 6S motherboard rev. 1. Of course that could all be solved by simply abolishing anti-consumer nonsense like intellectual property in the first place.
I would suggest that Apple should make available already existing blueprints, schematics, and parts to 3rd parties. There could be exemptions for IP sensitive components.
Edit: and as mentioned above, consumer electronics is just about the worst application of this. Mechanical goods like pumps, or engines, or macro-scale items which can be repaired easily and successfully are a much better candidate. Durable goods is the trade term, maybe?
One area I'm familiar with, fishing reels, already does this. Detailed schematics are available from the manufacturer and numbered parts can easily be ordered. Additionally, most manufacturers have in house repair facilities. Suppliers who don't offer this are at a competitive disadvantage.
Rather the technical details and repair practices used by the manufacturer should be available (even for a price!). The repair shop would need to purchase the material & necessary equipment and get certified to repair (for warranty work).
This kind of thing also protects against the death of a company being the death of your ability to repair your item.
So no it does not have to be easy but it must be possible.
We don't need new phones every two years and people wouldn't buy them if it wasn't for the "free phones" in subsidized plans. 3 years for electronics is horrible! I usually do a 3 year cycle for PC upgrades, mostly because I can not because I need to, my two-upgrades-back machine dates from 2010 and still works perfectly
And phones are not a great example anyway, anything that is extremely miniaturized is difficult to repair, but even in laptops Apple devices have been historically harder to modify, requiring you purchase specialty parts and remove more things to do RAM/HDD/battery upgrades. I know people who have replaced their laptop screens entirely because the machine was fine after a few years but the connector was flaky. Batteries will die. Why should these be hard to replace? Replacement parts cost a small fraction of the device cost
Agree with all of this. If I was forced to upgrade my phone every 2-3 years I straight up wouldn't have one.
I purposefully avoid Apple products for the very reason of their shit being way too expensive and impossible to repair.
I don't need companies to redesign everything so Joe Sixpack can repair it easily, I just want to be able to buy parts and look at schematics, whether it's a washing machine, a fridge, or a computer. Difficulty is irrelevant because you know some guy on youtube is going to put up a step by step tutorial anyway.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
I can replace the SD card, SIM, screen, case, and battery on any phone I own.
No one is expected or tries to "repair" anything other than that.
No one has soldered wires to repair electrical shit as a general consumer since the early 70s
I think items should be, within reason, made repairable.
It should be relatively easy to replace a battery in a cell phone.
It should be relatively easy to replace a transmission in a car.
They don't need to go out of their way to make everything repairable, but they shouldn't go out of their way to make things proprietary or impossibly to repair either.
That's an extremely narrow definition of obsolete you have. An iPhone 6 isn't obsolete when the 7 comes out, it's just not quite as fast
I think with a lot of it automation plays a big part.
Like, I can work on my truck. It's got a big engine bay and I can get in there.
My wife's Mustang though, is a major pain in the ass because that motor was dropped in fully assembled and trying to replace a hose took me two hours because the clips to remove the old hose and fasten the new one were facing inward, toward the damn motor, in a way that only a robot with multiple joints could do otherwise I'd have to remove the engine.
Like, that's not a fault on Ford, it's easier to make cars that way, and I can still repair it, it's just more of a pain in the ass now.
No but the 5s which is three years old won't be able to adequately run the latest iOS software very well. That's not a repair issue though, that's a software issue.
That's really on Apple, it happens with their laptops too, just not quite as quickly. Android phones don't nearly have the same issues with older hardware running poorly. I have a nexus 4 (4 years old) that is still working quite well - I use it as a travel phone because I don't care if it gets lost or smashed or whatever
fair enough, I just feel like there's two conversations going on here.
"modify" and "repair" are two different things.
"cell phone repair" and "fridge repair" are two different things.
We talked about this a while back in a chat thread I think but like 50 years ago or 70 years ago and back further you had to repair things. Things were expensive by all standards and you expected to keep them running because they were part of your income in a lot of ways.
Even PCs in the 80s and early 90s were expensive as shit so yeah you replaced ram and reworked the mother board and swapped processors but now anyone can go out for $200 and buy a chromebook to have basic computer use. that didn't exist even 15 years ago.
Personally I'm okay with companies figuring out how to make products so that they cost me $200 every four years rather than $2000 every 10.
Also a lot of it is miniaturization of technology. People could replace faulty tubes on old tvs or radios. You can't just go cracking open a 4K 60 inch tv because it died on you. That's why you buy the extended warranty, which is less than the cost of parts you'd have put into it anyway.
No, bad @Gnome-Interruptus ! Bad! Improper application of copyright law! :P
Technically, copyright law would only penalize/criminalize someone who reverse engineers something if that "something" was computer software that they did not own and it wasn't for the purpose of achieving interoperability between programs.
Now, you could technically reverse engineer a patented product, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's kind of pointless because the patented features have been publicly disclosed. Reverse engineering could also help you figure out a trade secret, perhaps in how something is put together, but any company putting a trade secret out into the marketplace knows that it's not going to be a secret for much longer.
As an IT guy, I have to make sure that any new Apple laptop I buy has its RAM maxed out, because it's soldered onto the logic board nowadays and can't be upgraded. That plus all the other egregious shit Apple has been doing with their laptops nowadays means our office will probably drift back towards Thinkpads over the next few years.
I didn't know apple actually soldered in the ram now.
Okay that's pretty dumb.
Like there's not even an upgrade slot?
Though with copyright, sometimes the litigation is the penalty even if they dont have a solid case. (And if you are spending the time to reverse engineer something to create a supply chain, you know the source has the money to litigate you out of existence)
MWO: Adamski
Apple. We know what you want. Better than you do. Plebeian.