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Comment by minipci1321 | Hacker News Reader

Unclear what you had in mind. I'll assume you were speaking about your own secure-booting mobile phone that you paid full price and now would like to be able to reflash?

I am not sure what to tell you. The situation pre-dates the secure boot. If I recall correctly, Iiyama monitors were known to be unrepairable because the manufacturer always refused to release schematics. It did not prevent their extreme popularity.

As an end-consumer, I support very much the freedom to change any products I own, the way I want. I once replaced ball bearings in the drum of my washing machine -- you get the idea.

As a person authorizing a product that can potentially emit unhealthy or unsafe levels of RF, or a parent of teenagers using social media, or a developer of medical applications intended for mobile phone... I am none of that, but I guess I would have a very different opinion.

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> As a person authorizing a product that can potentially emit unhealthy or unsafe levels of RF,

This used to be, can be, and should continue to be limited on a hardware level. You can't flash a phone to emit "unhealthy or unsafe levels of RF" if the circuit itself won't let such amounts of power to flow to the radio. Of course, someone could still mess with the hardware itself, but that doesn't scale and (in case of breaking RF limits) is illegal.

> or a parent of teenagers using social media,

This is interesting because, in a way, it's telling me that you the maker of the device are my parent. The argument sounds like, "to prevent your child from flashing your device, we'll prevent you from flashing your device". How about giving me the tools to limit my child's access, if I desire to do so, while not limiting my access?

> or a developer of medical applications intended for mobile phone...

This is a large topic, but to a first approximation, I don't believe a software that cannot be modified by the end-user for health reasons should be allowed on the phone. I also don't believe most medical apps in the smartphone spaces are of this category. The way I see it currently: either accept that some users (like myself) want to have full read & write access to their data on their phones, or make your solution a separate, tamper-proof, black-box device (and get a regulator to rule that for me to open it is illegal).

Maybe not unsafe per se from an emissions perspective, but there are spectrum considerations and other things, and with more and more done in software and less with discrete components, the trend is clear.

Safety is complex - what if the phone starts emitting on bands allocated to emergency services.

> As a person authorizing a product that can potentially emit unhealthy or unsafe levels of RF, or a parent of teenagers using social media, or a developer of medical applications intended for mobile phone... I am none of that, but I guess I would have a very different opinion.

Let's be honest and accept it's just about money and control to the makers of these devices. They will bring reasons such as these in their defense, but really they just want to keep the user from being in control of their device and e.g. making tracking them more difficult. I mean there have probably been tens of thousands of roms flashed on different devices. How many of them have emitted unhealthy levels of RF? And parents could retain the ability to flash their devices without giving that ability to their children. The reasons really just don't hold any water imo.

It is not like precedents are not known:

https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/set-your-wi-fi-card...

> Let's be honest and accept it's just about money and control to the makers of these devices.

Agree. My point is that less control for manufacturers over the image presumably will lead to lesser profits. My illustrations might be more or less relevant, depending on the standpoint.

>I am not sure what to tell you. The situation pre-dates the secure boot.

That's an invalid argument. It doesn't matter how long this has been the case.

>As a person authorizing a product that can potentially emit unhealthy or unsafe levels of RF, or a parent of teenagers using social media, or a developer of medical applications intended for mobile phone...

You're presuming this is the only and the correct way of handling this. That is, you're arguing it is the manufacturer's affair and right to restrict one's basic rights to enforce lawful handling of their product.

I'd rather argue that in reality the manufacturer's main interests lie in reducing support costs and the enforcement of their patents and copyrights.

> You're presuming this is the only and the correct way of handling this. That is, you're arguing it is the manufacturer's affair and right to restrict one's basic rights to enforce lawful handling of their product.

This is not really what I said (somehow people focus on the second part), but I do believe that offering this freedom (to install any image) will lead to lesser profits for the manufacturers. Quite possibly because other potential customers might find this feature unacceptable (my illustrations may be good or bad). That is, your personal freedom runs into someone else's. Then the market should decide, right?

> I'd rather argue that in reality the manufacturer's main interests lie in reducing support costs and the enforcement of their patents and copyrights.

Yes. Add there loss of face in case of hostile hacking. Etc. Since when this is condemnable?

>Since when this is condemnable?

Do not confuse the tools businesses are provided by the law with the interest to profit. For instance, 10 to 80 years long copyright terms after death are not your inherent rights as a creator but tools the current legal infrastructure offers. Hence it is not the only solution.

>This is not really what I said (somehow people focus on the second part)

No, you did, and the market decides only a share because it is already affects by numerous direct and indirect regulatory measures, e.g., patents. In the past explicit enforcement of the right to repair was rarely an issue for consumers just as net neutrality had not been a serious issue. This has obviously changed.

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