Not necessarily. Consider products that require radios like satellite internet transceivers. If you were allowed to "modify it however you want" you could easily modify it to put up a continuous wave and effectively DoS the satellite gateway, causing an outage for all other customers on the entire beam which is obviously something the ISP wants to avoid at all costs.
Hence, many companies only allow you to lease the transceiver, not own. And even if you did literally own it, they obviously don't want you modifying it for fear of harming the service of other customers.
It's one thing if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster to burn cool patterns into your toast. It's quite another if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster such that nobody else's toaster in the neighborhood works anymore.
What I'm trying to point out is that your comment seems to suggest restricting users from making any (all) modifications, even if they wouldn't affect anyone but themselves, because they might make a modification would affect others. I think one should be allowed to make any modifications as long as they're made responsible for how those modifications affect others. And even if a modification potentially (not through every use) negatively affects others, they should only face consequences when the use actually affected others or went against regulations of the shared resource (the air).
It's like arguing that people shouldn't be able to modify their home batteries because they could use them to purposely damage the power grid. That's kind of a ridiculous scenario to worry about when the same infrastructure is already vulnerable to utterly pedestrian physical sabotage. It's a facile rationalization for imposing restrictions that have an ulterior motive.
If we decide you have an inalienable right to repair the phone I made for you, does that mean I have to facilitate it? Does it mean I can't put technical barriers in place to make it harder for you? Do I have to offer you any sort of support & warrantee if you have modified it?
Can I refuse to offer you a sale on the object, and just offer a lease? Etc. etc.
You pay the full cost of the device, but you don't own it, and companies retain the exclusive right for repair/replacement. But, they don't have any onus for repair/replacement, and you need to pay full price for a new device if your current one gets damaged.
An honest rental system might be preferable. At least then people would know what they're getting into. At least when I rent a device, there's some real obligation for the actual owner to fix it when it breaks. At least then companies who legitimately sell their devices and don't block repair efforts would have a marketing edge.
By all means, let people rent software. Just make sure companies are correctly marketing that as a rental.
When you buy a book, you own the hardware but not IP. You’re “licensed a nonexclusive irrevocable right to use, that allows reverse engineering but without sublicensing clauses” aka you can’t xerox the full book and sell it for $5. When you buy a sandwich, same except hardware can be eaten.
Really the deal of “mandatory licensed” software is that you can’t pirate it, and that should already be covered by laws. It should not require a million page contract and those contract mustn’t be much more than blank pages.
No, it's not that simple.
Exactly where we place the limits is up for debate, but I think I conclusively proved to everybody reading this that there need to be limits the only question is where.
I am allowed to remove my headlights, but I'm not allowed to drive on the roads if I have removed my headlights. The restriction is on roads.
I own my home, but I'm not allowed to replace the GFCI outlets in my bathroom with non-GFCI outlets.
Having the right to modify and repair does not mean a carte blanche to ignore and circumvent building and electrical regulations. You do have the right to remove, replace or add additional outlets providing that the regulations are complied with, and you can purchase outlets from any vendor which sells products compliant with the regulations.
Availability of first-party and third-party parts would greatly open up the market for electronic goods of all kinds. So long as they comply with the necessary regulations and perform equivalently to the original parts, it would be a vast improvement upon the current state of affairs.
Being able to repair things is very different, it is _in_ the common interest and likely against the interests of the manufacturers.
As for bad parts and bad repair jobs, sure. I would think that owners are incentivized to buy parts that are safe and to install them correctly. Of course some battery batches will be bad, but that's true for authentic parts too. Remember the Samsung Note battery issues?
Also if we want to prevent fires because of batteries then we should make Apple products illegal because it happened that Apple products had issues too https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall
The issue there is driving at night on public roads. You can, with your own car, remove your headlights. The car manufacturer can't show up and sue you for that.
> I'm not allowed to pour oil on the ground even though it would only destroy my own grass
That's not the only thing it would destroy (ground water, local wildlife, etc). You are allowed to style your hedges in the shape of a middle finger, or pluck all your grass out blade by blade (save for any HOA restrictions you agreed to).
I believe there are technical differences in how ownership of the land works in different jurisdictions throughout the world. The land or the earth below your grass might not be as yours as an article of clothing you're wearing.
If you own your car, and the headlight burns out, why shouldn't you be allowed to repair it back to the original factory state? Why should you be forced to pay someone else to do this?
If someone tries to argue that you're going to do it wrong, it seems like the onus should be on them to prove that your repair was bad and dangerous.
This is different from outright purchase of the car, where you can literally drive it to the nearest scrap yard and have it crushed right after purchase :)
Even this right is being eroded - see Tesla. You can drive it to the scrap yard, but someone else can't always drive it back out.
It's very reasonable to say that the vendors created an expectation of ownership to push their sale.
If you didn't notice that I called them "vendors" instead of "leasers", it adds to my point.
Other things being equal, I would agree. However, if market forces push us into a choice between ordinary people being able to own things and use them freely against ordinary people being forced to pay rent on everything forever and use things only as some higher power dictates, it's not going to take long to make that choice. This is the choice that we are heading towards with the increasing use of software and, in particular, the repurposing of laws originally intended to prevent exploiting the work of others to create software so that they constrain the ordinary use of a product by the person who bought it.
All of them will be licensed, almost abolishing private ownership. If we idly accept licensing of everything, we will enjoy what will be basically serfdom.
People that were writing these laws never imagined they would prevent you from repairing a cat-feeder or a lighting system. They were intended for another purpose entirely. Maybe it's time we stopped misusing those laws and created a separate body of law for this specifically.
This is already happening. I work in an engineering consulting, specialising on consumer electronics. I have to admit, the wider industry is becoming a part of the issue: everybody wants to become like Apple.
We have an enormous tide of new clients incoming, with prime majority of them having no previous experience doing anything with electronics whatsoever.
If we ignore customers with out in the clouds fantasies, we will be losing like 3/4 of the new business, on another, we will be loosing our engineers who will be leaving to work on something more interesting and merit worthy.
The hottest buzzword among Silicon Valley accelerator bred entrepreneurs I see is "product-as-a-service," which basically you buying a product, but still having to pay to use it even after you already own it.
We have a joke that soon even toilet paper rolls will come chipped, and the paper will not work unless you pay somebody on the internet.
Unfortunately not: https://futureiot.tech/ikea-sets-up-smart-home-business-unit...
It's sort of unfortunate. I can see having an idea, and wanting to start a business, but not have people copy it wholesale. But I can also see that people who do start companies go the full-tyranny route - closed source, phone app only, invasive data collection, until purchasing something is a compromise on every level.
If a house, a car, a shirt, or a phone is offered to you for sale, and you buy it, then you should own it.
FWIW, I agree with you. Please don't attack a straw-man!
Even if you don't mention them explicitly, you still have to acknowledge the difference because one of your examples was "software object".
When consumers pay money for software, it almost always licensed and not bought. If you buy MS Windows 10 from Amazon.com, you purchased a license. If you truly want to "buy" Windows 10 in the same sense as your other non-software examples, you'd have to convince Microsoft to sell you the "ownership of the codebase" or have enough billions to acquire the entire Microsoft corporation to "own" Windows 10.
- "buy software" the legal ownership sense : as in buying the copyright which is usually something companies (not consumers) do when they buy the intellectual property rights. E.g. Adobe Inc buys Macromedia Dreamweaver. This is the true ownership.
- "buy software" the casual sense : which just means the consumer getting a CD or a digital download to install a copy of the software. This the license not the ownership.
They are 2 different things that use the same word "buy" and just because a commentary omits the word "license" doesn't mean the above distinctions go away.
It's a similar distinction for many types of intellectual property. Photographers of weddings usually don't let couples buy the wedding photos in a legal ownership sense. Instead, they sell some prints with a license for use. Same with musicians selling "songs" to the public. People bought a license and not the copyright. Paul McCartney doesn't even "own" the songs he wrote with The Beatles. Thus, Paul McCartney can't do "anything he wants" with the song "Yesterday". He can't "resell the song" to somebody else like a used book. Instead, he has to ask for Sony's permission.
Does anyone "force" couples to license photos instead of buy them? In one sense, no. The bride & groom could conceivably contract with a photographer on a "work for hire" basis and thus own the copyrights to the photos. But most couples don't do that. Newspapers and magazines do establish "work for hire" with freelance photographers so they can own the photographs but most wedding couples don't.
As other commenters mentioned, the real issue is the slippery word "buy" that defies consumers' natural intuition of what that means. If you're really leasing/renting/licensing something, you need to make that clear.
You mentioned buying a software product, but that is not commonly done by consumers. We all license software. Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it. The replies mention changing software copyright for consumer products. I can imagine that to be a good idea, but I don't see the EU making GPLv3 software mandatory for software products. I don't see a way forward yet.
> Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it.
No, when people use the word "buy" here, they're using it in the same way I might buy a physical book.
When I buy a book, I'm free to write in it, scan it, transcribe it, rip it in half, reglue the spine, put a dust cover on it, or resell it. I'm not free to republish it or violate the author's copyright.
When I buy a piece of software, I should be free to hotpatch the DLL, back up the product, put wrappers around it, examine it, write about it, or resell it. That doesn't mean the owner should lose their copyright. You're conflating two unrelated concepts -- the abolition of copyright and the erosion of basic consumer ownership rights that have been established for centuries.
In fact, the EU already has a right to resale for digital software. And yet, despite that consumer-friendly rule, not every piece of software in the EU is currently GPLv3 licensed.
All that people are saying is that our rights as consumers shouldn't go away just because we bought a digital book instead of a physical one.
When the majority (consumers) decide they want everything for free and that they want absolute power over the creations of others creators will simply stop revealing what they create and stop making their creations available for purchase. Instead creating things for private use.
The vast majority of these "creators and skilled professionals" are doing work for hire for the same people who own everything else, and have absolutely no control over the product of their labor.
all of these are completely different actions, have different standing in front of the law, have different repercussions etc etc
the way i see these kinds of initiatives: i think they're healthy, i think we need them, but i also notice how they're from a bygone era where cars where fixed in the driveway. that age has passed, and sure, we need a new paradigm. but i still wouldn't trust a random person vs a dedicated service center to fix my phone. can we make those phones so simple that anyone can repair them? would this entail any performance drawbacks?
curios to see where this whole thing leads.
Do you feel that age has passed because manufacturers now block people having the info needed for repair, or are you meaning the complexity of cars has increased?
Perhaps the age of fixing cars in the driveway may return, if manufacturers aren't able to block the info needed.
At present, more technically advanced people seem to piece together their own CANbus diagnostic tools. But off the shelf products that work for "every model" should be practical if this legislation works.
Though, making your own engine block is pretty far from a "home garage thing" anyway.
People used to just buy those parts from a local supplier or wrecker, then fit them in their garage at home. That doesn't seem like it should have changed.
People into automotive (and boat, uav) CAN stuff have figured out ways to reverse engineer much of it though.