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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

I think it's totally valid to void warranty when customers modify product software. If users do things like disable temperature limits and mess up their camera, then I see no reason why the company (and be extension, other customers) should foot the bill.

Giving away the SDK, regardless of warranty revocation, is a step ahead of most camera manufacturers.

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No, it's not valid. At all. I think it is illegal in some countries and should be illegal everywhere. It was enough of these "practices".

If I swap out my car's engine with a more powerful one and screw up the drivetrain will warranty cover it? If I load broken firmware onto my device that screws it up, why should the company be on the hook? Replacing firmware is no different than replacing any other component.

What countries force companies to provide warranty when users load faulty firmware onto devices?

In the US, car manufacturers are required to honor the warranty for the rest of the car after you swap the engine unless they can prove your engine swap caused the failure they don't want to repair. They will probably have little difficulty proving that for a scenario like a more powerful engine breaking a transmission. They'd have a much harder time claiming it caused the heated seats to stop working.

This SDK seems to be for PC-based remote control apps, not camera firmware. A well-designed camera firmware would not accept remote control commands that exceed the hardware's safety limits.

That's not the problem. The problem here is that Fuji appears to be claiming that any use of the SDK voids the warranty entirely, regardless of the defect. t would be like if you swapped out your car's engine with a more powerful one, and then, from a completely unrelated fault, its navigation system stops working.

In the US, my understanding is that this is explicitly not legal, per the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act. FujiFilm can choose not to offer a warranty at all, but if they offer one, then it must cover defects on modified devices unless they can show that the modification caused or contributed to the defect.

In the EU, it is my understanding that it is legal to have a guarantee with terms like these. However, regardless of any guarantee the manufacturer may offer, there is a statutory guarantee in the EU for most products, which completely ignores the terms that the manufacturer might prefer. This usually ends up being weaker than Magnuson–Moss in terms of duration and modifications. But it usually means that for six months, the seller must prove that the fault with the product was caused by the consumer, and for two years, if you can show that the problem is from a defect with the device originally and not from you, then you can still get repairs, replacement, or a refund.

The short answer is: The warranty must cover damage not caused by your modification.

There are no countries i'm aware of that require you warranty damage caused by user modification. Lots of countries require that you do not void the entire warranty, or refuse service, of any damage not caused by the modification, and generally the manufacturer has to show the damage was caused by the modification if they want to refuse service.

In this case, Fuji is trying to void the entire warranty. That is not legal in a lot of countries.

A more apt analogy would be the MVD plugged a dongle into the canbus plug and now your warranty is void.

I mean, this is exactly what they are doing.

And isn't that normal? If you remap your ECU to use a different fuel mixture that voids the warranty right? That's what google results overwhelmingly say. And it makes perfect sense. Users might alter the firmware to run at a suboptimal setting that increases wear. Would you expect a manufacturer to honor warranty if you bolted on a turbocharger?

No, not right.

I'm seeing sources indicating that yes, it will void warranty. Both in the US [1] and K [2]

1. https://carperformanceboss.com/ecu-tuning-warranty-legal/

2. https://hyperchips.co.uk/will-a-car-remap-affect-my-warranty....

> If I swap out my car's engine with a more powerful one

yes, legally required to be covered in the us.

> and screw up the drivetrain will warranty cover it?

No, not legally required to be covered in the us.

The difference is the law specifies the manufacturer can not assume a leads to b, they have to a reason to think b was caused by a.

Not illegal, just not binding.

Hardware should be designed to be resilient to broken software to whatever degree possible.

And then still, warranty should cover defects in the face of modified software.

The SDK is not some hack downloaded from some shady website. It’s not a third-party unauthorized tool. This isn’t like, “I transformed my Tesla into an ICE car and then asked them to fix it.” It’s like, “I paired my phone via Bluetooth to the entertainment system and now they won’t fix my defective AC.”

Yes it’s hard to prove that hardware wasn’t broken by broken, unauthorized software modifications. Is there even a small amount of evidence that the warranty burden caused by software modifications is significant? Many stores are happy to cover occasional consumer error even if they’re not actually liable to, and that is SURELY more common than firmware modifications.

Not to mention the directions this could go into. Oh, malware exploited our phones and then modified the system firmware? Sorry, your warranty is void because you ran unofficial firmware, goodbye.

(Obviously, and especially in the last case, if you do break your device on your own, or someone else does, then of course manufacturer warranties do not cover that. That’s a whole different wheelhouse. But your warranty should not be entirely void over software. This is the same as those technically-not-legally-binding “warranty void if removed” stickers everyone unfortunately tolerates.)

The SDK basically gives remote shutter control and file transfer. There is nothing in it that could plausibly damage anything.

wouldnt shutter control give the possibility of the image sensor overheating from extended exposures? I could absolutely be talking out of my ass but I thought I remembered that being a risk when I flashed ML to my Canon for star photos.

The worst I can thing of is extra noise from the heat build up from the sensor being energized for extended period. This is one of the many reasons that image stacking is so advantageous. Cold winter nights imaging Orion is probably not going to notice it nearly as much as those hot summer nights trying to image Milky Way. (I'm hoping to take my camera cooler out for a spin this summer. Just a modified pelican case with insulation and ice chest freezer packs. lo-tech)

Basically every camera I have had has a "bulb", which is pretty much as-long-as-you-want exposure. Never heard of sensor overheating even after hours of exposure.

Overheating is more of an issue for the image processor, at high frame rates. During bulb mode, the sensor is on for a long time but it's only one frame being handled by the image processor.

Any CCD based camera will certainly heat up a lot, and cmos as well to a lesser degree without good/active cooling.

Most cameras time out at about an hour maximum unless they are special purpose astro cameras.

There are a lot of changeable settings listed in those header files, chances are some combination of settings or other highly-tuned SDK usage could put the camera to work and potentially cause it to overheat (eg. forcing a specific shutter speed while also capping the movie shutter speed, perhaps) since they're not testing the use cases you could theoretically enable via the SDK.

Then that's a defect in the product, not the fault of the user, and should be covered under warranty.

(& the defect should get fixed. Nobody wants to brick their camera.)

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