Digital fair repair act passed in New York | Hacker News Reader

Digital fair repair act passed in New York

nysenate.gov

82 pointspunnerud39 comments

Exemptions for farm equipment, motor vehicles, medical devices, and household appliances with "a digital electronic product embedded within it". So... Basically laptops and phones are covered by this?

Is a TV an appliance? My washing machine and dryer don't have digital electronics within them (they're like 20 years old) but all my other home appliances do.

It's still a lot better than nothing.

Oh yes, definitely. I just wish that NY lawmakers would have more backbone than federal lawmakers. Getting elected to the state government costs significantly less money for a campaign than winning a federal position, state lawmakers should not be as easy to be influenced by large corporations as they have a lot less to lose in comparison to federal lawmakers in terms of future campaign contributions.

Or maybe I'm very naive. I do live in NY, my elected state representatives did not spend a ton to win their seats.

Unfortunately the lower campaign costs also mean it is cheaper for a purchaser-of-politicians to fund the run of a competitor who will do their bidding.

It's the first domino to fall.

This means the very important work being done at tractorhacking [0] has become even more important. What incentive does a publicly-traded firm whose key shareholder is Bill Gates have to ever make their products repairable by New York's farmers now?

[0] https://tractorhacking.github.io/

Gotta start somewhere!

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good!

You just do the thing. It's not like they're walking the appalachian trail or making a baby. You can start at the end, and the fact that they haven't is a serious problem.

This was passed so that politicians can lie to their constituents, claiming to have supported right to repair, while carving out exceptions where it would have mattered most. The idea is to keep populist discontent at bay while not actually solving the problem.

Farm equipment is more important than everything else combined IMO.

I don't understand how most countries aren't terrified of having their ability to repair farm equipment, which is essential to food production, locked behind parts serialization with the encryption keys controlled by a foreign company.

Keeping repair prices in check should be viewed as a beneficial side effect of right to repair legislation. The real win is diversifying knowledge and maintaining the ability to repair equipment domestically.

Is it accurate to say they're terrified of having the ability to repair farm equipment? I think it's probably more accurate to ask "How come we have a political system where the politicians are more beholden to the large companies who 'donate' to their campaigns than the people they represent?"

or "how come so many politicians are terrified of loosing the donations of the farm equipment manufacturers" & "why don't we regulate politician's incomes such that they can't profit from campaign 'donations'?"

Exempting motor vehicles is also pretty terrible in my opinion, as someone who knows how to build one from parts but needs to go get fleeced by dealers thanks to all the obstacles they create for self repair.

Wouldn't the opposite argument be easier given past history? \They\ want it to be hard to repair so only the country that has authority over the manufacturer has power over the food production of countries that don't have power over the manufacturer.

> I don't understand how most countries aren't terrified of having their ability to repair farm equipment, which is essential to food production, locked behind parts serialization with the encryption keys controlled by a foreign company.

One possible explanation is that the people who hold the power here are geriatric, utterly out of touch with the state of modern technology, and periodically have lunch at the country club with the emeritus chairman of the board of XYZ farm equipment company, who reminds them in casual conversation that these right-to-repair bills are frustrating and bad for business.

The purpose of the act for anyone unfamiliar:

>> This bill requires original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to make diag-nostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment available to independent repair providers and consumers if such parts and repair information are also available to OEM authorized repair providers.

Very exciting to see this pass after California's bill was killed [1]

Right to repair is one of those frustrating issues that has broad public support, but not enough passion to impact elections. This makes it easy for a small number of corporations to influence legislatures via lobbying and campaign donations, and effectively block popular measures.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/01/california_repair_bil...

> via lobbying and campaign donations

you mean bribes

I used to think this was sarcasm. Then I met people who literally didn’t understand the difference between putting money in a politician’s pocket / promising them personal perks and lobbying then or donating to their campaign or PAC.

It's basically the same thing, just regulated. When you follow the (extremely limit in the US, thankfully at least a bit more complex in other developed countries) rules to give money to a politician for favours it's called lobbying.

You can lobby without money too ( by voicing your opinion), so maybe that's where you see a difference?

> basically the same thing, just regulated

Campaign expenditures are audited and regulated. Lobbying generally involves little of material value going to the politician—it’s connecting with experts and writing bills their staff are too stretched to deal with.

PACs are the black hole in the equation. But if you think a PAC can just buy a politician a boat or a house without consequences, you’ve severely underestimated the FBI’s appetite for those kinds of cases. Conflating these modes normalises actual bribery.

> if you think a PAC can just buy a politician a boat or a house without consequences

That's not the problem. The problem is the spending on political campaigning. They're bribing the politicians with the political power of office (if they don't take the money, then it's almost impossible for them to get elected). Other countries deal with this by having strict (and relatively low) limits on campaign spending.

Well sure believe what you want about regulation and audits.. one of the least corrupt countries (the Netherlands) has scandal after scandal.

If the information is not there, it can't be audited. And politicians seem to have very bad memory.

You can take a personal loan as a politician to support your campaign and have that paid back by campaign contributions. A house can be bought in an revocable trust by a political friend and be used as the politician's home address for residency purposes and physical residency purposes. Speaking engagements and their ilk often pay politicians for minimal work. A cousin or friend can be paid by a politician's campaign to perform services for a campaign. Most politicians and elected officials receive 2X or 3X pension time served over regular firefighters and first responders and other public state empolyees. A part-time politician over 5 years earns as much pension as a public employee working for 10-15 years in many states. Benefits abound in the rules for the rulemakers.

"Arm's length transactions" are more heavily regulated for corporate minions than they are for politicians in many ways.

Lobbying without money is whispering in a cacophonous, raucous jungle of influence. You will not be heard most of the time.

At some point you have to ask why people who clearly aren't doing it for patriotic or altruistic reasons are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to apply for a job that pays hundreds of thousands a year.

It's true that it's not quite a bribe, since the politician can't spend the money on personal expenses. However, it is still a way of buying influence, since the money goes to helping the politician getting reelected and therefore maintaining the position of power that makes their influence valuable. In practice it's only a little better than bribery.

It feels very much like Copyright abuse/extensions. Extremely common, everyone is against it, yet not important enough to impact elections which allows a small number of corporations to influence...

Inexplicably doesn't apply to some of those things most likely to actually need repair: Cars, motor vehicles, machinery, .... all things for which maintenance and repair have actually be turned into profit centers by OEMs in recent years.

Most small consumer tech (the only stuff actually covered) simply doesn't have any designed repair path, except maybe battery and screen. No manufacturer other than Apple has enough of its own consumer access to have any repair afaict?

Meanwhile we're increasingly forced to use dealers for minor repairs to our cars. FFS.

I also live in CA so the bill obviously has no impact on me, and I don't see anything like this happening here in any form any time soon :-(

Seems well-intentioned but inept, in that it only applies to "digital electronic equipment."

Why?

Probably to get it passed. Include more things and you need to convince more people/lobbyists and you’ll never get anything through.

Pick your battles. No way this would have passed if they had also included e.g. farm equipment.

I don't understand the Farm Equipment exemption. Its not like NY manufactures farm equipment. Its a big enough market that I doubt any companies would want to leave.

Rural NY has many farmers. Like any other state. State laws can propagate to other states if left unchecked by corporate representatives. Our legislatures don't represent the interests of the people as well as they probably should.

All the more reason it's offensive, because it's not like John Deere is some major economic value creator in New York. I would love to know what back room quid-pro-quos were involved in this.

I would argue (and I hope someone else does) that "digital electronic equipment" applies to such equipment no matter where it is, including on a tractor.

Probably safety.. low voltages devices. 'Safety' was a big argument for those against.

[dupe]

News from last week, a handful of posts including this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31614055

This is great news! I am extremely excited to see what this means in practice!

It's a shame that states have to do this and not the federal government.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com