California Right to Repair Signed into Law
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ifixit.com
Calif. passes strongest right-to-repair bill yet, requiring 7 years of parts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37507226 - Sept 2023 (280 comments)
Lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
For example, my monitors appear to be hollow inside, so that a bit of dust got in and caused one of them to get a bad pixel. For so many years, smartphones weren't waterproof. Most of the power tools I own seem to use plastic for the most-used parts like the on/off trigger. Batteries can't be easily accessed or replaced. Etc etc etc.
If we were to count these design decisions as booleans in a measure of good engineering, then even one profit-seeking misstep could result in a 50% reduction in repair score. I feel that most products in existence would score perhaps 4/16 or 25%, maybe lower (edit: could be as low 15/65535 = 2.29e-4 depending on the weight of the bits!). Everything from cars where the alternator or fuel pump are buried under the engine, to smartphones that can't be easily opened or have their SIM card swapped, to appliances that don't have a low-voltage cutoff to survive a brownout.
So I wonder if this act touches on any of that. If not, it would be great to codify these things into standards, sort of like Consumer Reports but more formal, with the goal of promoting and eventually achieving decommodification.
Most computers don't try to lock out their owners from administrative access, but video game consoles usually do.
Which is b.s., but I guarantee that's why they got the exemption.
Probably a "security" reason. If $anybody can get access to tools we use at the factory, bad guys can circumvent the alarm.
I'd imagine that it's pretty similar for game-consoles: literally _any_ tooling/docs that allow $hackers or $pirates to gain any foothold threatens our business model...
I don't think either of those are particularly _good_ arguments, but I'd bet that they're very similar to whatever lobbies were involved in crafting the legislation.
So is it a phone with gaming capabilities? Or a gaming console with phone capabilities?
Reminds me of the Nokia N-Gage.
I imagine it has to do with integrity of the system. If people start messing with it and leave some sensors unplugged and there's an incident, the first thing survivors are going to do is sue the manufacturer despite having tampered with it.
I'm surprised to see airbags didn't make the list. Some things, amateurs really shouldn't mess with.
I don't think auto parts need right to repair, as far as I know companies like Dorman Products are allowed to reverse-engineer pretty much any part of a car, manufacture, market and sell them.
I would love to see right-to-repair advocates and infosec advocates in a ring, fighting it out.
Why is it that consumers get salty because they can’t read what they’re actually buying?
You can also email me @ joshho@stanford.edu
Bonus: same eli5 for yesterdays delete act
So basically, you have the right to repair things as long as it's not a John Deere, an Xbox, or an alarm system. Those things are magical in nature and we must not anger the gods of their making.
I can't take anyone seriously who defends these things. I don't need a devil's advocate for what it's worth; I've heard the arguments, and I'm about as convinced about them as I am the case for a flat Earth.
If you modify a Ford truck and that modification kills you, you're liable.
If you modify a John Deer tractor and John Deer didn't do everything in their power to stop you from making an unsafe modification, they're liable.
Furthermore, if a farm worker gets killed, maimed, injured from the framer's modification, the farmer is immune from liability and it is still John Deer that would be liable.
https://nationalaglawcenter.org/workers-compensation-for-agr...
> Whether or not someone is eligible for workers’ compensation depends on their state and the industry they work in. There are no requirements at the federal level that mandate states to have workers’ compensation laws. Nevertheless, every state, except for Texas, requires most employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. However, the majority of state workers’ compensation laws specifically exclude or limit agricultural employers from the workers’ compensation requirement.
Industrial operators who modify their equipment are not children, they should be responsible for their actions and trusted to repair it.
Pay close attention to the standards section and the verdict allocation of case study #1.
> Farmer, arguably the person most at fault, is essentially immune from liability. This would be true in most states due to Workers Comp
> Jury cannot attribute % of fault to Gonzales because he used Employer's equipment. This would not be true in most states.
> Jury wishing to give Gonzales "something" has only Bush Hog and Massey Ferguson to fault. Cannot do a % reduction for fault of Farmer or Gonzales
Even in this case, one of the lines of argument seems to have been that the manufacturer was aware of pre-existing safety issues and injuries, yet did not recall the product or adjust its design. That's certainly different than a one-off unauthorised modification blowing up.
I suspect that the argument that gaming consoles made was that it is necessary for them to be able to restrict access to repair because failing to do so would make them unable to enforce intellectual property and copy protection on their equipment as required by licenses that they have from publishers.
"This game can only be played in Japan because of {content/licensing}". Enabling full repairs would mean that someone could more easily modify their device to present itself as a Japanese version and now the company and maker is liable for content that is allowed in Japan but illegal elsewhere.
Again, this is an "I suspect" - I don't know for sure what argument they're making - just trying to channel the mind of the corporate lawyers (which isn't an entirely pleasant way to be thinking).
Lobbyists have no power over regulators except to threaten to withhold bribes from them. The only reason why a regulator would care about a lobbyist is if they're corrupt and receiving bribes - as in this case.
How does this disjoin? Assuming it becomes popular, wouldn't both parties be in favor of future legislation to remove the carveouts?
Lots of examples of “cracking” the voting population to stall political will.
If you put the blame on the lobbyists then no regulator can save you, because you forgive corruptable regulators.
Republicanism (supposedly) offers a solution to alleged instability, rashness, impetuosity, and social and political tyranny of democratic politics because it recognizes that the majority does not equal the whole of the community. US citizens elect what are basically proxies for power, but those proxies have only a facade of accountability. Instead, the elected enter a sphere where they ultimately control the institutions that control life for everyone in the US. It allows them to erect sets of rules that are never uniformly applied, it thrashes violently against efforts to combat such corruption, and have known for centuries that ultimately the voters are immaterial to the perpetuation of this system.
Absolutely no one in the US does any kind of governing whatsoever. The chickenshit house and senate AND executive branch punt lawmaking into the Supreme Court. Laws are all written by the Praetorian guard of lobbyists, piece of shit attorneys, and NGOs/think tanks. The judiciary exists to rubber stamp plutocrats’ agenda, nothing more. Binding arbitration ensures that the “deplorables” are forced into a parallel legal system, which robs them of the opportunity to take companies to court.
Lobbying is the engagement with members of the government to promote a certain agenda. The reason the offices of our legislators are open to the public is so that the public can go in and do exactly that. It's called "lobbying" because it is what is done in the lobbies of state houses.
There is nothing wrong with lobbying as such, but the combination of campaign-donations-as-protected-speech-for-corporations with lobbying makes for a very powerful, legal flavor of corruption.
I don't understand how people seem to think their food just appears out of thin air. Farming is a 24/7 job and is hard on equipment. Repairing farm equipment is at least 50% of the job. Games consoles, alarm systems, or trees don't feed anyone.
Maybe if farmers go on strike now of all times the fall which is harvest time and let the food rot. Let's see how long people can go without or with reduced availability of food. "Oh no my tractor broke down and I can't repair it"
4) that what we absolutely need, 3) that what would be nice to have, 2) that what serves no purpose/we would be better of without and 1) that what we've failed to ban.
If we strictly define those we can then proceed to rate those who consume our attention and those tasked with governing by the ratio of time they spend on each.
No doubt we are all guilty pondering niceties rather than necessities. Imagine an idea for a startup that is necessary.
If they are anything like British farmers they would rather get shafted by John Deere than work together with their neighbours.
The bill would require... the manufacturer of an above-described electronic or appliance product... to make available, on fair and reasonable terms, to product owners, service and repair facilities, and service dealers, the means, as described, to effect the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of the product, as provided.
The bill would also require a service and repair facility or service dealer that is not an authorized repair provider, as defined, of a manufacturer to provide a written notice of that fact to any customer seeking repair...
The bill would also authorize a city, a county, a city and county, or the state to bring an action in superior court to impose civil penalties on a person or entity for violating the Right to Repair Act, as provided.
The bill would make these requirements and enforcement provisions operative on July 1, 2024.
> Exemptions: game consoles, alarm systems, agricultural and forestry equipment
(This is from the linked article.)
This law requires manufacturers to provide parts, tools and documentation for how to repair their products. It didn't change anything about rights of people to do whatever they want with their property.
For agricultural and forestry equipment there is already extensive California law dealing with them in the the California Business and Professional Code (BPC).
To wit, the "Fair Practices of Equipment Manufacturers, Distributors, Wholesalers, and Dealers Act" which is Chapter 28 of Division 8 ("Special Business Regulations") of the BPC.
Alarm systems are also regulated under the BPC.
This new "Right to Repair Act" is part of the Public Resources Code. It is is Division 30, Part 3, Chapter 8.6.
Division 30 is "Waste Management". Part 3 is "State Programs".
Chapter 8.6 was the "Cell Phone Recycling Act of 2004" so presumably is getting renumbered to 8.7, and the "Right to Repair Act" is being inserted right before that, after the "Rechargeable Battery Recycling Act of 2006" (Chapter 8.4) and a chapter called "Electronic Waste Recycling" (Chapter 8.5).
(Why is this done as waste management under the Public Resources Code rather than under whatever California's consumer protection code is called? I have no idea!)
It seems at least plausible that the exceptions other than the video game console exception are there because legislators feel that changes to how those things are handled should be done separately via changes to the BPC.
Still a net win for right to repair. On the game side, everyone is just going to play on a steam deck in the future anyway.
And that's the group of people make it possible for us to stuff down all this food we're consuming, and somehow lawmakers find it OK to not give them more rights...
John Deere sees value in IoT data gathered from its equipment to do all sorts of predictive analysis. That very much undercuts the basis of American food production, which relies on government subsidies for a variety of reasons. I ultimately believe that this value is derived by front running American farming subsidies, a complex form of insider trading. An existential crises is brewing in American farming that repairing tractors is on the forefront of.
However, fixing a combine harvester is definitely a different prospect to modifying your game console or cell phone. We can acknowledge that. I still think that farmers are capable of repairing and modifying the equipment they depend on to make a living and provide all of us with food. But there definitely needs to be some form of safety regulation.
Because we know that consoles are typically sold at a loss or barely break-even point, at least at launch (and some for their entire lifetime - like with Xbox[1]), with their cut of digital & physical sales funding the continued R&D of the consoles.
The only difference with iPhones is that Apple both makes money up-front on the hardware and on the backend with app/game sales.
If Apple were to cut the price of the iPhone, or fill it with diamonds (or an actually-valuable rare material like Tungsten) to bring the COGS up to the MSRP, would the EU and Cali suddenly bow to Apple and let them off the hook on being a gatekeeper/anti-R2R practices?
0: https://www.thegamer.com/standard-ps5-break-even-profit-june...
1: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/322561-microsoft-says-it-...
Does documentation mean how to replace the operating system/firmware and any necessary signing keys?
1. security certifications depending on these being present and functioning, and nobody's going to certify equipment with arbitrary third-party repairs; and
2. these devices always work only with some kind of subscription paid to a security company anyway, since the point of them is to send some signal to said company to get something to happen.
Although!
Right to repair does not forbid insurance companies to forbid it. But can I please repair my home alarm system, thanks.
As such, there's no way for the insurance companies to make such a forbidding rule, and have it be enforceable. There are no "inspectors" or "auditors" that can be sent to look at your alarm system who could possibly notice that it's been "repaired" in this manner.
Pretty much the only (industry-wide) thing that can be done to curb such repair attempts, is to outlaw the tools (like reverse-engineered third-party firmware) required to do so.
(Of course, any given alarm device maker could do what Apple has done with iPhones, and just make all major components of the devices proprietary, and have all components do signing handshakes before talking to each-other, where they reject each-other unless they've both been mutually first-party signed and activated. This would put high logistical barriers in the way of repairing the device — you'd have to get your hands on first-party parts, that the OEM won't sell you. But there's no system-level incentive that either the state or the insurance companies are in position to create, that would get them to do that.)
or maybe we gotta work on accepting that it may be possible for two completely different, even opposing theories, to explain similar things? (in completely different ways?)
it's just that one is easier (for some use cases) than the other one, and to fight over which is right is all wrong. I think that in the future the whole debate will be understood as an instance of the blind men and the elephant[2]
but we just don't have the mathematics (nor the philosophy...) for this. either it's not invented or it hasn't managed to become widespread
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
yes, that's right, I just tried to apologize for flat earth. your cue to downvote me away from sight. maybe I just want to make bridges... impossible bridges... between suckers lagging but still trying to understand and others who refuse or are unable to explain