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Comment by willio58 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like they had to exempt those ones to avoid the lobbyists. I think this is a good first step. First, it applies to all new industries that pop up. Also, I think it will be good to collect evidence that right to repair benefits consumers and the environment. That might provide the footing the state would need to fight for right for repair for those specific products

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Agricultural product producers are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to "right to repair". There's no reason why farmers shouldn't be able to fix their own equipment. These companies make it so farmers can't fix their tractors, they have to go to a dealership. Farmers that, for over a hundred years, have been doing repairs on their own in the field (literally) to get their tractor working again so harvest finishes, still aren't allowed to fix their own equipment. It's not a "reasonable" exemption when there is decades of precedence. Adding a computer to these things should not stop someone from doing this work, and there's no reasonable explanation why someone shouldn't be able to repair something they've had the rights to repair for decades.

Agricultural equipment falls into industrial equipment which has different liability concerns for the manufacturer.

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.

Those liability laws need to be corrected.

Industrial operators who modify their equipment are not children, they should be responsible for their actions and trusted to repair it.

Yep - that's where the legal fix needs to start. Until people making the changes are liable for the changes they make to industrial equipment (and this includes things like cranes and generators and such that also have similar issues of repair), the industrial equipment makers are going to be very hard to persuade to support right to repair as it puts them in the spot of even more liability.

Do you have any references for the equipment manufacturer's liability? I find it hard to believe your point as written.

Product Liability in the Farm Equipment Industry - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY

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

Thanks for the link, but I still think there's enough nuance in the court system (in any country) to recognise that a manufacturer shouldn't always be held liable for a system just because their logo is on it. There's no law dictating that manufacturers have a duty to make farming equipment impervious to mechanics' failures, and unless there's a clear indication that courts will interpret some law this way, I wouldn't bet on it.

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.

And that same reasoning applies to a Nintendo Switch? How many people died from self-repaired Joy-Cons?

I was only addressing the agricultural equipment part.

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).

> I feel like they had to exempt those ones to avoid the lobbyists

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.

this is a first step, but its a step to disjoin the incentives of farmers and consumers on the ballot.

> this is a first step, but its a step to disjoin the incentives of farmers and consumers on the ballot.

How does this disjoin? Assuming it becomes popular, wouldn't both parties be in favor of future legislation to remove the carveouts?

Consumers won't feel the pressure, so there will be less solidarity and therefore less political will. Very nasty manipulation tactic.

See also Medicare offering significantly more healthcare for old people, removing them from the pool of voters motivated to pass Medicare for all type legislation.

Lots of examples of “cracking” the voting population to stall political will.

Why are lobbyists even allowed to lobby? It's plain corruption.

Lobbyists aren't necessarily bad. They're _supposed_ to be there to educate those who make decisions. But they go far far beyond that and we need to regulate them massively.

The US was NEVER a democracy. It was founded as a “democratic republic”. And basically operates as a republic, in which the aristocrat class sneers in contempt at the “deplorables”, utterly convinced they are the only ones fit to make decisions and thus driven to a mad desperation to keep direct representation out:

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.

Hey now. As a liberal, I really don't like the way you're talking about the US government. They're the good guys and they are only corrupt when republicans are in control. What are you, some kind of racist nazi?

> we need to regulate them massively

If you put the blame on the lobbyists then no regulator can save you, because you forgive corruptable regulators.

When you want to be educated on a product do you ever look to the seller's marketing for that education?

It is a perversion of free speech. Money should have no place in a functioning democracy.

Double-edged sword. We may not even have this version of right to repair at all if not for lobbyists...

Lobbying is not a magical activity. The public servants whose salaries come from money you have no option but to give them should not be giving in to lobbyists.

I view it as a First Amendment issue. We can call out "privileges" that lobbyist groups have that ordinary citizens don't (which as far as I know are not granted by law, they just have to do with the size and influence of the groups). But a lobbyist is just a person or group that voices an opinion to law makers. In theory, literally any individual person can be a "lobbyist" and preventing the practice would prevent people from talking about issues to lawmakers. Which would be the exact opposite of what we would want in a democratic system.

What is the substantial difference between an ethical lobbyist (that is, one who just hounds a law maker all the time, but does not engage in gift-giving, favor trading, political donations, etc) and a particularly engaged citizenry? The lobbyist takes a pay check?

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.

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