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Comment by throw10920 | Hacker News Reader

> Without these certifications, you are not an independent repair provider and manufacturers can refuse to allow you to do anything.

If this is true, it doesn't seem like it's actually "right to repair" at all.

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I read things differently. Several sections clearly reference the owner of a device. For example under section C part i

(C) Makes parts available directly or through an authorized service provider to: (i) An independent repair provider or an owner at costs and on terms that are equivalent to the most favorable costs and terms at which the original equipment manufacturer offers the parts to an authorized service provider and that:

the word owner shows up 17 times in the bill, and seems to give the same rights to an owner, that an authorized repair shop has.

The subtle point in that sentence might be "provider OR an owner", as opposed to "provider AND an owner".

The law there is defining two categories manufacturers need to provide the parts to, changing it to AND would mean owners would have to be certified repair people to be covered.

Not trying to take a dig at your comment, but for others struggling to parse (as much as I was) what it was trying to say, here is the trick that helped me - place a comma right before “changing” or treat that word as the start of a new sentence.

There was an entire lawsuit about the presence or absence of an Oxford comma in some law, possibly even in Oregon?

[edit: boo it was Maine! Happily "Oxford comma lawsuit" is sufficient search term: https://www.npr.org/2017/03/23/521274657/the-10-million-laws...]

They were awarded $5M in the end. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.htm...

Very fair I don't do the best job going and clarifying my comments some times. They come out a bit stream of consciousness. I did see your comment in time to make the change at least.

All good, no worries. I have the same tendency for writing singular sentences that should’ve honestly been paragraphs instead.

I’ve got some feedback about it at work, so now I genuinely try to be a bit better about it. It is a bit easier for me to be mindful of it on HN, but, as evident by my comment history, I am still far from being consistently good about it.

It is still often a “stream of consciousness written down as I would speak it outloud”, but now I at least started doublechecking the punctuation (or lack of it) for any potential confusion it could create before hitting send.

There’s tons of prior art in Law saying that And and Or are the same thing and can be interpreted interchangeably based on context.

Much to the chagrin of the computer scientists who think it’s some sort of robust formal specification for civil society.

> based on context

Does this specific context allow for interchanging?

The bill clearly defines an independent service provider and an owner as different entities.

WANTED: DEAD AND ALIVE

If you look at "wanted" to be prefixed to everything in the list, it'd expand to: "wanted: dead, and wanted: alive".

While this: "Wanted: dead or alive"

could be interpreted as: "We haven't decided yet what we actually want, if it's dead, or alive, but it's one of those".

Then it can be good to give them (the police) a call and ask if they have decided yet, before you go looking for the wanted person

Obviously they want Schrodinger's criminal. You must get them before their wave function collapses.

> Much to the chagrin of the computer scientists who think it’s some sort of robust formal specification for civil society.

Law is actually code, just written in a language that is full of UB and you need to have if run on the system to know exactly what it does, the system being the hierarchy of jurisdictions.

> Law is actually code, just written in a language that is full of UB

Which is why legalese exists. To try to limit undefined behavior by being extremely verbose to cut out any loopholes.

Like...imagine a kid jumping on their bed. Mom says "Stop jumping on the bed!" and the kids stops. Comes back to the kid's room later, kid is jumping on the bed again, tells the kid to stop. Kid says "I'm not jumping, I'm hopping!" and goes into a diatribe about the difference between jumping and hopping, mom says to stop hopping and leaves. Goes back again later, kid is STILL jumping on the bed, and mom is angry! "You said no jumping or hopping, I'm not doing either, I'm bouncing!"

Eventually the mom has to say something like "Do not jump, hop, bounce, spring, leap, or otherwise propel yourself upwards or laterally from the bed, mattress, or any other part of furniture intended for sleeping".

Great example.

And then it goes on even further, because she did not say, that the kid must never "propel themselves upwards or laterally from the bed", and only stopped that action in that moment ...

https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=4AyjKgz9tKg [video]

That's what I'm saying. It looks like you can repair your device. But you can't repair devices for anyone else without a mountain of certifications.

They're going to kill the independent repair industry.

> They're going to kill the independent repair industry.

This bill does not kill anything that is not already dead.

This. The parts and information in question are already hard to get and aren’t being sold to authorized repair providers.

It places the minimum bar at known place, and that known place is anti-consumer. So now all companies know that they don't have to any more than have a certified repair center program.

What's that you sa? The requirements on certification are impossibly high. Oh noes.

There is presently no bar whatsoever.

Any bar at all is an improvement over what presently exists, wherein: There is a vacuous void.

It's one thing to fix things for yourself, and a whole other kind of thing to hold yourself out to the public as an expert in something. Kind of like how you can defend yourself in court but not someone else unless you are a lawyer. Though I would be surprised if the law were written such that you couldn't repair someone else's device, so long as you did not receive compensation for it.

So as a non-certified repairer, you have to offer a city tour around the block, at a ridiculously high price, and then repair the device at no additional cost. All a matter of perspective.

The problem is that it sounds like the device manufacturer gets to decide what certifications are sufficient. Presumably they could decide that no certifications are sufficient, and thus no one can run a certified repair shop.

Or they could offer their own certification, but make attaining it prohibitively expensive or difficult.

> without a mountain of certifications.

It's not a mountain of certificates, you just need one of many different options.

They explicitly mention A+ which I assume is the CompTIA one.[0] Yeah, I'm not going to say it doesn't suck to have to pay $250, but there are free practice exams[1]. Here, I even took a screenshot of their sample questions[2] there are things like

  Which of the following password choices increases the chance that a brute force attack will succeed?

  A. Dictionary words
  B. Special characters
  C. Long passwords
  D. Capital letters

I'm okay verifying that someone has this basic level of competence. I would be surprised if any given Hacker News user couldn't pass one of these tests without studying. You need like a 78%...

But let's be real, if you're repairing for a friend, you just fucking order the stuff for them and put in their name and info (with their permission of course). The only "for anyone else" part that requires certs is if you're operating a business. I think you all are blowing this part out of proportion. Mountains out of mole hills. I know it is the internet and we like to complain without knowing what we're complaining about, but come on...

[0] https://www.comptia.org/certifications/a

[1] https://www.comptia.org/training/resources/practice-tests

[2] https://imgur.com/a/X1ajlAy

If the previous comments are to be believed (I don't know I didn't read the law), then individual repairperson will need many certs in practice. If I put myself out there as able to repair phones and there are a dozen popular phone manufacturers and each requires a different cert then I need to make them all happy to be able accept whatever customers walk in the front door with.

> If the previous comments are to be believed (I don't know I didn't read the law)

It's probably worth doing so before taking a stance. I'd highly encourage this if you see people arguing about something in the comments. Especially when it is linked. Here, I'll save you the trouble

  (e) “Independent repair provider” means a person that:
    (A) Engages in the business of diagnosing, maintaining, repairing or updating consumer electronic equipment in this state but is not an authorized service provider; and
    (B) Possesses a valid and unexpired certification that demonstrates that the person has the technical capabilities and competence necessary to safely, securely and reliably repair consumer electronic equipment in accordance with widely accepted standards, such as a Wireless Industry Service Excellence Certification, an A+ certification from the Computing Technology Industry Association, a National Appliance Service Technician Certification or another certification that an original equipment manufacturer accepts as evidence that the person can perform safe, secure and reliable repairs to consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells.

We can see that it literally says what I indicated.

>> It's not a mountain of certificates, you just need one of many different options.

  Possesses __A__ valid and unexpired certification that demonstrates that the person has the technical capabilities and competence necessary to safely

Nowhere does it say that many are needed and the continued text makes a stronger indication that these are examples of such sufficient certifications rather than the specific ones needed. If you're willing to believe the other comments maybe you're willing to believe I googled the requirements and can find no such clear description in Oregon Law that one must have a mountain of certificates. All I can find is that you must be certified (with similar but not identical examples provided) and a specific requirement about the certification including discussion of pollution. Which those practice exams I showed even have such a question. But also IANAL, but neither are most of the commenters. Still, I did read the text before responding and tried to do due diligence before taking a position. I hope we can reduce the number of arguments by RTFMing.

I understand your argument. It is a good one. But there's a level of ridiculousness to the text that should give you pause.

The National Appliance Service Technician Certification shows that the holder knows how to repair ovens, refrigerators, and other major household appliances. Your interpretation of the text says that the Oregon legislature believes that this qualifies someone to repair anything covered by their wide-ranging right to repair law. That can't be right, can it?

No, a more logical interpretation is that the list of certifications is just a set of examples, but that manufacturers will have to decide what is applicable to whatever it is they manufacture.

Sure, however, the bill also requires that a manufacturer does not "impose a substantial condition, obligation or restriction that is not reasonably necessary to enable an independent repair provider or an owner to diagnose, maintain, repair or update consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells"

My guess is there would be challenges in court if they made the certification process onerous.

They're just saying you need like a CompTIA certificate and you can't just be some rando. But mind you, it also includes anything YOU own, so if someone is able to act on your behalf that's good enough too. Getting one of those certs to set up shop isn't that hard. Probably just to prevent people from mass ordering parts and redistributing.

The very next sentence says:

> You can be just an average person repairing your own device, in which case the manufacturer must work with you.

It also could be misused by Apple.

Well, it's the same state that won't "permit" a non-certified engineer from recording and noting the time on a stoplight is outside of law. (Note: he won a first amendment lawsuit, and the state body used his formula in the end)

https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-makes-history-w...

So yeah, when I see verbiage about certifications like this as a barrier to repair electronics, it's pure protectionism and the state impeding actual ownership rights over whatever this crap is.

(Put bluntly, my hardware is mine. If I want to take it to someone else for repair, that's 100% on me and my property rights to decide that. 'CerTiFicAtIoN', especially with the shit company or govt in question should have no say on who can or cant fix MY hardware.)

If you read the bill, they clearly differentiate between a service provider and an owner. The bill does not require an owner to be certified to purchase parts, manuals, tools or make repairs. It does require the manufacture to make those things available to both.

So in theory I could buy the manuals, tools, and spare parts, and bring them to Chuck over there who runs an unaccredited repair shop? That doesn't seem awful.

The contention is whether or not you can fix someone else’s device without a certification. If you can only fix your own device then that’s useless to 90% of people who are not technically adept enough to do it.

When I want to get a battery replaced I take my device to the repair shop and they replace the battery. I don’t ask them if they are “certified”. If they break something the liability is on them. Every single repair shop I’ve ever been to offers a warranty on their repair.

You mean those actual businesses with business licenses? Yeah, they’re fine.

The guy ipersting out of The back of his car at a flea market?

Who exactly certifies a repair shop???

The state, the company, or some 3rd party independent org?

If you read the bill it states that a shop must "Possesses a valid and unexpired certification that demonstrates that the person has the technical capabilities and competence necessary to safely, securely and reliably repair consumer electronic equipment in accordance with widely accepted standards, such as a Wireless Industry Service Excellence Certification, an A+ certification from the Computing Technology Industry Association, a National Appliance Service Technician Certification or another certification that an original equipment manufacturer accepts as evidence that the person can perform safe, secure and reliable repairs to consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells".

The bill also requires that a manufacturer does not "impose a substantial condition, obligation or restriction that is not reasonably necessary to enable an independent repair provider or an owner to diagnose, maintain, repair or update consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells"

Yep this law is just a giant handout to the industry.

I wouldn't be surprised if they use this law to now sue "uncertified" repair shops.

Yes, it's such a giant handout that Apple came out against it.

The implicit claim being made in this sarcastic comment is that it's not possible for a law to be detrimental to one company while unfairly favoring another.

Which, of course, is obviously false when you think about it.

Which major tech companies would it be good for while being bad for Apple? Keeping in mind that the owner of a device is also allowed to repair without certification.

Where did I say "major"?

The OP said "a giant handout to the industry". If you're trying to make a point that excludes all the major players in the tech industry then by all means go ahead but it isn't the conversation you joined.

I imagine the parable of Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch is largely lost on today's audiences. More's the pity.

What mechanism in this law do you propose allows them to sue repair shops?

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