Hacker News Reader

Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

He's not being blocked from repairing it, and he doesn't need to hack it.

He just needs a part. (They did eventually send it to him.) If they had not, he doesn't need the right to repair it, rather would need someone to manufacture the part.

View on HN

But is a compelling reason to have solid right to repair laws.

One could imagine a solid industry of 3rd party parts providers if devices are built under a right to repair framework

Once again, that thing falls under FDA regulations. You’re telling us about a world with 3rd party mix and match components, all FDA approved in any and all combinations on 5 year plus old devices?

> under FDA regulations.

That's just (!) under current FDA regulations though yeah?

It's not like they're forever unchangeable.

I'm supportive of the right to repair in every sense, but even the strongest right to repair laws would not have helped improve the outcome in this case.

The strongest right to repair law would probably require detailed schematics, BOMs, and (sufficiently detailed) manufacturing steps being available for all the parts.

That would enable people to organise getting replacements manufactured themselves. :)

Is there any evidence that was the bottleneck?

Bit early to be looking for bottlenecks... ;)

Honestly, this world be great lol. The cost and complexity of manufacturing would maintain a moat for the companies.

At the very least, they could license the schematic to customers.

I love that future, but that's not right to repair. It's simply not what that means. You can want open source manufacturing, and you can want that legally mandated, but not having manufacturing steps doesn't take away your right to repair something you own.

>He just needs a part.

Right to repair, in a broad sense, also covers access to parts. This is definitely an edge case and we might want to just consider that if we're going to do experiments on disabled with the aim of helping them, and they want to continue using the tools, we might have to subsidize access to the parts until they die.

I don’t think it’s an edge case at all. Right to repair doesn’t require a manufacturer to continue making parts or spend their own money on creating a large inventory of them. It’s one thing to require Apple to sell you a phone screen they are still making, it’s another to require them to be able to sell any number of them at any time from ones they do not.

Right to repair is a negative right. There’s no reason to turn it into a positive one.

It's an edge case because the supply is so small and the hardware is so specialized. If this were an iPhone screen there's be a dozen companies in china capable of producing and selling them near cost if apple didn't interfere, and we'd have plenty of people willing to repair and resell the screens if apple would stop abusing US customs to seize repaired screens as they've done in the past.

The point still stands, no ‘right to repair’ can force manufacturers to stock X number of parts, or spin up production lines again, at some future date. Regardless of the company’s condition.

Even the pentagon can’t force that, they just pay a large amount of money to a new company to recreate the original part to the exact same spec.

Theoretically it’s possible to enact new legislation to mandate that something sufficient must be set aside in some sort of escrow system, and punish companies for not doing so, but that would probably result in most manufacturing companies fleeing the US….

I mean this particular one may be an edge case but you probably just described half the products people would want to repair.

And the real meat of the comment is the part about forcing companies to make and sell things.

I agree with that, and it's possible that half of what people buy and want to repair aren't going to be repairable under market conditions. Probably more; most of these cases it's just economically infeasible to repair anything that isn't new or produced recently, with supply lines still active, and it's fine when nobody wants to pay for it.

So for my definition, what makes this an edge case is specifically it's expensive medical equipment that a disabled user can't pay to acquire a part for, and companies aren't willing to produce anyway because it's so niche. 99% of equipment probably falls under "I want to repair it and someone (myself or a repair company) wants to fix it" or "I don't want to repair it because it's so expensive". The rest would be the edge case where you want to repair it and you literally can't afford to - even if you could produce the parts.

By the way, I hate this article, I just want the information and not have to parse an entire goddamn magazine to get to it.

Yeah it is overly-literary. Writers sometimes just like to put words in things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com