back to article Cali Right-to-Repair law dropped, cracks screen, has to be taken to authorized repair shop

A Californian law that would give people the right to fix their own electronic devices has been pulled by its author less than two months after it was first proposed. "While this was not an easy decision, it became clear that the bill would not have the support it needed today, and manufacturers had sown enough doubt with …

  1. Fungus Bob

    Maybe we should stop buying stuff.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      As sales stagnate in mature markets, this is precisely why Apple's forcing repairs to go to them and pushing up the cost of repairs close to the price of a new model... they win either way.

      1. Olivier2553

        Or they loose a customer for ever once he realize that buying from another brand is cheaper, works just as well and can be fixed at a reasonable price.

        When the market goes scarce, when you have less people buying your products, increasing the price is the last thing you should resort to.

        1. itzman
          Headmaster

          Or they loose a customer for ever

          Always keep your customers on a tight rein...

          Or is that a tight rain. Or a tight reign?

          1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

            Here rein. You can sort or remember that kings and queens reign because of the G in Elizabeth Regina, assuming you have enough Latin.

            1. wayne 8

              over your head

              OP "Or they loose a customer"

              Reply: "tight rein, [etc.]"

              Emphasis is on "tight" to oppose "loose" as used by OP, instead of "lose".

          2. dajames

            Or is that a tight rain.

            In even a light rain the possibility of water ingress may ensure that your beloved shiny cannot be repaired at all!

        2. Wade Burchette

          This is Apple. No matter how Apple bad screws the customer, most people still will continue to buy Apple because they think that owning an Apple product somehow makes them better.

          1. Boo Radley

            Whenever I see someone with an Iphone,,I automatically think "fool!!"

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Whenever I see someone with a privacy slurping Android device, I automatically think "fool!!"

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Apple makes some good products, but the iPhone is just too expensive to justify and, yes, many people buy it as a status symbol. I see unemployed(able) people with iPhones buying junk food at the corner market with EBT cards. I just can't figure out what exactly they are signaling.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Really? I'd have thought Apple would be all over that. Can't have the Apple brand devalued by allowing the unemployed to own then. Hopefully they will introduce a new update that automatically bricks an Apple device if you don't spend enough in the iStore. We can't just have any old hoi polio using Apple products!!!!

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                "Aspirational"

                I see a fair number of people with iPhones and bad shoes. Usually not the very latest or most expensive, but still.

                Getting folk to prioritise fondleslab brand over things like, I don't know, food and clothing, ie, buying it despite its being so expensive that it hurts is possibly part of the marketing "magic".

      2. big_D Silver badge

        And I thought Qualityland was a hilarious, pithy vision of a dystopian future, but it seems the US tech industry has taken it to heart as a 3-point plan to the future...

        I baggsy the job as Maschinenverschrotter (machine recycler/scrapper).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Qualityland

          https://www.dw.com/en/hbo-to-adapt-german-satirical-novel-qualityland-into-a-tv-series/a-47886160

          But HBO are American... where will it end up?

          1. big_D Silver badge

            Re: Qualityland

            Terrible, I expect, like "Head full of Honey"...

            I hope I am wrong, it was one of the best books I read last year.

      3. jelabarre59

        As sales stagnate in mature markets, this is precisely why Apple's forcing repairs to go to them and pushing up the cost of repairs close to the price of a new model... they win either way.

        That would presume Apple actually *fixes* anything. They'd rather tell you to buy a new one, or a so-called "refurb" at a premium price. Oh, and recovering your data? Nah, they won't do that either (and make false claims it can't be done).

    2. JohnFen

      Yes. I avoid buying anything that the manufacturer is specifically trying to block me from fixing. This is one of the reasons that Apple gear is a nonstarter.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        THE number one reason I stopped buying Apple gear decades ago.

        1. wayne 8

          Never, ever bought Apple

          Even back in the day of Apple ][. Bought an Atari 800.

          Really frowned when Apple let people think that Apple invented the GUI mouse desktop with the Lisa. Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) developed that concept earlier.

          Give them credit for the music player development with the iPod. Unless they took credit for someone else's work.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Never, ever bought Apple

            "Give them credit for the music player development with the iPod. Unless they took credit for someone else's work."

            Like many of Apples "inventions", it was the slick design and pretty user interface they came up with, not the actual technology or device. MP3 players, smartphone s and tablets were around before Apple "invented" them. They are generally very good at making things "just work", be interoperable (with their own product lines) and marketing.

          2. Camelfoe

            Re: Never, ever bought Apple

            Apple lost a patent fight with Creative Labs over the IPod user interface in 2006. Well, I suppose I should say they 'settled' a patent fight, but paying out $100 million usually means a loss.

    3. chivo243 Silver badge
      Childcatcher

      ^^^^ This!

      My son celebrated a Birthday this week, a relative bought him a big honkin plastic Nerf gun. Same relative that bought him one last year, that one broke with in a day, and it still kicks around my son's room. Where to I dispose of this? Plastic recycling? no, it has metal screws and springs inside? Just in the bin then? Looks like it will be found by some archeologist in 1000 years!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        While the Nerf guns my kids have are still working despite being a few years old I would just put them in the recycling box. They seem to be able to automatically sort the metal parts from the plastic ones where I live.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          No, more likely they simply discard them at the recycling facility. My city has told people that stuff that they have to intercept at the recycling center costs them a lot of money, and please stop putting stuff like your Nerf gun or a pizza box that's contaminated by grease into recycling bins.

          Since they went from people lifting small bins into the truck to "single stream" using a 55 gallon bin that is lifted via automated arms on the truck they can no longer intercept stuff at the curb and refuse/tag the load so the homeowner knows what is and is not acceptable. I could throw just about anything into my recycling bin and they'll "accept" it, but that doesn't mean it won't cause them problems later.

          Unless they've specifically said something like that Nerf gun is acceptable I wouldn't assume it is. There are some cases where they HAVE to be able to deal with stuff like this, like staples in mixed paper and big staples in cardboard, which my city says are both acceptable - probably because they know a lot would end up in the landfill since people aren't going to want to manually remove all those staples. They used an example of a tissue paper box that has some plastic wrap glued in around the opening as something that isn't acceptable due to mixed materials, unless you tear out the plastic and throw that away and recycle only the box.

          1. jelabarre59

            No, more likely they simply discard them at the recycling facility. My city has told people that stuff that they have to intercept at the recycling center costs them a lot of money, and please stop putting stuff like your Nerf gun or a pizza box that's contaminated by grease into recycling bins.

            I usually pre-strip things like that (as well as printers, etc) down to readily sorted pieces. Molded plastic goes into recycling (they *should* be able to recycle them that way, if they aren't fat lazy slobs), metal into a pile of metal pieces that eventually get to the scrap yard. Circuit boards I hold and drop off at the electronics recycling bins at a customer site.

            The town's "bulk pickup" refused to take my printers, and the local carting company where I used to bring electronics started charging for it. So that's why I strip them down myself.

          2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            "like staples in mixed paper and big staples in cardboard"

            Paper recycling is a fairly mature technology and they have systems in place to separate out the unwanted bits of metal and plastic that contaminates it. That does come at a cost though. I've seen recycled paper that clearly has small amounts of plastic embedded in it, so I assume that in some circumstances, for cost reasons, the separation is not as complete as in more expensive recycled paper. The same applies to cardboard. Likewise, glass and metal recycling is a fairly mature process too and most remaining containments get burnt off during the melting/smelting process but plastics recycling is still an emerging technology and there are just so many different plastics, often "melded" into single units which can't ever be separated, even by manual workers. Using the Nerf gun, I wonder just how many plastics are used in it's construction? It can be shredded so the metals can be separated, but I don't think there's a good way to separate the different plastics so even pelleltsing it for re-use will at best produce a poorer end product if the differing plastics melt at different temperatures, not to mention colour separation.

            And food contamination of plastics, paper and cardboard can only really be dealt with at the user end.

        2. Duffy Moon

          "I would just put them in the recycling box"

          My council recycling service does not accept hard plastics. I assume this is the same for most (all?) others.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Mine will take everything marked with a number except #6 (styrofoam) and plastic bags/wrap even if marked (the bags/wrap are accepted at the community recycling centers, just not in the bins...maybe it complicates the sorting process?)

      2. imanidiot Silver badge

        Just put it in the plastic bin. They plastic gets shredded and then the metal is fished out with a magnet. Or take it apart yourself if you're worried about it (They're all dirt simple to take apart, you'll find videos on how to do it for modding purposes on the web for most models). Even better, open it up and find out why it's broken, because there's a good chance it's easily fixable. Spare parts can be had from the usual sources such as AliExpress, eBay and/or Amazon. Hasbro might also be able to help directly if you send them a friendly email asking for a specific part.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          And if the metal is non-magnetic?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Then it will survive the melting process and will be filtered out further down the recycling line.

          2. imanidiot Silver badge

            They can split out non-ferro metals like aluminium and copper with a high frequency AC magnetic field. This induces eddy currents in the metals which are then repelled from the magnet. Usually done by having a large (electro) magnet spinning inside a hollow roller at the end of a conveyor belt. The non conductive materials fall down into one bin, the conductive materials get flung over the top and land in a different bin.

            1. Malcolm Weir Silver badge

              A simpler approach is just to shred the plastic/metal thing into a coarse powder and shoot the resulting stream off the end of a ramp. This sorts the granules by weight, which is very effective.

              (Back in 1979 or so I got a tour of a recycling plant that did just that. PCBs went in one end, piles of powdered stuff came out the other. They particularly wanted the small yellow-ish pile nearest the chute)

              1. imanidiot Silver badge

                That only works on materials with differing densities. Unfortunately the difference in densities between aluminium and a lot of plastics isn't big enough to allow that to work reliably.

          3. The Original Steve

            Was about to post the same thing re: throw it in the green bin anyway.

            It simply isn't beyond the wit of man to be able to split out the plastic from the metal in a broken nerf gun.

            I'm not a materials engineer, but as other have said there are various solutions. Top of my head: crush it and use magnets. The remaining plastic and possible non magnetic metal could be dumped into a water pod where the metal sinks, plastic will float.

            Seriously, all the local authority / government need to do is actually fucking try. We, the individuals should do are bit, but the system needs to meet us half way.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              "all the local authority / government need to do is actually try."

              Where do you live?

              If it's England or Wales, the bits I'm most familiar with, the local/regional government no longer have the budget or the power for that kind of thing. They have to outsource it, to ensure "best value" (ie best bonuses for the board).

              It's not even allowed to use prisoners as cheap labour, for any labour-intensive parts of the process.

              Have another go, based on recent documented facts, rather than some imagined/remembered history books.

              And remember that this whole process has to look capable of making a profit *now*, business doesn't care about the three year outlook let alone three decades from now.

      3. dajames

        Plastic recycling? no, it has metal screws and springs inside?

        A recycling centre should be able to deal with metal.

        A bigger problem is that there will be parts made from different plastics that have to be recycled separately (if at all), and they will almost certainly not carry recycling marks to allow the types of plastic to be identified.

      4. wayne 8

        We have to leave clues to our present for the future.

        Would be fun to erase the technology used to create modern wonders.

        Leave them scratching their heads and making stuff up to explain it.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          "Leave them scratching their heads and making stuff up to explain it."

          They were votive offerings or used for religious purposes :-)

    4. Sherrie Ludwig

      I stopped using Apple

      I had an iPad when the sales system I use in my business only played nicely with Apple products. I am typing this, and running Square, on a $20 phone from a lower cost US telcom. The iThing died and I don't miss it a bit.

  2. oiseau
    FAIL

    Of course ...

    Of course there are probably really good, valid reasons for why members of the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee have decided ...

    Of course there are ...

    Meeeeeeeellions of reasons.

    O.

    1. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Re: Of course ...

      The kind of reasons that fit nicely into a big brown envelope

  3. whitepines
    Facepalm

    "One of our chief concerns with this legislation is its potential to weaken the privacy and security features of various electronic products," the letter read, adding: "With access to proprietary guides and tools, hackers can more easily circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network."

    So...they just admitted NSA/FSB/PLA 61398 can rifle through customers' "secure" and "private" devices? Because I guarantee their oh so secret tools are available to such agencies, and they just said that with those tools the devices are rendered insecure.

    Ooops.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "Because I guarantee their oh so secret tools are available to such agencies, and they just said that with those tools the devices are rendered insecure."

      Not really. Those "oh so secret tools" are available to staff in authorised repair centres and the related field engineers. In many cases, a carefull hunt around the web will locate them. The "security" they are talking about is that nefarious people might use them to "brand" lower quality, 3rd party replacements, eg putting the "sooper sekrit" ID codes into a replacement board/firmware. Not all manufactures are equally paranoid. Lenovo will let you download the tools the "brand" a replacement system board, but HP require that you log in with your authorised servicer ID to download their branding tools. (yeah, HP use the word "servicer" to describe a technician)

  4. DanceMan

    Same bogus reasoning that IBM/Lenovo and HP put bios locks on their laptops to make changing to a non-OEM supplied wireless card difficult to impossible.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    And anyone is surprised?

    It used to be said in the States that "all politics is local." That adage has been replaced by "show me the money."

  6. a_yank_lurker

    Twain Would Not Be Surprised

    Well someone has to be the minor leagues for America's Native Criminal Class (aka Congress). The difference is the number of zeros of the total in the envelope.

  7. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    Most politicians are the most unpatriotic Americans there are

    I believe Lincoln said about wartime losses then sacrifices helped ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

    It seems today that "a goverment of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations" is the preferred version.

    The founding fathers would be spinning in their graves.

    And yes, our shitload of chancers and morons here in the UK are no better.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Most politicians are the most unpatriotic Americans there are

      Quite so, the world over. Now all we need to hear is that nice Assemblywoman got a large donation to her re-election fund.

      To paraphrase: Under the spreading chestnut tree, the corporates bought you and they bought me.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice iThingy

    Shame if something happened to it

    1. Kane
      Thumb Up

      Re: Nice iThingy

      "Shame if when something happened happens to it"

      There, fixed that for you.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This doesn't bode well for independent mechanics.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This doesn't bode well for independent mechanics.

      What *is* the latest state of play with the legislation which was (at least in part) provoked by the antics of "authorised" John Deere service agents and such looking to protect their monopolies in the USA and elsewhere?

      https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/10/25/18024332/us-copyright-office-right-to-repair-dcma-exemptions

      Etc

  10. Updraft102

    "With access to proprietary guides and tools, hackers can more easily circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network.

    So Linux (along with all of its GNU and non-GNU bits), Firefox, and Chromium must be dangerously insecure products compared to, say, Microsoft's products, since the full source code for them is available to anyone.

    Security by obscurity is a sham.

    "Bad actors could seek to exploit compliance requirements for illegal purposes, such as circumventing digital locks protecting copyrighted content and/or making unauthorized modifications."

    Circumventing digital locks should not have become illegal in the first place. Fair use of copyrighted material, in the US at least, often goes beyond what digital locks would allow... it's the digital locks themselves that are the problem, not the opportunity for people to break them.

    As for unauthorized modifications-- unauthorized by whom? When Apple sells a phone to someone, it stops being Apple's property and becomes the property of the buyer. The only one who needs to authorize anything is the owner of the property in question, and that's not the company that made the product.

    "Manufacturers want to ensure that their products are serviced by professionals who understand the software that operates their products..."

    No they don't. They want to ensure their products are either serviced (poorly) at extortionate, non-competitive prices, or that they are not serviced at all, but replaced. This much is abundantly clear. Apple wants a monopoly on fixing Apple products, which they intend to use as monopolists will. They claim it's too hard to fix their products, yet a lot of people (like Louis Rossmann) manage to do it anyway, even with Apple blocking them at every turn. If it's too hard, how do they manage to do it even with all of the roadblocks in place?

    If Apple wants to make sure its products are serviced by professionals who understand the hardware and the software in question, that would suggest releasing all of the information in question so that said professionals may access it freely, and making the parts available as well.

    If Apple truly believes that their own servicing is so much better than what you can get from third-party repair outlets, why not just let the third parties do their thing so that the customers of these independent shops can see how bad they are? Give them enough rope to hang themselves, Apple, if you're so certain that they would do so. Right now, those shops have you to blame if they're not able to get a given part or fix a given problem. If you think the independent shops, even with your cooperation, will just ruin Apple products that Apple itself could have repaired, thereby forcing such customers to buy anew, isn't that a good thing? No one's going to blame Apple for a phone that doesn't work after some non-Apple repair facility butchered it. It would simultaneously boost sales and sour such customers on the idea of ever going to an independent repair facility again.

    If Apple and others were really convinced of any of this, there would be little reason for them not to support independent shops. People will get burned, and Apple can crow about how you can get Apple quality only from Apple. They've got to actually walk the walk, though... no more doing slipshod "repairs" like gluing a piece of rubber to a chip to smash it down onto its cracked solders instead of fixing the cracked solder (and underfilling the chip so it won't crack again). Apple actually has to outperform the competition for this to work, and they're obviously not confident in their ability to do so.

    There's something that happens to people when they are elected to a position of power. They begin to think they're far smarter than anyone else, and that their own election proves their superiority. They have heard their own campaign rhetoric so many times that they begin to believe it. Congress was bamboozled by Bill Gates when he claimed that IE was part of the OS and could not be removed. That was an outright lie, of course. Mozilla's Revenge proved it could be done and leave the OS quite functional and stable, and that was written by some guy out there in the community who didn't have access to any of the MS source code. Even if that little tidbit was not known, does it make any sense to believe that MS did not have the power to remove IE from Windows when they had just finished sticking it in there? Congress did! They knew so little about computers that they believed rather obvious lies, and they knew so little of their own ignorance that it never occurred to them. On paper, Microsoft lost, but it was a kind of loss that probably had them popping champagne and celebrating.

    Tech salesmen scam laypersons all the time, and the current hype about "the cloud" is only one of many examples. They make a presentation with lots of buzzwords sprinkled in, and it makes no sense to any of the investors. It makes no sense to anyone, because it was all bollocks. None of the investors want to admit they didn't understand it, since everyone else seemed to. So they claim they get it, that it's the best thing ever, and that anyone who doesn't agree is not thinking outside the box, or whatever other buzz-phrase they want to whip out. No one wants to admit they're the one who can't see the emperor's new clothes.

    Actual techies in IT see through the BS right away, recognizing that there's nothing new about thin clients or server-side/centralized processing, and they're written off as luddites who don't understand tech by the people who actually don't understand tech.

    In a few years, the new thing has become the old thing, so they take the even older thing and put a new coat of paint on it and make another new thing.

    1. Mark 85

      Perhaps a good alternative is for Apple to lease the phones rather than sell them. When you go in to replace your phone, naturally they won't have the model you have but a new model with a new leasing price.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Leasing

        That's the latest scheme from Tesla (Also in CA). They'll lease you an Electric Car and then take it back because according to theit cult leader, Elon Musk.. they will be worth more after the lease than before.

        Something in me says that he should be travelling the US State Fairs selling some potion or other bit of magic that will cure all diseases.

    2. JohnFen

      "So Linux (along with all of its GNU and non-GNU bits), Firefox, and Chromium must be dangerously insecure products compared to, say, Microsoft's products, since the full source code for them is available to anyone"

      You may be surprised at how many people seriously think this is true.

    3. quartzz

      lots of interesting informations there. thanks.

      reminded me of a couple of eg's I had

      used to be a technician for a company that supplied CD copiers. one of our customers was a barracks (fair play, not a lot wrong with them). the guy that met us in the copy room, said "don't tell these guys how to work these copiers (I mainly just replaced the bits that went wrong). they are corporals, you know. they're in charge of ships, they win wars, they don't need to be told anything".

      also, different place. we had a new computer in the test room. case off. it had a bracket in it. the sales guy was showing a customer around. he gave the bracket a tap and said "look at that build quality, solid". I happened to know, that if he'd done anything more than give it a tap (ie, tried to move it), it would have come out of the machine.

  11. Claverhouse Silver badge

    These manufacturers are so repellent: their slimy reasonings so transparent...

  12. MacroRodent

    Whose device is it anyway?

    Manufacturers: "... "Bad actors could [...] making unauthorized modifications."

    Buzz off! If I own the device, any modification I make or ask to be made is not unauthorized!

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Whose device is it anyway?

      Sadly, the problem is software/firmware. "They" have been allowed to get away with not selling you it, but licencing the use of it, with many, many restrictions and almost zero responsibility, ie an unbalanced and therefore unfair contract which unsurprisingly never seem to get tested in court as the big players always seem to settle out of court with NDAs.

  13. simonlb Silver badge

    Lets see what happens when Ford, GM and VW try to enforce that type of shit onto their customers

    Manufacturer: Servicing and Maintenance

    1. All replacement parts for our vehicles must now be sourced AND fitted by one of our authorised repair shops. That is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality.

    2. All consumables must also be sourced and fitted in the same way. That is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality.

    3. When we say ALL, we actually mean EVERYTHING. That is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality.

    4. Prices for spare parts will be borderline extortionate, but again, that is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality.

    5. At some random time in the future we will decide that we can't be arsed providing spare parts for your vehicle any more. When this happens, it is because that is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality. Sell it and buy a newer one!

    6.Basically, you can wash your vehicle and refuel it (although you may - sorry WILL - need to buy an expensive adaptor so you can fit the gas pump nozzle into the fuel filler.) As already hinted at, that is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality.

    7. It's for your own good really as we know best. Have we mentioned that is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality

    8. Any unauthorised attempt at circumventing these safety features will result in this company ignoring your vehicle for the rest of time.

    9. This is the price you must pay for our brands perceived high quality.

    Rest of World: Fuck You!

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Lets see what happens when Ford, GM and VW try to enforce that type of shit onto their customers

      John Deere already does...

    2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

      Re: Lets see what happens when Ford, GM and VW try to enforce that type of shit onto their customers

      They were already heading in that direction - warranty void unless you had all servicing done at a franchised dealer using manufacturer parts. They made all the same arguments - highly complicated machines, quality, safety, need for properly trained techs, etc.

      A good few years ago now, the EU turned around and called bo11ocks to that - insisting that manufacturers could not impose such conditions. I can't recall whether it was the same time that they also required manufacturers to provide sufficient information to allow third parties to properly service them.

      1. Claverhouse Silver badge

        Re: Lets see what happens when Ford, GM and VW try to enforce that type of shit onto their customers

        We'll be safe from all that EU bureaucratic nonsense after Brexit.

        We want our own natural protectors of elected MPs to safeguard us if we need safeguards. People like Gove, like Johnson, like Corbyn, like Blair, like Davies, like Cameron.

  14. jonathan keith

    Lobbyists

    I propose a new rule: that every time an elected representative takes a meeting with a corporate lobbyist, the lobbyist has a tooth / fingernail removed without the aid of anaesthetic. Just another cost of doing business.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Lobbyists

      I have a better idea: just put it all into a youtube channel where we get to watch them do their dirty dealing.

      Then let their opponents fish through it at election time.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lobbyists

        "I have a better idea: just put it all into a youtube channel where we get to watch them do their dirty dealing. Then let their opponents fish through it at election time."

        I don't see that approach as better (or worse) than the earlier suggestion, just different.

        Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?

        Some countries already required their political leaders to be willing to publish their tax information from time to time.

    2. OssianScotland

      Re: Lobbyists

      I would suggest the same applies to the elected representative

  15. DontFeedTheTrolls
    Headmaster

    "All that extra cost is great for Apple's bottom-line but is literally coming out the pockets of America's consumers"

    All that extra cost is great for Apple's bottom-line but is literally coming out the pockets of America's consumers. FIFY!

    If you think Apple repairs are expensive in America you should see the additional markup in other countries!

  16. Dabbb

    Californians simply can't

    write a single article without channeling their inner Trump Derangement Syndrome ?

    Seriously, exactly what mention of Trump tax returns has to do or added to topic of this article ?

    P.S. By the way it's democrats who oppose to consumer rights in California and those are exactly same people you're going to vote next time.

    Have a think about it.

  17. VBF

    I cannot believe......

    I cannot believe that this is a legal issue.

    Once an item is outside its warranty..if I own it and I can fix it I <expletive> well will!!!

    It's when I cannot fix it and nobody else other than the manufacturer is (supposedly) allowed to that you have a problem.

    But then...... that's what YouTube videos are for :-)

  18. Crisp

    Who decides who's authorised to modify my device?

    You'd think I do, seeing as I paid for it and I have the receipt.

    I don't have to get authorisation from Honda if I want to swap my exhaust out. Why should it be any different with a tablet?

    1. adds

      Re: Who decides who's authorised to modify my device?

      Unless you change it in California, there you have to use Honda replacement parts.

  19. regreader2011

    Theft deterrent?

    Well, there *is* one argument on Apple's side (though not the one they put forth according to this article) -- because it is apparently impossible for anyone other than Apple to transplant the screen of one iPhone into another one (due to crypto?), no knowledgeable thief is going to try to nick my phone in hopes of selling it for parts.

    I wonder whether there is a path that preserves this property, while still giving third parties some option of repairing iPhones?

  20. Boo Radley

    An Old Argument

    harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network

    This is the exact same argument that the phone companies used to use as to why we couldn't buy and connect our own phones and answering machines. It has since been shown to be a big lie.

  21. Fred Dibnah
    Coat

    Eggman

    I am the Walrus.

    Mine's the one with a big furry collar.

    1. Swarthy

      Re: Eggman

      Ku Ku Kachoo!

  22. jelabarre59

    what hope...

    So if a consumer-oriented bill can't pass in the bastion of Progressives and SJW Sunshine, what hope is there for the rest of the country.

  23. Not Enough Coffee

    Amazingly, this argument the envelopes stuffed with money appeared to hold water with elected representatives.

    FTFY :)

  24. MachDiamond Silver badge

    It's way more than small tech

    The right to repair is much more important with items such as cars. Being held hostage because some manufacturer wants to insist that only they can repair their products and will, therefore, not sell parts to anybody is tripe. The same goes for "trade secrets". Joe the repair guy isn't going to get some service manuals and repair instructions and start competing with Renault. Munro & Associates tear down and sale of reports on the Tesla Model 3 is another example of how industry "researches" each other's products. Would a stack of service manuals have helped? A little, I'm sure, but not having them didn't hinder anything. It does hinder somebody that lives hundreds of miles away from a Tesla service center that would like his local auto shop to repair his car after not seeing a low bollard in a car park and doing a bit of damage to a rear corner. Being able to get repair parts would have the car fixed far faster than Tesla often takes.

    As to small tech, it seems manufacturers keep making them smaller and gluing the cases shut. It doesn't do a blind bit of good in terms of preserving secrets, but it does make getting repairs super expensive. It also opens the doors for lower cost products to flourish. Why repair a top of the line Samsung phone (again) when you could buy 3-4 Blu phones for the price?

  25. N2

    Amazing isn't it...

    Trillion dollar companys

    But they engineer obsolecense and difficulty to repair into their products, claim 'green credentials' and act like complete twats towards their customers. Then scratch their heads when profits fall.

    A pox on their houses for eternity.

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