New York congressman puts forward federal right-to-repair bill A New York congressman has introduced a federal right-to-repair bill, just a week after the state's Senate passed a bill addressing the same issue. That state bill has failed to progress, we note. The proposed federal-level legislation, though, would compel original equipment manufacturers to provide consumers and independent …
Oh sure, because all of a sudden the entire planet is capable of repairing complex devices where some of the chipsets alone represent more than a lifetime's worth of research.
I'm OK with asking manufacturers to make it easier to repair devices so that maybe a third paty can do it, but there's a limit to how much can be done. How deep should that repairability go? Replace a screen as a unit? OK. Replace individual chips inside that screen? Sure, as soon as a repaired is willing to acquire the requisite tools, diagnostic gear and training - and is willing to sign a very tight NDA, because now you're getting into the need to disclose intellectual property.
Also, who takes responsibility for the device warranty once anyone other than authorised and trained people have been in there, and who provides the financial backing for that?
So, if we cannot go deeper, maybe should zoom out instead. Oh look, now we're back at manufacturers repairing their own gear.
It's all fun and games when you seek to repair simple stuff. It gets a tad more problematic when you have to wind back a lot of assembly and need the required skills to do a repair.
Your mandated right may in Europe come with the consequence of losing the multi-year warranty we are entitled to here, because the two don't exactly go together.
A Democrat put it up, Republicans will shoot it down. Dems try to make things better, Repubs kill any/everything that helps the masses. We _might_ see 1 or 2 Repubs *not* toe the Party line & march in lockstep with the rest of their hive mind kin, but they will probably also get summarily kicked out for not parroting the approved GroupThink bullshit rally points.
Partisan bullshit.
In 2019-2020, Congress passed at least 250 bills with broad bipartisan support. (Meaning, a clear majority vote including significant numbers from both parties.)
I haven't found any figures for the current Congress, but I don't see why it should be significantly worse.
Of course most of these bills died without ever being tabled in the Senate, but that's another story.
John Deere and others like them are making the meals on the tables of the world more expensive, their profits from walled in maintenance are ultimately paid for by the consumer.
In addition, their system favours large large corporate farming and discriminates against smaller farmers with more limited fleets.
I was at a Xing networking event (German equivalent of LinkedIn) at the Amazone factory in Lower Saxony. They did a tour of their factory and I asked about repairability. The Amazone representative seemed quite perplexed, as I explained the John Deere situation.
His reaction was, "why the hell would we want to do that?"
That's why we need a strong and independent anti-corruption body with claws and teeth.
Otherwise such "lobbying" will lead slowly to modern slavery, where you'll own nothing and you'll be forced to appear happy (like in that story where employer installed cameras in the workplace detecting if employees wear a smile).
I remember an old friend telling me the story of when he went to the British Leyland factory site after a break in. Seems some kids had got in and had a bit of fun driving around in the completed vehicles and smashing them like bumper cars.
He was surprised that the managers were in no way aggrieved at the situation, in fact they looked quite elated.
On asking why, they pointed out that they had met the production quota, and as a result of vandalism, now found themselves with a heap of spare parts that they could sell on to garages for a greater price than they would have originally got for the cars.
France already has similar legislation and Europe is looking at taking it on as well...
So Apple & Co. will have to start offering repairable devices and non-prejudiced access to spare parts and documentation outside of the US anyway, if they want to keep selling their products internationally.
I would think, if the products can be repaired in Europe, companies will find it hard to continue the non-repairability ethos in the USA over the long haul.
Most people have a strong sense of their limits to repair something. There are many devices if something fails it's time to take it to the shop. However, as a consumer I should be able to pick the shop who does the repairs.
By making devices repairable, things like replacing batteries and opening cases without funky screw drivers will be easier.
"You won't be able to purchase a device at any price, only lease."
To some extent, that's already true. Anything with s/w or f/w has licenced stuff you don't own in it, and with DRM laws, it may not be repairable, ie fixing bugs, once the manufacturer stops producing updates without replacing the s/w or f/w with open source (if that's even possible)
> Coming soon
> You won't be able to purchase a device at any price, only lease.
It's already here. Look at the IoT tat that 2 years after purchase just ceases working because the vendor has shut down the 'cloud' service it has to phone-home to on a daily basis to work for no other reason than becuse they can (well, to make more money).
That could get interesting. According to EU and still current UK consumer law, that two year warranty we enjoy also extends to "a reasonable lifetime" whereby the retailer is still responsible to for a repair/replacement/refund proportional to it's age/expected life at the time of failure. I'd expect most devices to have a minimum life of 4-5 years and there will be people buying much closer to the service shutdown who might even still be in the two year warranty period.
The lesson from the above is to always buy your IoT tat from a reputable local* dealer.
[*] where "local" means in your national jurisdiction.
In a statement, Congressman Morelle said: "For too long, large corporations have hindered the progress of small business owners and everyday Americans by preventing them from the right to repair their own equipment.
"This common-sense legislation will help make technology repairs more accessible and affordable for items from cell phones to laptops to farm equipment, finally giving individuals the autonomy they deserve."
I support the effort, being a Mr. Fixit myself. A couple of points need to be made on the statements. They are not preventing us they are taking away from us. Thus, they will not be giving autonomy, but returning it.
In some categories, the access to parts just may not happen. Tools are available and reverse engineering provides the knowledge. But if a manufacturer never repairs themselves and only provides a replacement under warranty, then there may be no spare parts available, they may not have affordable tools to offer. The economics of simply not repairing but replacing under warranty may be more than offset by the profits of continual replacement of "disposable" out of warranty kit.
I think the effort needs to be more about discouraging making/designing more and more products to be disposable. This includes things that generally get recycled like cars, trucks, heavy equipment, farm equipment. It's not just about keeping things out of landfills, but also keeping more money in the wallets of the working class.
You make dome excellent points.
As a Mr Fixit I am sure you have come across thr situation where say, something like a small cheap bearing has failed and needs replacing.
When you look at the manufacturer's parts list, that bearing only comes as a part of an assembly such as a rotor that costs dozens of times as much as the bearing.
Often on these assemblies the bearings are unmarked too.
Practices like this are deliberate and contribute to landfill because such sharp practice, makes a lot of goods beyond economical repair and in favour of purchasing a replacement.
That is why such bills need to be well researched and properly worded to address the repairability issue fully and in favour of owners and consumers of goods
You also have chip serialisation - that is a chip must be "activated" by a manufacturer, otherwise it will not work with the device, even if you have a genuine part pulled from another device.
Companies also ask part manufacturers to slightly modify a part (even doing something as small as swapping pins) and then tell them to not sell that part to anyone else except themselves.
Classic example are charging chips on Apple devices - $5 chip often fails, but you cannot replace it with off the shelf chip and you can't buy it form TI or whoever is making it, because Apple prohibits it.
This should be illegal!
On top of that there are companies that use open source software, which they (grudgingly) publish.
But you can't recompile it yourself and run it on the device - oh no!
As the device bootloader is signed and the key is blown into fuses on the CPU, and the application must be signed too for the bootloader to run it.
So - you can build the app, but you can't sign it (with the manufacturer key) and therefore you can't run it.
None of which of course is in the spirit of the open source license the company is taking advantage of!
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