Right-to-repair laws proposed in the US aim to make ownership great again American farmers may soon be able to repair their agricultural equipment without paying the maker of their machinery for the privilege. And owners of other products may also see fewer repair barriers, depending upon how two new pieces of federal legislation are received. The Agriculture Right to Repair Act [PDF], a US Senate …
Is that it only applies to farm equipment. Still, it's a start and all of the proposals are common sense. I wish they could extend this to cover my car.
But, by far, the one proposal I fervently wish could be made universal is:
"Ensure that patents and copyrights of discontinued documentation, parts, software, or tools get placed in the public domain."
This would do so much to reform the broken patent system.
"I thought it already applied to cars in the USA?"
Yes, there is a defined set of things which must be available, like the standard OBD2 codes.
Manufacturers also use what I think are called "extended OBD2" codes. They transmit ignition timing on the OBD2 standard, but maybe the control module uses unpublished codes to transmit its internal diagnostics. So anyone could see there's a misfire, but only if you have proprietary OEM data could you see the module reporting a broken data wire.
Some manufacturers also lock their components by serial number. Okay, you bought a replacement ignition control module. Now bring it to the dealership because the other electronics in your car won't work with it until they program the new serial number. BMW is known for this, I think Volkswagen too. Ask a Tesla owner where they go for repairs.
"...a replacement ignition control module"
All correct, the "standards" are a fake. For the ignition control module itself, it's possible that the proprietary computer software simply aged-out the module and there's no way of detecting that. It's rightful to age out certain components when nothing is wrong with them, can't argue that but, without any underlying view of how and where this is being done, it could be being done because of a design bug.
Well, the OBD II standard is real. Wikipedia has some good information; look up Parameter IDs. Even a cheap $50 (£50) scantool can read the faults behind any warning light on your vehicle, and get a dazzling amount of operating parameters besides.
It is just a baseline, though. Manufacturers have many more details beyond the common set, sometimes specific to a certain engine or transmission. They charge money for that info. This is one difference between the little bluetooth dongles and the $5000 scantools that mechanics use.
And yeah, it's dirty that manufacturers can software-lock components to retain control. It's basically the same thing that Apple does with iPhone parts.
The fundamental problem with Right to Repair isn't the proposal. The problem isn't the discussions, nor the ideas for solutions, not even this bill.
The PROBLEM is the Big Money has pressured and lobbied and bullied and coerced and even outright LIED to the legislators in a position to fix the problem.
Therefore, the issue is whether or not the legislators will have the BACKBONE to stand up and do the right thing, regarding Right to Repair.
Or buckle to the corruption of Big Corporate, like they always do.
That already exists, at least here in the United States: we lease vehicles, which includes full service during the contract.
If Deere wants to lease, rather than sell outright, they need to say so and stop pretending that their "sale" allows full ownership to the purchaser.
Or maybe the tractor itself you get to own, but then there's "Tractor OS" which has a monthly subscription fee and some kind of security lock to prevent a 'Tractor Linux' from being used in its place... OK starting to get too close to home now, right? Yeah we can all see THAT coming. Next it's your car, then your computer, then your TV, oven, washing machine, ... (I suppose phones are already that way with locked in carriers requiring an unlock code they will not give you until you pay for their service for a year)
(and I'm not even mentioning the data being 'phoned home' and monetized - oh wait I just did!)
[and then, gummint gets to apply a USE TAX of some kind, tacked onto your subscription fee, applied to whatever you do with what you own. In a sane world this would be written off as a crazy conspiracy theory. Still, I should probably stop giving gummint the ideas]
That worked for Adobe - but only because Adobe have a de-facto stranglehold on the creative industry (effectively, if you are in the design/print business then your clients will expect you to be able to handle Adobe documents).
But contrary to what others have said, Deere don't have that degree of stranglehold. A tractor is basically a commodity item with stable and well defined interfaces. If you drag something, then there are industry standards about how you couple it; if you attach an implement, again there are industry standards for the 3 point linkage; ditto for the power take off; ditto (more or less) for hydraulics. Basically, for any specific weight/size/power of tractor, you can largely swap that tractor out for any other make of a suitable weight/size/power.
And there are plenty of manufacturers around. Ford, Case, Massey Ferguson come immediately to mind. But there's also Lamborghini (made tractors before they made cars) and a host of other little known makes. And that's before you get to the Russian and Chinese models - a lot of which appear to be either copies of, or perhaps they bought the tooling from, well known makes like MF.
So Deere can take the decisions to stop selling outright, but their sales teams will very quickly be feeding back to management that they might as well scale back manufacturing capacity a lot. They'll get some lease deals - big operators do tend to lease more of their kit - but they'll lose pretty well all of their sales to small and mid size customers.
One thing that does tend to get attention is when [big vendor's sale person] comes calling to collect his next sale - he sees that amongst your current [big vendor] kit parked in the yard, there is now a competitor's product. The sales person knows very well that once you've bought one of something else, unless it turns out to be a lemon, then it's unlikely to be the last.
Ensure that patents and copyrights of discontinued documentation, parts, software, or tools get placed in the public domain.
So suddenly nothing will ever be discontinued, they just "don't make it any more right now."
offer specialized tools on reasonable terms
I already had this issue with one of my bikes. My particular model-year FJR-1300 has 4 bushings in the front forks instead of just 3, so you need a special tool to insert the 4th one. They wouldn't sell me one until I got the Better Business Bureau (usually toothless) involved. Suddenly they were able to get me one. And it's a simple goddamned tool that's just a multi-stepped cylinder about the size of a Coke can. 10 minutes on a lathe max.
should be left to the market
What? You don't let us buy it! What kind of "market" is that?
"Software" is much too broad a category. You're trying to reopen the DRM wars of the mid-00s. Don't do it. We may have lost, but it could have been a lot worse, and our support has only softened since then - people are used to streaming content now.
Instead let's try to pick battles we have a chance of winning. These bills both look like a worthy attempt.
I think I am going to write my representatives and tell them to support these bills, but add a provision for that a manufacturer must provide a replacement battery, or allow a functional equivalent, and instructions on how to replace the battery. This would prevent Samsung, Apple, et al from having devices where it is impossible to change the battery without destroying the product.
Australia has "fit for purpose" consumer laws. You cannot request software updates to provide new features but manufacturers are required to provide updates to fix bugs, even if the system is no longer under warranty or maintenance.
Hard to get any of them to acknowledge it, especially overseas call centres, but I know HPE will give them up if you apply enough pressure.
It would be good if this extended to removing the ability of manufacturers to 'break' your product if you don't pay for their 'services'. Eg the scanner in your all in one stops working because you have run out of 'official' ink even though you don't want to print. We should be able to 'fix' that too. And perpetual licence software being 'deliberately broken' to force you to move to a subscription model. Hello Adobe!
Just means Fruit Co. in Cali (Apple) will reclassify their fancy new iWatch with EKG capability as a "medical device" -- and of course, the iPhone or iPad to go with it -- so they can still keep things restricted.
Meet the new laws; same as the old laws.
You can be very certain that they won't do that. There's a reason everything they sell comes with all those warnings about "not a medical device, don't use for medical purposes" and the like (along with "don't try and run a nuclear power station with it") - and that's product liability. With general purpose IT stuff, we "sort of" accept bugs and crashes as part of the experience. With medical kit we expect it to work[period]. And if medical kit fails to work properly, then some serious brown stuff can hit the air circulator.
The stuff in the proposed law about putting utilities and service doc into the public domain when the product is discontinued is a stand out for me.
I would be very happy to see that.
On the other hand, I would be even happier to see service doc available to everyone so that they can repair their stuff when it is not discontinued. You have to celebrate your victories where you can though.
Saw a rumour recently that Toyota is looking to make the remote lock/start option become a subscription only model, where you pay a monthly fee to access your car. I think this would have been slammed by this sort of law
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/12/22831105/toyota-subscription-remote-start-key-fob
That's a different thing altogether.
With one proviso, that's basically selling an option that's not essential to you using or repairing your car. So when deciding what make/model/set of options you want to buy, it'll be just one more "is that worth the price" choice.
The proviso is that the buyer is made fully aware of it BEFORE purchase. It's not entirely clear from that article, but it does look like you get a physical key fob that can be used to start the car. If that is the case, rather than an option to pair your mobile etc to do it, then I would expect that to be a "static" feature. Unless it was made clear (and not buried in small print) than this function was dependent on subscribing to an unrelated service, then I would expect it to function without me paying a subscription for it.
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