also, id go so far as to say that while we should have the right to repair/hack our own devices, I think legally requiring the producer supply OEM parts is a bit of a stretch. Should I be able to fix my tractor, absolutely. But I don't know why a business would be incentivized to sell anything but the entire device.
I don't think it's a stretch at all. If they've already manufactured the parts, requiring them to sell replacement parts to customers really should be a thing. Holding them back because of shitty IP laws and strangling their ability to get things running is bad form and anti consumer
I believe Tesla games this by charging ridiculous amounts for short-term online repair manual subscriptions, but most manufacturers just sell copies of the manuals. I think access to that information is a good idea, so Tesla should be swatted down.
Allowing third parties to make the parts is the way to go.
When considering cars or large tractors, it's not as valid of a consideration, because they might sell an entire "computer unit" as a part vs the RAM to upgrade it. maybe?
So, this is me replying to say that government regulation might be seen as good or evil depending on your point of view and the context, but I hope members from both sides would agree that the health of the environment is rarely a consideration in businesses.
Not being able to repair something sucks for the environment, because people will throw the whole thing away (like a phone), when just a small part is broken (for example, the microphone!). Sometimes an external (not-naturally-market-occuring) stimulus is required to incentivize things like repair.
I'm looking around my office - there's about 300 workstations, all of them have a gigantic metal case, the motherboard has several PCIEx slots that will never be used, several SATA connectors, metal clips for the CPU mounts, tons of power cabling just hanging around doing nothing because it has no devices connected to it. All of those PCs will be fully replaced for newer models in about 3 years, and all of this effort to make them repairable and modifiable will be for naught. If we could buy a small system that had everything integrated on the motherboard and required one cable for power, would that not be better for the environment? All the plastic to make superfluous connectors in my machine is literally a giant waste of resources and we could have done without it.
It's not a stretch. This is equipment that should last a while and you should be able to get replacement parts. This isn't a single-use phone that will be thrown out and recycled.
Making it easy for customers to change the software could put you in a bad situation. Essentially, the same one VW is in, a $35,000 per vehicle fine.
I object to the word "tamper" because implies that even though I am the owner of the car I somehow require authorization to work on it.
No people should demand the devices they buy be repairable and if enough people care that's where the market would follow. When it comes to rights I think companies should have the right to sell devices that are not user repairable. I also think consumers have the right not to be ripped off on first party repairs but that's a problem with multiple solutions e.g. audits and penalties.
I'd also argue culture has made owning a mobile device a function of being socially acceptable. It's more weird today to go to a bar and say, "yeah I left my phone at home on purpose" than to say "yeah I'm an atheist" 20 years ago. So it's quite nearly socially unacceptable to not have a mobile phone.
Understand that the U.S. is a liberal democracy, a constitutional democracy, and its constitution prescribes quite a number of things including the power of the people to define an economic system and the means to regulate it. Market failures are why we get legislated alternatives. You can dislike it all you want, but some fairy tale notion of either capitalism or free markets is not a requirement of this government's founding documents.
1. When their demands are not heard, people use the law instead, i.e. "If you want to do business on our land, you have to play by our rules."
2. "if enough people care that's where the market would follow" - there are so many counterexamples to this I have no idea how you were able to type the words. The 'market' (corporations) will use the substantial information asymmetry and its organizational advantage to steer things in the direction most profitable to it. The way to fight this is through collective action, not by leaving individual consumers to somehow outplay a giant corporation.
3. Patents and copyrights are granted to 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts'. Their malicious use, such as restricting the distribution of repair manuals, and preventing the manufacture of replacement parts, could well be grounds for losing them. Demanding they instead be made available for purchase seems like a very reasonable alternative.
Though I'm not sure making unrepairable equipment is a good business strategy: Once you get the reputation of gouging your customers on repairs your top line will start to sag.
I don't think anyone would condone a manufacturer like Foxcon ln selling parts independently, but that stuff is handled contractually anyways.
Activation Lock greatly reduced the amount of thievery associated with Apple devices, and I think it's been a tremendous boon to -humanity- (how? by reducing the whole ecosystem of shit that grows around theft. Without Apple products, it's a less viable 'career' for the disadvantaged, and the scum who feed off them. It's like if half the grass in a field was inedible, it'd support a smaller population of buffalo or something. )
John Deere has gone as far as to claim that farmers don’t
own the tractors they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars
for, but instead receive a "license to operate the vehicle".
I don't have an MBA, but that seems really short-sighted. Configuring your entire value-add chain, from R&D to sales to marketing, to focus on low-margin volume sales sounds preposterous. I mean, volume will always be meat & potatoes, but the darwinian struggle for high-margin sales is how you nurture growth.
Once the small farmer is gone John Deere will only be able to sell to huge conglomerates. Eventually those conglomerates will dabble with vertical integration and cut John Deere out of the equation all together.
Seems to me if John Deere wants to stay relevant they'd do everything they can to inflate the resale value of their tractors, and that necessarily includes sustaining a high resale value in the used equipment market.
In a world of cheap financing it's easier than ever to keep farmers buying new equipment, and more important than ever to maximize returns based on loose financing. You shouldn't need a lawyer to hold a gun to your customer's head. This obsession with maintaining control of their product after it leaves the factory seems just so epically ridiculous. And that's before we get into any of the minutiae of copyright and the uphill battle they'll face. Anything but the strictest of controls over their software will net them absolutely nothing at the end of the day except alot of pissed-off customers. It certainly won't be an impediment to Chinese knock-offs, who have very capable software engineers. Whoever is telling them that is so misinformed that I'd wonder if they were taking payments on the side from the Chinese.
I guess this is why American manufacturing is slowly dying. I mean, we're still the number one manufacturing country in the world, but despite strategies like these, not because of them.
Suppose a law is passed which forces my digital device manufacturer to allow me to install arbitrary firmware on my device. What could go wrong?
Well, it depends on how they implement it. If they remove signature verification during the firmware upgrade process, maybe some malicious person could change my firmware. I don't want that.
So, what they should do is give me the signing key. The design of the device doesn't need to change. We don't need to re-legalize "hacking" the digital lock. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention)
Nope, the manufacturer just needs to include a copy of each device's unique key in the box when they sell the phone.
Leave the rest to the consumer.
Being able to modify and fix your own hardware as you want is a boon to humanity.
I personally encounter more frequently state when I want to repair or modify my hardware then when I get is stolen.
More over petty thiefs don't distinguish between one phone or the other. If they do, they will more likely steal iPhone, if they are even more clever and know that it is hard to crack an iPhone, then it is such minority that you can ignore them almost altogether (and they are more likely to know how to really crack it - it is not impossible).
Wait what? The smartphone market has plenty of competition. If being user-repairable was an important feature to consumers there would be lots of phones that delivered it.
> I'd also argue culture has made owning a mobile device a function of being socially acceptable.
I'm not sure what you're arguing against.
> the U.S. is a liberal democracy, a constitutional democracy, ... the power of the people to define an economic system and the means to regulate it ... You can dislike it all you want,
Now you're really straw manning me as some sort of libertarian utopian who's against democracy (both false), Here is what I said:
"I think companies should have the right to do X."
That is quite clearly not a statement about legal or constitutional realities, it was a response to grandparents own made up right (to repair). The constitution allows for all sorts of things that are bad ideas. At one time it allowed the owning of humans as chattel slaves. More recently and relevantly it can compel companies like Apple to compromise the security of their devices in various ways. The Nebraska bill touches on this in a smaller but not insignificant way as part of the world class chain of security in current iphones is the touch sensor and third party replacement of the sensor breaks this chain. So yes the government has the right to force Apple to provide parts/specs/whatever. Is that a good idea? I don't think that's clear at all.
You've also invoked market failure in this case with zero evidence that it exists in the smartphone market. I'd bet that repair revenue is a rounding error to Apple and they likely take a loss overall. And if market failure does exist (and it might well for tractors which are 90% of the article's focus) there are also other avenues for correcting that failure.
It's easier to just lock down everything than to get the lawyers involved in the software architecture.
Wait until one guy releases a walkthrough on the the two pins you cross or the steps to remove some chip and add a new (or worst case blast some part of an SOC with a laser), then all the geek friends of those pretty criminals will take a stab at it.
Its not like the criminals themselves are doing much with phones and laptops they steal currently. They just sell them for pennies on the dollar to some shop that won't ask questions. The shop wipes the machines, resets keys or does whatever they will do. If the procedure is more involved the shop will pay less for iPhones to offset their costs, which could still deter thievery, but we can't expect it to always be "literally impossible".
Either this ability exists, and the FBI is hiding it via creating large numbers of device requests of Apple, or Apple is telling us the truth and the iPhone is not easily hacked.