Right to repair sold to the highest bidder
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Farmer Lobbying Group Sells Out Farmers, Helps Enshrine John Deere's Tractor Repair Monopoly
The California Farm Bureau has agreed to a toothless version of "right to repair" that was written by tractor manufacturers.
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So all the stuff that's been available on cars for, like, 20 years will be available on tractors in 3 years? Presumably for OBD, that's only on new models too.
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@loopback0 John Deere claims that you don't own the tractor, you're only licensed to use it.
This should mean that John Deere will fix it for free
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All that freedom must get tiring.
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Reminds me of that thing with Tesla, where if you're trying to get a manual on how to repair your car, there's a drop-down list where you select your state and the only option is Massachusetts since that's the only state with a right to repair law that covers that.
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@TimeBandit said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
John Deere claims that you don't own the tractor, you're only licensed to use it.
Isn't it that you do not own the software that runs it, but only a license to use it?
It is a small distinction, and the effect is roughly the same since they encrypt the CANBUS with their own methods, but still.
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@Polygeekery That distinction is entirely made up by the lawyers who got told to "make sure they don't own what they bought". And it's pretty much bullshit since vehicles don't work without electronics anymore.
They'd just as well claim that the tires are only licensed if they could get away with that.
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@topspin said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@Polygeekery That distinction is entirely made up by the lawyers who got told to "make sure they don't own what they bought". And it's pretty much bullshit since vehicles don't work without electronics anymore.
They'd just as well claim that the tires are only licensed if they could get away with that.I am not defending them in the slightest. John Deere can DIAF over this.
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A teenager that gets it
This 17-Year-Old Has Become Michigan's Leading Right to Repair Advocate
When Surya Raghavendran dropped his iPhone, he learned to repair it himself. Now he wants to protect that right for everyone in his home state of Michigan.
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Unfortunately "right to repair" can mean two different things, which causes confusion and hurts the message:
- Legal right to modify things you bought
- The company must provide facilities (tools and plans) for people to repair their products
Right 2 is debatable and hard to define, whereas right 1 is so obviously good it makes you wonder why such a thing could ever be illegal.
And sadly it all boils down to software not having it. That's what we should be protesting against. I should be able to legally spend resources disassembling everything from Windows to tractor firmwares, and selling patches for them.
Then John Deere wouldn't have a case against anyone, and market pressure would do the rest, at least for the big products.
(In another topic, I really wonder if those extra fees have been worth all this bad publicity for them)
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@topspin said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@Polygeekery That distinction is entirely made up by the lawyers who got told to "make sure they don't own what they bought". And it's pretty much bullshit since vehicles don't work without electronics anymore.
Yes, and? Software copyright protection is not anything new. Computers don't work without an operating system, and we've been on a revolving hamster wheel of copyright lawsuits over them for many decades now. Now that more and more things are controlled by more and more complex computers and computer programs, it just stands to reason that the lawsuits would naturally follow.
It's no more or less bullshit than printer companies putting microchips in the ink cartridges and then writing printer firmware that only lets you print using authorized ink cartridges and rejects cartridges after they've printed a certain amount even if they actually still have ink in them. Which is to say, yes, it's complete bullshit, but until the government starts making laws that say they can't pull those shenanigans, they can, and they will probably continue to take full advantage of it.
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@anonymous234 said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
Unfortunately "right to repair" can mean two different things, which causes confusion and hurts the message:
- Legal right to modify things you bought
- The company must provide facilities (tools and plans) for people to repair their products
Right 2 is debatable and hard to define, whereas right 1 is so obviously good it makes you wonder why such a thing could ever be illegal.
And sadly it all boils down to software not having it. That's what we should be protesting against. I should be able to legally spend resources disassembling everything from Windows to tractor firmwares, and selling patches for them.
Then John Deere wouldn't have a case against anyone, and market pressure would do the rest, at least for the big products.
(In another topic, I really wonder if those extra fees have been worth all this bad publicity for them)
Right 2 is actually "If the company has locked the product in such a way as to prevent third-party repairs, it must provide facilities (any necessary keys and codes to lock/unlock/authorize) for people to repair their products without producing any negative effects on its license or functionality other than voiding the factory warranty".
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@anonymous234 said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
And sadly it all boils down to software not having it. That's what we should be protesting against. I should be able to legally spend resources disassembling everything from Windows to tractor firmwares, and selling patches for them.
A law like this would essentially kill GPL. If I can distribute - and even sell - patches to other software on my own terms without permission from original developer, there's no need for me to stick to their license terms about distributing modifications.
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@anotherusername I don’t think you have actually disagreed with me there.
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@Gąska But you still can't distribute the modified product because of copyright laws.
You have to distribute the patch, and tell people to acquire the original product way, then apply it.
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@anonymous234 said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@Gąska But you still can't distribute the modified product because of copyright laws.
You have to distribute the patch, and tell people to acquire the original product way, then apply it.
Or I could distribute the unmodified GPL-ed software alongside my patch.
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@topspin said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@anotherusername I don’t think you have actually disagreed with me there.
The part that I disagreed with was the part where you made it sound like some tractor company lawyers figured this stuff out recently.
Intellectual property licensing shenanigans have probably been around for nearly as long as intellectual property laws have.
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@Gąska Fine, I guess it breaks the GPL then.
Is that a big deal? Maybe it deserves to be broken.
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@anonymous234 if not for GPL, we'd never have Git work with large repositories.
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@Gąska said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
if not for GPL, we'd never have Git
I don't see how this is a bad thing
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@bb36e said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@Gąska said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
if not for GPL, we'd never have Git
I don't see how this is a bad thing
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@anotherusername said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@topspin said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@anotherusername I don’t think you have actually disagreed with me there.
The part that I disagreed with was the part where you made it sound like some tractor company lawyers figured this stuff out recently.
Intellectual property licensing shenanigans have probably been around for nearly as long as intellectual property laws have.
They have. Waaaaaaay back in 1908, before computers were even a thing, a book publisher, Bobbs-Merrill Company, tried to put a EULA in one of their books placing restrictions on how it could and could not be resold and claiming that non-compliance with this policy would be treated as a copyright violation. Of course, that was a bunch of nonsense, and eventually the Supreme Court found it to be officially a bunch of nonsense, and the ruling in this case codified the First Sale Doctrine: copyright grants them the rights and protections explicitly granted by copyright law, but beyond that, once you've sold something you created, it's their property and ceases to be your property.
It's unfortunate that this incredibly important ruling has been weakened so much over the years. On the face of it, it makes any and all software EULAs and "shrinkwrap licenses" completely null and void, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, the one appeals court ruling I'm aware of didn't see it that way, and it never went to the Supreme Court to get straightened out, so we're stuck with the current mess.
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@bb36e said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@Gąska said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
if not for GPL, we'd never have Git
I don't see how this is a bad thing
No, we'd still have Git. It would just be even worse. And every large company would have their own custom extensions.
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@anotherusername said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
Right 2 is actually "If the company has locked the product in such a way as to prevent third-party repairs, it must provide facilities (any necessary keys and codes to lock/unlock/authorize) for people to repair their products without producing any negative effects on its license or functionality other than voiding the factory warranty".
The best way to handle this would be to have a law that says that if a company locks out third-party repairs, they must provide repairs (or replacements) for free for the reasonable lifespan of the product (as determined by the court; it'd be reasonable to expect a tractor to last longer than a smartphone). Like that, it doesn't prevent anyone from making those business decisions… but it does give a strong hint that there's going to be a whole bunch of mandatory financial downsides involved for the manufacturer (or their local agents).
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@Gąska said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
And every large company would have their own custom extensions.
It's not like that's difficult for them to do right now anyway, at least from a front-end perspective. (Well, apart from the fact that you have to understand git in the first place to write the extension; that's not a license problem.) Git has a pluggable client architecture; put your program in the right place with the right name and git will adopt it (and anyone trying to claim that the GPL infects across that interface will get laughed at).
No, the reason why they don't is much more closely related to
than anything else.
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@Gąska Sounds like a very small price to pay to be able to reverse engineer Office and actually make 3rd party programs compatible with it.
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@anonymous234 said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
actually make 3rd party programs compatible with it
You wish.
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@Gąska said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
A law like this would essentially kill GPL.
Seems like a good reason to do it then.
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: Hi, my MacBook Pro screen is really dim.
: We have to replace everything. That will be 1,200 or maybe 1,980 CAD please!
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: The connector was bent. I bent it back. It's on the house.
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@Deadfast I haven't watched TFV, but this doesn't seem much different from any other big chain store manned by drones who don't give a shit about customers and just try to sell them <whatever> as opposed to small shops where the owner has a strong incentive to actually keep customers happy or they won't be back.
On the top of my head, I can recall a similar incident one time I got a flat tyre. It was on my way to work so during my lunch break I went to a big auto-repair chain around my office and after a quick look at the tyre they told me I had to buy a new one (so make it two, of course, to get a balanced axle). So I basically told them to fuck off, and the next morning I went to the small auto-repair shop next to my home, who put a plug in the tyre for a couple of bucks.
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@remi I suspect it is due to how those companies are structured. A big tyre chain might be devoted to actually selling tyres (in large numbers), to the point that doing trivial repair jobs (for people who didn't buy tyres from them) is expensive. (Lots of tyre replacements, relatively small garage area, more salesmen than mechanics, whatever). If you buy tyres from them, they may be more forthcoming (customer satisfaction yadda yadda yadda). A small garage instead will do all the jobs they can. That's a bit different from Apple's case though. Apple sells their product and should have a duty to serve their customers well, and not gouge them. It should be in their interest. It isn't because Apple stuff aren't exactly basic commodities the way tyres are (there's no difference between tyre shops, is there? Installing tyres is an easy job. Repairing complex electronics? Oh but you have to have it done by the source, you don't want to risk your expensive gadget and putting it in the hands of any hack with a screwdriver and a solder gun do you?). People will spend the money Apple tells them to spend because they might not consider any other option.
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@admiral_p said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
People will spend the money Apple tells them to spend because they
might not consider any other optionare iDiots™.FTFY
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@TimeBandit what's a diot?
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@admiral_p Someone with more money than common sense
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@remi
Yeah, what the video didn't really touch on was how much diagnosis time went into the two diagnoses they got. My expectation is that the Genius Bar ran through a 5-minutes-max checklist, saw the triggered moisture sensors, and then goes back with a "worst case" estimate to the customer so that any remaining surprises become positive -- the only thing worse than coming back with "well, it's not economical to repair" is coming back with "well, it should be $150 and an hour" and then coming back in 30 minutes later with "well, actually.... oh, and you still owe us the $150 either way".And, conversely, how much diagnosis / teardown time really went in to getting to the problematic connector for the small shop. My suspicion is, if he was honest with himself over how much time that had cost, he wouldn't have done it for free, but would have billed the hour. Having worked at a small shop in the past, I can attest to how easy it is to spend significant amounts of time on "minor" repairs that you don't feel is fair to bill to the customer... and then all the sudden you're billing 2 hours for 8 hours worth of work and wondering why the boss is making noises about how they can't afford the staff (or, if you're the proprietor, wondering how the food's gonna be on the table this month...)
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@izzion said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
saw the triggered moisture sensors, and then goes back with a "worst case" estimate
Those moisture sensors are a scam anyway since they can turn red even when not touched by water.
As soon as the Apple employee saw them red, no more diagnostic needed, we have to change EVERYTHING!And, conversely, how much diagnosis / teardown time really went in to getting to the problematic connector for the small shop. My suspicion is, if he was honest with himself over how much time that had cost, he wouldn't have done it for free, but would have billed the hour.
If it's a problem he already saw before, he knew exactly where to look.
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@izzion said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@remi
Yeah, what the video didn't really touch on was how much diagnosis time went into the two diagnoses they got. My expectation is that the Genius Bar ran through a 5-minutes-max checklist, saw the triggered moisture sensors, and then goes back with a "worst case" estimate to the customer so that any remaining surprises become positive -- the only thing worse than coming back with "well, it's not economical to repair" is coming back with "well, it should be $150 and an hour" and then coming back in 30 minutes later with "well, actually.... oh, and you still owe us the $150 either way".They still should do much better.
And, conversely, how much diagnosis / teardown time really went in to getting to the problematic connector for the small shop. My suspicion is, if he was honest with himself over how much time that had cost, he wouldn't have done it for free, but would have billed the hour. Having worked at a small shop in the past, I can attest to how easy it is to spend significant amounts of time on "minor" repairs that you don't feel is fair to bill to the customer... and then all the sudden you're billing 2 hours for 8 hours worth of work and wondering why the boss is making noises about how they can't afford the staff (or, if you're the proprietor, wondering how the food's gonna be on the table this month...)
Maybe this very fault is relatively common across MacBooks and he already knew where to look. Of course it's sensationalism in a way (who's going to pass the opportunity to appear as the coolest kid on the street?) but not necessarily it's completely dishonest. To be honest, local repair centres, even the mum-and-dad variety, will make you pay quite a lot for stuff as trivial as formatting and reinstallation (which can be basically done unattended).
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@admiral_p said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@remi I suspect it is due to how those companies are structured. A big tyre chain
In my example I didn't go to a tyre chain, just an auto-repair chain, so they didn't have any specific incentive regarding tyres. But what @izzion says explains as well what they do: spending 30 min doing a fix that brings them 10 bucks isn't worth it, whichever way you turn it around, whereas selling a tyre (or two) will always bring some cash in (unless the repair guy has to spend more time to convince me to do it than their margin, but that's extremely unlikely). But whatever the reason, the bottom line is that a big chain will be more likely to push for replacement parts than fixing the existing ones, because they run on a pure economical analysis of margin on parts and cost of labour. A small shop is more likely to be run on a mix of that plus "doing what the boss likes to do", so as long as they get what they feel is decent money at the end of the month, they don't care that much about squeezing the maximum return from customers.
That's a bit different from Apple's case though. Apple sells their product and should have a duty to serve their customers well, and not gouge them. It should be in their interest.
Their "duty" and their "interest" are two very different things. And I don't think Apple makes any kind of significant money on their repair shops (even assuming they gouge customers, how often do they go to a repair shop, compared to how often the average Apple customer simply buys a new device?). I wouldn't even be surprised if they lost money on them, counting in the cost of real estate in what are usually prime locations etc.
I guess Apple doesn't care that much about the repairs that someone else could make, at least not in terms of lost revenue. What they probably care about is the potential of loss of image, i.e. they want to ensure that none of their devices run in a half-broken-held-together-by-gaffer-tape state, which is what opening the repair market to everyone would do. Remember that they purposefully position themselves as a luxury good, so they don't really want a steady stream of degrading models trickling down in increasing states of disrepair, they want people to either have a fully working device, or lust for when they might buy one. There is no middle ground for luxury products.
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@remi said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
Remember that they purposefully position themselves as a luxury good, so they don't really want a steady stream of degrading models trickling down in increasing states of disrepair, they want people to either have a fully working device, or lust for when they might buy one. There is no middle ground for luxury products.
Yeah, that's exactly why Mercedes/Porsche/Ferrari/etc don't fix their cars and don't sell parts for it.
Oh, wait...
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@TimeBandit They do fix them, of course, but they also push strongly to have repairs done in their own shops only (and I can tell you that first hand). This is the part where I said that they don't want to see too many devices (cars) held together by gaffer's tape, as this does impact their brand image.
(of course, cars are not electronic devices and especially older models can be easily fixed by anyone so in practice they don't really have that stranglehold on the repair market that they'd like to have, but I'm pretty sure that they would do it if they could, like Apple does)
And I suspect that the part about not making that much money from repairs (compared to sales) does apply to luxury car makers as well...
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@remi said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
And I suspect that the part about not making that much money from repairs (compared to sales) does apply to luxury car makers as well...
Looks like you never looked at luxury car repair & maintenance cost
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@remi said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
and I can tell you that first hand
Which one?
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@remi said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
(of course, cars are not electronic devices and especially older models can be easily fixed by anyone so in practice they don't really have that stranglehold on the repair market that they'd like to have, but I'm pretty sure that they would do it if they could, like Apple does)
Modern cars are full of electronic devices, and don't really work without them.
It's already the case that with some manufacturers that if you took a used electronic module from one vehicle and fitted it to another - like you would to fix an issue on an older car for cheap - that you need to take the car to a dealer (or an authorised repairer) to have the module authorised to work with the new vehicle.
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@remi said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
They do fix them, of course, but they also push strongly to have repairs done in their own shops only
The problem here is that Apple's idea of convincing a customer to have their device repaired at an authorized "dealership" is to take their lawyers and sic them at the independent repair shop for even thinking about repairing their products.
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@loopback0 said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@remi said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
(of course, cars are not electronic devices and especially older models can be easily fixed by anyone so in practice they don't really have that stranglehold on the repair market that they'd like to have, but I'm pretty sure that they would do it if they could, like Apple does)
Modern cars are full of electronic devices, and don't really work without them.
It's already the case that with some manufacturers that if you took a used electronic module from one vehicle and fitted it to another - like you would to fix an issue on an older car for cheap - that you need to take the car to a dealer (or an authorised repairer) to have the module authorised to work with the new vehicle.Yes, exactly. Now that the technology allows manufacturers to keep the repair chain under their own control, some of them do push for that. Which was my point, that this way of trying to keep control is nothing specific to Apple.
Of course, the way Apple does it is particularly egregious (like @Deadfast says), and that is pretty awful. But unfortunately, Apple is far from being the only awful company around (this thread started talking about similar shenanigans from John Deere), so what I'm saying is that mentioning Apple as if they were the only bad apple (pun intended) of the lot, or even the biggest or most visible or different from the rest in any way, is highly misleading.
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45 Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After Independent Repair, Sting Operation Finds
New research showed that 90 percent of contacted companies told customers that repairing their own device would void the warranty; that's illegal under federal law.
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@TimeBandit While an independent repair can not automatically void the warranty, if the company can prove that the independent repair had any role in causing further damage, they absolutely can (legally) refuse to cover that under the warranty.
So the scare tactic is at least partially true. If a customer has their device repaired by an independent party, and the process of opening and closing the device causes something else to wear out prematurely, or the independent party puts in a new part and that part fails, the factory isn't going to touch that. As far as they're concerned, the warranty has been voided by the repair. It only voids the warranty, though, for damage that could be related to the repair itself. Any other damage still has to be covered under the original warranty.
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@anotherusername said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
Any other damage still has to be covered under the original warranty
Not according to them, and that's the issue
