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The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#161

Post by ksk »

twblalock wrote: post #133
wfo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market has failed to protect a right that is important, that's exactly when regulation is necessary. Handling the constant failures and disasters created by the market to the detriment of the populace is the purpose of regulations and the entire justification of the mixed economy model every modern society operates under.

What right has not been protected? You do not have a right to require manufacturers to create repairable items. If you think such a right exists, prove it. That's what this "right" to repair really is -- it is forcing manufacturers to make things that they don't currently make, and that most people don't want to buy. (If people wanted to buy them, someone would already be selling them and making money on that segment…

>What right has not been protected?

The right to complete ownership of an item you paid full price on. More and more manufacturers want to erode this right and make it "illegal" for people to repair products they paid for. Did you not read the article?

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#162

Post by twblalock »

ryandrake wrote: post #160
twblalock wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are actually arguing that any government policy that requires companies to modify their products in a way that they weren't already doing is bad, you have created a very difficult position for yourself to defend. I don't know why you interpret my argument that way. It's not a blanket statement against government regulation of products, and none of what I wrote can logically necessitate or lead to that positi…

The "right" to repair one's own stuff is as made-up as the "right" to encumber products with repair-resistant features. This is not a question of what's etched into stone tablets somewhere, it's a question of what we value as society. When what people want to do conflicts with what companies want people to do, who gets to win? The simplistic answer is to just throw your hands up and "let the market decide." But the m…

All rights are manmade. Rights are social constructs. I'm not looking for stone tablets anywhere. But simply saying that a right exists does not make it so. If that is all it takes, please excuse me for a moment while I go declare, and then exercise, my right to rob a bank.

Like any social construct, a right exists when it is broadly accepted as a fact and is operational within society. It helps if you make it a law, too.

Don't provide truisms about why the market is not always correct. That doesn't prove anything. You need to prove that this particular circumstance, of repairability in products, is one of the times when the market is not correct.

On the contrary, a company's right to encumber products with repair-resistant features is not a imaginary or asserted right -- it is protected by laws which have been passed for that purpose, such as the DMCA in the case of DRM, which have been challenged and upheld in court. So this is really about an imaginary right to repair versus an actual, legal, broadly recognized right to encumber.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#163

Post by markcerqueira »

dllthomas wrote: post #121
cwkoss wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the correct response is to swerve in to the group with the fewest people? I don't think human drivers have the reaction time to make these decisions, not sure why so many expect computers to be able to.

Because eventually, computers will be able to.

But by then the car will be able to engage its flight module, take off, and fly you directly home.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#164

Post by mindslight »

twblalock wrote: post #154
mindslight wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo. For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of creative product wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is really being sold to the consumer, but the design of it. A person buys a cell phone…

> You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo. Oh, so you're a mind reader who can figure out my motivations? By the way, those are arguments, not rationalizations. They are pretty good, too. > For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of creative…

It doesn't take an ability to read minds to characterize a comment. In a universe with no copyright, arguments about its benefits would fall flat. In a universe with a right to repair, all the consumer benefits would be "manifestly true" in the way you're treating the arguments for copyright. You're demanding a level of proof that can only be met by having the condition already existing, and thus just defending the status quo.

> show your work

So you've expressed your arguments in terms of ZFC or whatever? Coming up with new concepts is obviously intuitive work - I've laid out what I see as a simple deeper abstraction behind copyright, which you've done nothing but ignore along with every other argument.

> What rights are being taken away?

Rather than get into semantics over the word "right", let's say lawful ability. In the case of a CD, what has been taken away is your ability to simply make copies of that CD. Instead, the publisher purports to sell you a license to only listen to the music. Yet they conveniently forget the second half of that abstraction - if the CD is scratched, they don't send you a new one!

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#165

Post by twblalock »

ksk wrote: post #161
twblalock wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What right has not been protected? You do not have a right to require manufacturers to create repairable items. If you think such a right exists, prove it. That's what this "right" to repair really is -- it is forcing manufacturers to make things that they don't currently make, and that most people don't want to buy. (If people wanted to buy them, someone would already be selling them and making money on that segment…

>What right has not been protected? The right to complete ownership of an item you paid full price on. More and more manufacturers want to erode this right and make it "illegal" for people to repair products they paid for. Did you not read the article?

Ownership is not all-encompassing. For example, it would be illegal for me to make and sell copies of the books I own. It would also be illegal for me to drive over the speed limit in the car I own. If I owned a gun, I couldn't just shoot anyone I wanted.

What makes you certain that the right to repair something is a built-in feature of ownership, when ownership clearly does not confer all possible rights?

Ownership is clearly not what you think it is.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#166

Post by blastrat »

foota wrote: post #157
blastrat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank your for saying this!!! Because the article was completely about people REPAIRING technology they purchased, and not at all about mods, modding or modifications.

They're pretty much one and the same, how can you allow someone to repair something without allowing them to modify it as well? What if they repair it badly?

how can you allow people to own guns without allowing them to shoot people?

how can you allow mechanics to fix brakes without allowing them to break brakes?

I dunno... laws maybe? Like, the same laws that can require manufacturers to allow aftermarket competition.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#167

Post by pessimizer »

jolux wrote: post #143
Karunamon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the steering wheel that's deployed on all public roadways right now? I'm struggling to see the substantial difference between "self driving car with modified software should be disallowed because safety" and "manually driven car should be disallowed because safety". The former is still strictly safer.

I thought the entire point of computer driven cars was to reduce the dangers of driving. What exactly is the point if we give everyone with a self driving car a steering wheel like they have now?

If that is the entire point, I'd rather they be illegal altogether, and we could avoid the debate by saying that we only license human drivers. I thought the entire point was to lower the costs of transportation and lower the number of cars on the road. The dangers of driving are not great enough to give up individual agency to that degree.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#168

Post by pessimizer »

nathan_long wrote: post #13
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

I think this whole open source and right to repair/modify will be very interesting with self-driving cars, because of their interaction with the commons. Here are some issues. There have been some discussions about the ethics of self-driving cars if it should sacrifice the lives of the people in the cars to save more lives. In a right to repair/modify wouldn't a lot of people pay to have the algorithm changed for the…

You bring up very interesting questions, but the self-driving car should be taken as a very special case. A manufacturer can hardly argue that they have a safety reason to keep you from repairing your TV, printer, or cell phone.

They certainly can, and have.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#169

Post by Retra »

msandford wrote: post #107
marcosdumay wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not run off the road... And it pushes the break hard. What kind of ethical dilemma should it have on that example?

It has 0.5 seconds until collision so no hope of stopping. Push the brake all you want, unless that car gets back in its lane, people die.

Do you have a specific example of this situation occurring as you've described it? If so, was there an ethical dilemma when a human was in control? If not, don't worry about it.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#170

Post by pessimizer »

wildmusings wrote: post #88
CaptSpify wrote: post #77

I used to do after-market repair medical equipment (MRI's, CT's, X-Ray, etc). One of the biggest frustrations was: $manufacturer wants $5000 to repair a CT. We'd charge $1000. We'd repair the CT, and it would pass all the built-in diagnostic tests. But then when the customer went to make a scan, a pop-up would appear saying "Unauthorized Repair! Call $manufacturer to fix!". $manufacturer repair tech would come in, pl…

> $manufacturer repair tech would come in, plug in a usb-key, type a code, and charge $1000. They didn't run any of the diagnostics, and were basically paid to keep the usb-key available. How is that legal? I sincerely hope that would not survive a civil suit. Though it could be that hospitals are weary of suing their suppliers for various reasons.

Under what law would it be illegal? It's not just medical equipment - it's tractors and iPhones, too.
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