Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

ifixit.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 354 posts

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#111

Post by John_KZ »

nimbius wrote: post #56

As an automotive mechanic, this is awesome. You have no idea how many sensors/controllers in a car can only be reset by violating the DRM. Example: the suspension control computer for newer fords (so far just raptor and newer commercial F series) is separate from the ECU, and if it faults out you need to buy a new $2500 computer and sensor pack. You can, however, replace a commonly blown diode or fuse on the computer…

Congrats, you presented the one and only case where the manufacturers are right: Nobody should tamper with critical control systems.

I don't want a DIY arduino-hacked suspension control chip or ABS. Neither would your clients. Unless of course your client understands this and it goes into the service logbook and you take full legal responsibility for any accidents this might cause in the future.

However I couldn't care less if my mp3 player has it's EMMC swapped or if my laptop has a third-party LCD replacement.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#112

Post by DoreenMichele »

sevensor wrote: post #110
DoreenMichele wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe they would be pissed?

Deere infamously has a EULA for their equipment that forbids farmers from breaking DRM, thereby locking them into first-party parts and service. Notwithstanding the jacked-up costs of first-party parts and service, this policy idles farm equipment at very inconvenient times, occasionally ruining the luckless owner of Deere equipment.

Thank you.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#113

Post by mikhailt »

But these are just temporary exclusions that needs to be renewed every three years, right?

Can someone explain why three years? It feels like it is not even worth the risk of "breaking" the laws in 4 years not knowing if they're renewed or has been revoked.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#114

Post by saagarjha »

mikhailt wrote: post #113

But these are just temporary exclusions that needs to be renewed every three years, right? Can someone explain why three years? It feels like it is not even worth the risk of "breaking" the laws in 4 years not knowing if they're renewed or has been revoked.

I think the rule has been changed so that exemptions continue to stay in effect unless something significant changes and an argument can be made the the exemption may have been made in error.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#115

Post by cptskippy »

quadrangle wrote: post #107
awalton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It tells me that I really shouldn't buy a Ford car, since apparently billing for repair parts is more important to them than building a robust and repairable car. Adding a tamper resistant circuit to random bits of your car's electronics is adding cost while reducing robustness - who wants that in their car?

Ford is basically stopping production of cars anyway as they found that trucks are more profitable. But yeah, don't buy one of their trucks either. But what manufacturer is an alternative? Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances!

> Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances!

That's a lie. Yes they have DRM in place to artificially limit the range of certain models, everything else you said is mischaracterization, misrepresentation, and lies.

They saw opportunity in offering different ranged batteries of the same model, however the cost to produce two different battery capacities was too high. Instead of hiding this fact from the consumer, they instead offer it as an upgrade path if you one day have a need for the additional range.

This sort of thing is done all of the time in manufacturing to streamline costs. They even do it with their Autopilot system, all Model 3s come with the same sensor package but the feature itself is unavailable unless you pay to unlock it.

There's an advantage to doing this in that you do not have to guess at what consumer demand will be because you can lock/unlock features as needed in software based on consumer demand.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#116

Post by coder543 »

John_KZ wrote: post #111
nimbius wrote: post #56

As an automotive mechanic, this is awesome. You have no idea how many sensors/controllers in a car can only be reset by violating the DRM. Example: the suspension control computer for newer fords (so far just raptor and newer commercial F series) is separate from the ECU, and if it faults out you need to buy a new $2500 computer and sensor pack. You can, however, replace a commonly blown diode or fuse on the computer…

Congrats, you presented the one and only case where the manufacturers are right: Nobody should tamper with critical control systems. I don't want a DIY arduino-hacked suspension control chip or ABS. Neither would your clients. Unless of course your client understands this and it goes into the service logbook and you take full legal responsibility for any accidents this might cause in the future. However I couldn't ca…

> I don't want a DIY arduino-hacked ...

This is a professional service being done by the same professionals who you're paying to actually replace the suspension, brakes, brake lines, or other life-critical components. If you can't trust them to make a good judgement on how or whether to reset tamper detection, then how can you trust them to replace your brakes or suspension in the first place? Surely the idea is that some company would develop and test a process for resetting the tamper detection now that it is apparently legal, and then this tool would be provided to mechanic shops.

> and you take full legal responsibility for any accidents this might cause in the future.

Do mechanics take full legal responsibility for any accidents caused by replacing your brakes or other things? I'm sure in cases of egregiously negligent behavior, they could probably be sued, but most of the time it would be very difficult to prove that they were the cause. I don't think this would be any different.

> Nobody should tamper with critical control systems.

If you believe this, it sounds like you buy brand-new-only cars the moment your existing car turns on any kind of fault light. But, assuming you're okay with them swapping in a $2500 replacement instead, do you believe in this idea so strongly that you would pay 10% to 20% of the vehicle's MSRP any time a fault triggers? Keeping in mind that a vehicle's MSRP has very little to do with its used market value. $2500 could easily be 30%+ of a vehicle's actual value at the time that this occurs.

I get where you're coming from, but I think the strength of your language is out of proportion with the suggested repairs.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#117

Post by LeftTurnSignal »

was_boring wrote: post #103
ngngngng wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced most successful mechanics could be successful programmers. The skill set of looking at a problem and debugging until you really understand the architecture and design of what you're looking at is very similar in both fields.

I'm convinced most successful programmers can be successful mechanics for the same reason! Most programmers I know tend to be handy in some way, whether that's fixing their own cars (myself), wood working, or some other skill which requires them to think through problems and work with their hands. I actually view fixing cars as not only a hobby of mine, but as a fall back career should I ever become bored of software…

My brother is a mechanic and both worlds have so many similarities.

We joke that the big difference is that I got AC during the summer and he doesn't.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#118

Post by saurik »

mikhailt wrote: post #113

But these are just temporary exclusions that needs to be renewed every three years, right? Can someone explain why three years? It feels like it is not even worth the risk of "breaking" the laws in 4 years not knowing if they're renewed or has been revoked.

They actually (mostly) fixed this recently (in no small part due to being beaten down pretty hard by iFixIt a few years ago filing a crazy number of new exemption requests ;P). Now existing exemptions have a streamlined renewal process where the opposition needs to demonstrate that there was an important shift in the underlying evidence during that time.

https://clinic.cyber.harvard.edu/2017/10/25/update-on-the-20...

https://www.copyright.gov/1201/1201_streamlined_renewal_tran...

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#119

Post by deckar01 »

You can legally bypass the DRM on a 3D printer to use generic filament from suppliers other than the printer's manufacturer. I'm not sure there are many manufacturers doing this anymore. The rise of cheap, open source 3D printer changed the market pretty drastically over the last few years.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#120

Post by jedberg »

nimbius wrote: post #80
chrisshroba wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true? There are mechanics everywhere, so why would every one need to learn to program something that could be made by one and sold as a commercial (or open source) project? Sure, there are many types of cars and situations that need handling, but there are far more mechanics than that. I'm genuinely asking this because I often question whether it's true that "everyone should learn to program", or it's more li…

i started learning python in my spare time after I attended a training course for shop software that ran on Linux. As for the pi, theyre awesome. for $30 or so I have a computer powerful enough to pull OBD codes and do pretty much anything else in the shop wirelessly. And if someone drop it, backs over it, or splashes it with friction modifier or something I can just ask my boss for $40 to replace it instead of $1400…

Can you point me at some good tutorials on making a pi read ODBC codes?
Post reply on HN