Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms • Hacker News Board

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#161

Post by perl4ever » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #64

As the owner of a very heavily modified muscle car, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Half the fun of a muscle car is modifying it. This was easy to do with the older ones, there's an entire industry catering to it. With modern cars, manufacturers only make parts for them for 10 years or so. What are you going to do after that when the computer system in it fails? Aftermarket parts would be illegal, etc. The whole ca…

I have a 30 year old car with an ECU that has been repaired, so I think your perspective on electronics is incorrect. There are also replacement ECUs with custom electronics available for my car. People can and do repair, modify, or develop replacements for old electronics on cars. The practical aspect with old cars is that most of them are not beloved enough that there will be much support in the aftermarket. But that's not specific to the electronics.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#162

Post by smt88 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

eveningcoffee wrote: post #35

smt88 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also true of elevators. The vendors intentionally write awful code so that only they can fix it.

This is quite horrifying. I am not sure if the elevator ride will be the same again for me.

Don't be horrified for your safety. The software controls where the empty elevator goes. Many of the safety features, like the brakes, are tested regularly under the law and separate from the technician/programmer's work.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#163

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #48

eveningcoffee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite horrifying. I am not sure if the elevator ride will be the same again for me.

My building replaced its elevators last year, and one car still has an “activate Windows” overlay in the corner of the screen. A recent change to the floor selection wallpaper has somehow resulted in the button font in another car mysteriously reverting to Verdana. All I can do is remind myself there’s a mechanical interlock to keep the car from free-falling.

Escalators have mechanical interlocks and they've been failing a lot recently. Time to take the stairs.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#164

Post by TimTheTinker » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

femto wrote: post #160

This sounds like a niche for a small Pacific island. Islands like Jersey and the Cook Islands tailor their legal systems to cater for those who want a looser financial system. A small state could tailor their laws for those who want to repair things and potentially make a very nice "high tech" economy out of reverse engineering, importing broken stuff and exporting fixed stuff. Copyright holders might try and block a…

Brilliant. This is indeed a huge opportunity waiting to be taken by an otherwise stable country that is in need of some cash. Botswana, perhaps?

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#165

Post by ericabiz » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

berbec wrote: post #31

With this allow people to hack iPhones to disable "brick if 3rd party screen"?

This isn’t a thing currently. (I run repair shops and the #1 thing we do is fix iPhone screens.) Independent, non-Apple-authorized repair shops do significant enough volume that Apple has been forced to fix anything that trended toward this.

Exception: The home button on iPhone 5s and above cannot be replaced by anyone except Apple. If third parties replace it, Touch ID won’t work. On iPhone 7/8, the button won’t work at all. However, it doesn’t brick your phone.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#166

Post by Endy » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

anotherevan wrote: post #108

imglorp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, I wonder if the law will ever view misprepresenting the ownership of a device as fraudulent business practice. Suppose some hardware is sold to you, in the ancient ownership sense[1]. Then some time later, the maker decides that you must use only authorized parts, or they will not continue to provide a cloud service for it, or that it's just plain EOL. Then, you never really owned it - you were renting…

This is not just with hardware. It annoys me no end that there's a big "BUY NOW" button on Amazon when you're looking at an ebook, but with their digital restrictions management, you are really only leasing the ebook.

Could you get a class-action lawsuit together from everyone who's "bought" a digital book, and sue them for false advertisement?

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#167

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #115

quadrangle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

How would you feel about a regular petrol car having extended range as an option, but you knew the shorter range model had exactly the same tank but the fuel gauge was calibrated differently, and the fuel pump stopped pumping before the tank was really empty.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#168

Post by Endy » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #85

Great, but DMCA 1201 should be repealed completely. Patching it with exceptions is just fixing the symptoms, not curing the disease.

Realistically, the whole DMCA needs to be repealed, not just one piece.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#169

Post by mindslight » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

This is nice, but it isn't as nice as it should be. This is a section 1201 exemption[1] which is where the Library of Congress decides there needs to be an exemption to the law and puts it into place for a period of 12 months. Every year they review these exemptions and they often fall off. If you go to the link below and replace 2018 with 2008 - 2017 you can see exemptions for the last 10 years that have been added…

What we need is for software that attempts to impose restrictions on its users to become ineligible for copyright protection in the first place!

The output of a compiler is a mechanical result, not the creative work itself. A company should not be able to purportedly license a copy of a creative work to an end user under the copyright regime, while then stripping away the ability to utilize/service that copy via computational complexity.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#170

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #115

quadrangle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

For some reason I can appreciate the adaptive cruise control being an optional extra, as they've had to build and maintain the software for it.

The battery / range thing no so much.