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Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#111

Post by rrmoelker »

listsfrin wrote: post #90
schrijver wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies often have the monopoly on repair for their products because they don’t make the parts and diagnostic tools available. Yes, they ask money for repair, but there also plenty of repairs they flat out refuse to do. Apple refuses to repair phones with water damage for example. Repairs that repair shops might be happy to do, if they had the access to parts.

How do you repair water damage? Look at the colour of the motherboard and declare it's fine? Besides that, most Apple phones since 2016 or so are water resistant.

Scrape off rust, replace chips that have been shorted.

Does depend on chips being available and some knowledge on how to diagnose the damages (e.g.: board schematics).

Here's an example of new age Macbook pro's dying from little water ingress (design oversight). And a combination of knowledge and a simple chip can fix your nearly write off Macbook. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#112

Post by listsfrin »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #98
listsfrin wrote: post #36

The article says this is needed in order to reduce greenhouse emissions. I don't feel that's true. In my country in Europe nothing is done to reduce pollution from the cars and plastic usage. Year after year more products are built with plastic instead of glass or metal.

You seem uninformed about multiple EU initiatives, we've been deploying reneables, cleaning up the grid, etc. Our car emissions standards are much stricter than US/China/Russia. Unlike in the US, exporting plastic to the third world is actually illegal. And plastic is a distinct and separate problem to CO2. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco&t=579s You could still argue they are not doing…

I'm uninformed about the place were I live? I don't know what I smell every day, going to and back to work? You have quite some nerve ;)

Let me tell you some stories about illegal stuff.

A few days ago you could smell chemicals in the air every morning. In the middle of the city. There was a big scandal and they said UK exported their shit here. European style. Nothing really came off of it.

Money talks.

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#113

Post by falcolas »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #88
imtringued wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think banks would be happy if someone returned their "tuned" car after the lease ended.

When you lease a car, you do not own it. The bank owns the car and depending on the country of residence, the dealership is possibly on the hook for a guaranteed buyout price. The lessee is certainly not allowed to "tune" the car without the consent of the bank/dealership. They are usually not even allowed to service it anywhere but at an authorized garage. This is different from outright purchase of the car, where y…

> This is different from outright purchase of the car

Even this right is being eroded - see Tesla. You can drive it to the scrap yard, but someone else can't always drive it back out.

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#114

Post by listsfrin »

lm28469 wrote: post #99
listsfrin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what's so bad east of Poland but I'm not there. However, as I said, with a small bribe you can take out any particle filter here. It's common knowledge. Besides that, did those VW cars got banned from the streets? No! Does VW pay for my health issues? No! Those money are normal taxes to conduct business in Europe.

> I'm not sure what's so bad east of Poland but I'm not there It's known for being a bit less strict and a bit more corrupt than the west. At least from what I gathered from my bulgarian, polish and greek friends and from my own experience over there. Idk where you live but in France we have mandatory vehicle inspections every 2 years and you definitely can't bribe these guys. You'll get fined if you get caught, like…

We have yearly car inspections ;)

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#115

Post by Silhouette »

Funes- wrote: post #31

Being guaranteed the right to repair from every manufacturer is great and, more importantly, much needed. Nonetheless, most people abide by the culture fabricated by those very corporations, which is defined by an annual release cycle of devices which are minimally upgraded deliberately, their selling point usually being something visibly different from the previous year's smartphones--currently, being foldable or ha…

The cycle can be broken, though. Look at PC sales these days. PCs became good enough to meet most people's everyday home or office needs, and hardly anyone upgrades automatically every 2-3 years any more unless they genuinely need more powerful hardware.

Meanwhile, aggressive marketing particularly to impressionable younger customers has kids and those who influence them raving about a notch or a third camera or whatever it is this week, even though the benefits of these relatively small changes are often negligible. This seems to be more of a cultural problem, possibly with a side order of exploiting vulnerable targets in dubiously ethical ways, than a technical problem.

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#116

Post by falcolas »

simion314 wrote: post #49
userbinator wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, a car that "pollutes 100x more then the norms" is also very likely to be the most repairable...

Most cars are repairable, there is an industry of alternative parts, you go to a mechanic, he plugs the laptop with the software , find the problem, then you chose from a website with parts the one you want , you have different alternatives. Also you can visit places with scraped cars and you can find parts there for cheap. There is no DRM at the moment to stop you reusing a door from a different car or a door made b…

Yeah, Tesla does (though perhaps not with doors, yet). And if you look at the industrial tractor industry, you can see the future where it applies to even more and more vehicles.

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#117

Post by bitbldr »

cs702 wrote: post #110
jeremyjh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licensing is not the same as purchasing. I don’t think banning the concept of licensing would be helpful.

I didn't even mention the words "licensing" and "banning." If a house, a car, a shirt, or a phone is offered to you for sale , and you buy it, then you should own it. FWIW, I agree with you. Please don't attack a straw-man!

I think what previous comment was getting at is, most (all) of the time you buy a license to software, not the software itself

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#118

Post by jasode »

cs702 wrote: post #110
jeremyjh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licensing is not the same as purchasing. I don’t think banning the concept of licensing would be helpful.

I didn't even mention the words "licensing" and "banning." If a house, a car, a shirt, or a phone is offered to you for sale , and you buy it, then you should own it. FWIW, I agree with you. Please don't attack a straw-man!

>I didn't even mention the words "licensing" and "banning."

Even if you don't mention them explicitly, you still have to acknowledge the difference because one of your examples was "software object".

When consumers pay money for software, it almost always licensed and not bought. If you buy MS Windows 10 from Amazon.com, you purchased a license. If you truly want to "buy" Windows 10 in the same sense as your other non-software examples, you'd have to convince Microsoft to sell you the "ownership of the codebase" or have enough billions to acquire the entire Microsoft corporation to "own" Windows 10.

Re: Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets

#119

Post by mpol »

cs702 wrote: post #110
jeremyjh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licensing is not the same as purchasing. I don’t think banning the concept of licensing would be helpful.

I didn't even mention the words "licensing" and "banning." If a house, a car, a shirt, or a phone is offered to you for sale , and you buy it, then you should own it. FWIW, I agree with you. Please don't attack a straw-man!

Please don't feel attacked.

You mentioned buying a software product, but that is not commonly done by consumers. We all license software. Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it. The replies mention changing software copyright for consumer products. I can imagine that to be a good idea, but I don't see the EU making GPLv3 software mandatory for software products. I don't see a way forward yet.

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