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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

#121

Post by lnsru »

clarry wrote: post #91
lnsru wrote: post #37

That will end in another monstrosity like WEEE making entry for hardware startups harder and harder: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electro... Only big players with dedicated departments will comply easily. And about right to repair I have bad experience: broken cable is enough for lots of buyers to throw away electronic appliances. Let’s be honest: majority of users will cause more harm than do…

Which washing machine was that? Which display was that?

Siemens machine and Philips display. Siemens successfully disappeared, Philips acted ethically and sent refurbished one, because in the last days of warranty I managed to open support case.

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

#122

Post by jablan »

jasode wrote: post #118
cs702 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Expecting to get a "codebase" when buying a software product would be the same as expecting getting blueprints for all the parts your car is made of. The concept of "buying a licence" is forced and by no means the only possible, if one wants to use a piece of software.

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

#123

Post by baybal2 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #104
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.

Withing the next 10-15 years 95% of household appliances and furniture will have a chip in them, to enable some type of IoT functionality. All of them will be licensed, almost abolishing private ownership. If we idly accept licensing of everything, we will enjoy what will be basically serfdom. People that were writing these laws never imagined they would prevent you from repairing a cat-feeder or a lighting system. T…

> Withing the next 10-15 years 95% of household appliances and furniture will have a chip in them, to enable some type of IoT functionality.

This is already happening. I work in an engineering consulting, specialising on consumer electronics. I have to admit, the wider industry is becoming a part of the issue: everybody wants to become like Apple.

We have an enormous tide of new clients incoming, with prime majority of them having no previous experience doing anything with electronics whatsoever.

If we ignore customers with out in the clouds fantasies, we will be losing like 3/4 of the new business, on another, we will be loosing our engineers who will be leaving to work on something more interesting and merit worthy.

The hottest buzzword among Silicon Valley accelerator bred entrepreneurs I see is "product-as-a-service," which basically you buying a product, but still having to pay to use it even after you already own it.

We have a joke that soon even toilet paper rolls will come chipped, and the paper will not work unless you pay somebody on the internet.

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

#124

Post by californical »

listsfrin wrote: post #102
simion314 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not allow the companies that make chips from their laptops to also sell those chips for people that want to repair this laptops. So this repair people need to "illegally" obtain the chips from someone at the factory. Apple also threatens you with lawyers if you host or share schematics for repairing products. The new repair partner program from Apple is also a joke and created to appear they are trying to…

Maybe it's a joke to you. For me it's fine. People pay real money in order to have Apple quality. If all you need is "a computer", go ahead, there's plenty around any corner. Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly if everyone is allowed to sell stuff in its name.

There's a big difference between someone saying "I'm a repair shop that is capable of fixing Ford vehicles" and "I'm an official Ford Certified repair shop". Both are allowed to fix your car. The third party shop can order parts to repair your car.

And nobody curses Ford's name when they go to a crappy shop and spend $2 on a new headlight that fails in a week. That's the shop's fault.

Nobody is saying anyone can call their junk an "official apple product". Why would this not be the same as the car scenario? If you don't want to risk issues, don't go to sketchy repair shops.

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

#125

Post by econcon »

cs702 wrote: post #80

When you buy a physical object, such as a home, a car, a shirt, or a smartphone, shouldn't you be be able to repair it, modify it however you want, use it for different purposes, loan it to friends, sell it to others, and so on -- you know, all the rights and benefits associated with the concept of private ownership ? And when you buy a software object, shouldn't you have the same rights and benefits?

I think if this law is passed, companies will start subscription service where you'll be renting phones instead of owning then. Then onus and exclusive right for repair/replacement will stay with the smartphone company.

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

#126

Post by rndgermandude »

fastball wrote: post #27
rndgermandude wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you'll be out of luck. Same as you cannot legally buy leaded fuels in most countries anymore, even tho you might prefer them, and same as Bayer will not sell you Heroin(tm) to treat your cough anymore.

Wait so you think you should not be allowed to buy "unrepairable" devices?

No, I think it should be illegal for companies to sell new products. Which has the same net result as a buying ban for the new goods markets (and used goods market over time).

Now the question that needs careful consideration is what constitutes "unrepairable" legally? It has to be sensible and legally ironclad.

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

#127

Post by listsfrin »

rrmoelker wrote: post #111
listsfrin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Manual work like that should be more expensive than buying new.

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

#128

Post by rndgermandude »

fastball wrote: post #103
tremon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you should be allowed that. It's just that no one will be allowed to sell you one.

So... no, you wouldn't be able to.

You can buy your stuff in China or whereever if you really want to.

And I wouldn't include any used goods sold between actual people (not the corporation people) and grandfather in any products that were first put on the market before a certain date (and make that date a few years in the future as a grace period). And maybe even progressively introduce different restrictions.

But yes, by and large it has the same effect and yes, I think that this effect is to be desired.

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

#129

Post by danShumway »

mpol wrote: post #119
cs702 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ye…

What does the GPLv3 have to do with any of this? Copyleft-licensing software doesn't mean the original author gives up any of their own copyright privileges. How do you think dual licensing works?

> Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it.

No, when people use the word "buy" here, they're using it in the same way I might buy a physical book.

When I buy a book, I'm free to write in it, scan it, transcribe it, rip it in half, reglue the spine, put a dust cover on it, or resell it. I'm not free to republish it or violate the author's copyright.

When I buy a piece of software, I should be free to hotpatch the DLL, back up the product, put wrappers around it, examine it, write about it, or resell it. That doesn't mean the owner should lose their copyright. You're conflating two unrelated concepts -- the abolition of copyright and the erosion of basic consumer ownership rights that have been established for centuries.

In fact, the EU already has a right to resale for digital software. And yet, despite that consumer-friendly rule, not every piece of software in the EU is currently GPLv3 licensed.

All that people are saying is that our rights as consumers shouldn't go away just because we bought a digital book instead of a physical one.

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

#130

Post by TomMarius »

simongray wrote: post #29
TomMarius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we? I am not really sure we do. I think it's very hard to talk about what "the society" wants, and I know that it differs very much around 150 km to the north from me (where the border is) and that it is also roughly the opposite around 300 km to the south from me (where another border is).

> I think it's very hard to talk about what "the society" wants People vote for representatives, those representatives enact legislation, and the free press reports on it, causing a feedback effect. Over time we have a picture of what society wants. It's really not that hard. Obviously, there are many different interconnected societies in the world and not all of them have representative democracy or a free press. Ma…

During the last EU parliament elections, 28.4% people voted (in my country of 10 million). These 28.4% have chosen 21 representatives into a parliament of 736, which means 2.85% of all seats.

I think it's clear why this tells us nothing about what the society here wants. It might be said that the EU was the voice of the nations before they removed the unilateral agreement requirement, but not today.

Nobody here (parties, the representatives) is even talking about the right to repair, how can you be so sure the society here wants it?

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