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There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

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Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#91

Post by BostonEnginerd »

jayparth wrote: post #77
nickff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these reports really matter? Did they change your mind about the issue, or shape your opinion in any way other than fueling your previous view? I hear many people support these sorts of rules, but nobody seems to really benefit from them.

Which reports? Reports that require disclosure of political advertising spend? Yes. They're incredibly important. I want to know who is paying to try to influence an election. Many times, actionable information is exposed through these reports.

It’s interesting that the German automakers have only given a relatively small amount compared to the others.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#92

Post by Vinnl »

technothrasher wrote: post #73
Vinnl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's weird is that before moving to MA I had never even heard of ballot options. I'm not even from the US - what are ballot options? I can't find much about them, but from what I've seen, they seem similar to referendums?

Yes, a ballot question can be a referendum or an initiative. Basically, at least in MA, if you as a citizen want a law passed or repealed and you don't think the legislature will take it up, you can collect signatures of people who agree with you. If you get enough, it will be added to the next state election as a question for the voters to yea or nay. In other words, it's a direct democracy end run around the usual…

Ah cool, that makes sense - I think that's called a citizen's initiative in the Netherlands and in the EU, where it has only existed for 14 and 13 years, respectively. Indeed a great addition to representative democracy.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#93

Post by kazagistar »

TeeMassive wrote: post #45

I'm seeing videos suggested by the YouTube algorithm from time to time about the Right to Repair and nothing is more infuriating then watching those people who basically sold their soul to say things that are not only blatantly baseless but also which are very against the public interest and will have negative impact on the environment for the generations to come.

I dont even know what side you mean. Right to Repair allows longer product life (environmental plus) at the cost of simplifying modifications that worsen environmental impact (though that can be mitigated with careful regulation).

Its all still individual consumption environmentalism, which is the minority of impact.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#94

Post by bzbarsky »

CivBase wrote: post #82
unholiness wrote: post #55

MA voter who's genuinely torn here. The thing that bugs me out about this law is that, AFAICT, this data is _already_ required to be available to any 3rd party manufacturer through a physical "non-proprietary interface" (so far, an OBD-II port) after a similar ballot initiative from 2013 [0]. This law essentially just makes the data available wirelessly. I care about security holes and I care about consent. Having a…

I was also extremely confused by the smartphone app requirement. I don't imagine most car guys want to fumble around with their personal, expensive, fragile smartphone while doing automotive work. Modern vehicles generally have very advanced media consoles installed in the dash. Why can't they just display the information there? Or just add a standardized port under the hood with a publicly documented interface that…

I'm not a fan of the smartphone app requirement (as opposed to, say, a web app requirement), not least because it presupposes ownership of a smartphone. But I _think_ the intent is for "normal people" to be able to know at least as much about their own car and its behavior as the manufacturer does, and more importantly to know what it is their manufacturer knows. Importantly, this is all about data that got shipped off wirelessly to the manufacturer and does not reside in the car itself anymore.

The media console approach would require the existence of such a console and for the media console to connect to "the cloud" to retrieve the data. Possible, presumably, since the car is connecting somehow to ship the data out to start with, but I'm really not sure what the tradeoffs are there.

The standardized port idea unfortunately suffers from that last problem too: it relies on the car itself to make a connection to "the cloud"; depending on what's going on with the car that may or may not be possible, I'd think.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#95

Post by bzbarsky »

mkhcodes wrote: post #60
unholiness wrote: post #55

MA voter who's genuinely torn here. The thing that bugs me out about this law is that, AFAICT, this data is _already_ required to be available to any 3rd party manufacturer through a physical "non-proprietary interface" (so far, an OBD-II port) after a similar ballot initiative from 2013 [0]. This law essentially just makes the data available wirelessly. I care about security holes and I care about consent. Having a…

I'm in the same boat. I don't understand the argument that manufacturers are using telematics as a loophole, since it seems that the 2013 law specifically says that while many uses of telematics are not covered by the law, those that are "necessary to diagnose and repair a customer's vehicle" ARE still covered. > With the exception of telematics diagnostic and repair information that is provided to dealers, necessary…

As far as I can tell, the 2013 law doesn't actually define "telematics" or "telematics data". This intiative does define the latter to be data that the car collects and phones home, and which the car itself may not store at all (but the "remote receiving point", as the law calls it, does store).

It seems to me that you can't reasonably require access via the physical port on the car to data that is not actually present in the car's systems. Or am I missing something?

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#96

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

BostonEnginerd wrote: post #91
jayparth wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which reports? Reports that require disclosure of political advertising spend? Yes. They're incredibly important. I want to know who is paying to try to influence an election. Many times, actionable information is exposed through these reports.

It’s interesting that the German automakers have only given a relatively small amount compared to the others.

AIUI the German solution is to make their cars so difficult to repair and maintain, and require so many specialised tools, that nobody who isn't an authorised dealership will want to touch them.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#97

Post by mindslight »

zaroth wrote: post #56

I don’t understand how engineers can read the actual text of the Question and think this is a good idea... > shall be required to equip such vehicles with an inter-operable, standardized and open access platform across all of the manufacturer’s makes and models. What is a “platform” in this context? The vehicle is supposed to be equipped with one, so presumably not a cloud server then? Inter-operable with what? Other…

> I don’t understand how engineers can read the actual text of the Question and think this is a good idea...

Because engineers are generally capable of understanding that law is law, and not a computer program.

> Remember this is a legal requirement, not a spec

Yes, this is a basic principle of how laws are written. You've supplied the rebuttal to the rest of your comment. All the terms that you singled out and put scare quotes around are meant to be applied by the courts to ongoing industry practices - the point is to avoid needing future revision based on details. If the lack of specificity offends your engineer sensibilities, then you need to work on developing other modes of thinking.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#98

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

pc86 wrote: post #78
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

The No side's ads are incredibly scummy. The retired boston police commissioner has done an ad spot for Yes on Right To Repair specifically to slap down the "you will be raped in a parking lot" FUD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bye5DRBSpw The EFF is also strongly in favor, naturally, but i think Ed Davis will pull more weight if anyone's undecided. (when marijuana legalization was on the ballot in 2016, the then-…

To be fair, police already had the option to stop wasting their time on stupid college students, it's called discretion.

The problem with discretion is that it is also a common tool of discrimination. I'm fairly sure I have been given a pass on a few traffic violations that I probably wouldn't have if I weren't white.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#99

Post by unholiness »

mindslight wrote: post #87
unholiness wrote: post #55

MA voter who's genuinely torn here. The thing that bugs me out about this law is that, AFAICT, this data is _already_ required to be available to any 3rd party manufacturer through a physical "non-proprietary interface" (so far, an OBD-II port) after a similar ballot initiative from 2013 [0]. This law essentially just makes the data available wirelessly. I care about security holes and I care about consent. Having a…

I see where you're coming from, and this proposed law doesn't seem super useful in isolation. But consider: 1. Publishing the same data over OBD-2 ends up being an afterthought. Without even looking at the specifics, I guarantee that there is data transmitted through telemetry that is not output through OBD-2. That's just how embedded development works - focus on making the main feature work, then forget about the re…

These are definitely valid points. Unfortunately your last example (3rd party web services easily discovering when I need an oil change, or what days I've been driving aggressively) is the kind of hypothetical I would want laws actively preventing.

Arguably, it's not this law's job to introduce such a protection! But best I can tell, no other law covers it in MA. It is perfectly legal for 3rd parties to sell this and other data without my explicit consent or even an opportunity to opt out (I think only CA has such an opt-out [0]).

Granted, manufacturers already have and can sell this data with no recourse. But at least manufacturers have national brands which could be hurt by selling or leaking massive amounts of data about their customers. Perhaps some brands could even make privacy a selling point. It seems like this law erodes that thin shell of protection.

[0] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#100

Post by oehpr »

pjc50 wrote: post #75
nessunodoro wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scummy is a polite word for the advertisements. It's been fascinating to watch them evolve in waves. First wave: POV of a predator in a parking garage approaching a woman. Grave female voiceover: "Sexual predators could track your automobile, and remotely control the vehicle - including unlocking the doors." The female victim turns as the camera descends on her - she screams - "Vote No on Question 1. Don't let sexual…

It's interesting that there's no norm against participating in this kind of gross dishonesty. Everyone is comfortable that political speech is just a set of things you say to win the argument, and need bear no relation to any real or plausible events.

I think that it's not that there is no norms, it's that there's no point in having norms. These attack ads are conducted by proxies, not the interested parties themselves. It takes more energy to go after them then it takes for the interested parties to make a new proxy.
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