111–120 of 325 posts
Right to repair = ban on any waiver of repair rights in any commercial relationship.
I think this whole open source and right to repair/modify will be very interesting with self-driving cars, because of their interaction with the commons. Here are some issues. There have been some discussions about the ethics of self-driving cars if it should sacrifice the lives of the people in the cars to save more lives. In a right to repair/modify wouldn't a lot of people pay to have the algorithm changed for the…
I mean, if a company programs the car to do something in a certain situation, then I suspect any resulting court case would be against the company. If the customer sets it up, then presumably people would be more likely to sue the car owner.
I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect no self driving car company would want to make any decision here. Not least because they don't want to be sued into oblivion for it.
Also, a lot of those situations you mention are avoidable for open source. Well, avoidable in that you simply write the laws to specify the buffer space or what not. Then it doesn't matter whether it's an open source user or hacker that's ignored them.
I think this whole open source and right to repair/modify will be very interesting with self-driving cars, because of their interaction with the commons. Here are some issues. There have been some discussions about the ethics of self-driving cars if it should sacrifice the lives of the people in the cars to save more lives. In a right to repair/modify wouldn't a lot of people pay to have the algorithm changed for the…
I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. The odds of being in a situation where there's any sort of ethical choice to make are so remote as to not really be worth considering. 99.9999% of the time, the correct choice when faced with an impending crash will be to brake as hard as the driving surface allows and steer to avoid obstacles as much as possible. In any case, tinkering and commons already intersect…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Per hour" is rather ridiculous. I'm talking about per crash . There are a couple million vehicle crashes in the US each year, so if it really is 99.9999%, that's two or three ethical crises per year here. Among a billion vehicles it would be maybe ten per year. And honestly I'd be surprised if it's that many. When have you ever heard of a crash where there was any kind of ethical dilemma in the response? People keep…
> I'm talking about the car's ethical choices in crashes, not the ethics of the programmers. There is no practical difference. Computers do what we tell them to do, whether what I tell it to do has a conditional in code (the computer chooses), or instead always chooses one option because I left that condition out is a completely irrelevant distinction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is certainly not a logical conclusion of my argument that all bureaucracies that interfere with the market ought to be abolished, or that the market should be free in all cases. My point was that in this particular case , the market would be a better way to solve the problem than a bureaucracy. Therefore, advocating the existence of some bureaucracies and not others does not contradict my argument, nor is it incon…
In general, while market dynamics are quite important, "the market" doesn't actually constitute a valid argument for anything (as said thing would happen anyway), and usually indicates an attempt to stubbornly ignore differing opinions. The point is that companies are already asking for state intervention to protect their products as being a creative endeavor. So this is no longer some noble two-party private transac…
Copyright and patent protection are not one-sided. Consumers benefit from them, because copyrights and patents incentivize the creation of things which would not have been created otherwise.
Many lifesaving medicines never would have been invented if pharmaceutical companies would not have been able to protect them via patents and get rich. Similarly, much of the music, movies, books, etc. that consumers enjoy never would have been created if their authors and publishers were not able to protect them via copyright, and thereby get rich.
A lot of medical, technological, and cultural progress has been made by people trying to get rich. Patents and copyrights are ingenious because they channel peoples' desire to get rich into outcomes that are overall beneficial to society. The benefits compensate for the market restrictions they accompany, and overall, patents and copyrights have made society better off than it would have been otherwise.
Finally, what responsibilities do you think companies shirking? A responsibility to make products repairable by the consumers?
No such responsibility exists. Nor do you have the right to demand that a company design its products to include a feature you like, such as repairability. If you think such responsibilities or rights exist, prove it.
If you think they don't exist, but should be created, prove that the benefit they will bring to society will compensate for the market distortions they will produce (which will be quite significant if you think through all of the extra development, support, and liability costs that manufacturers will have to endure).
I used to do after-market repair medical equipment (MRI's, CT's, X-Ray, etc). One of the biggest frustrations was: $manufacturer wants $5000 to repair a CT. We'd charge $1000. We'd repair the CT, and it would pass all the built-in diagnostic tests. But then when the customer went to make a scan, a pop-up would appear saying "Unauthorized Repair! Call $manufacturer to fix!". $manufacturer repair tech would come in, pl…
So, if you do an after-market repair on a medical device, and a patient dies as a result of poor device performance, who does the FDA usually come after, you or the device manufacturer? I suspect the liability for medical device mess-ups is at least partially responsible for that situation. The tech who didn't run any diagnostics would be in serious shit if a patient died after he did nothing aside from typing in the…
FWIW, we did keep updated records on all the work that was done on the machine, for this exact reason. We also had to have records of passed diagnostics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is certainly not a logical conclusion of my argument that all bureaucracies that interfere with the market ought to be abolished, or that the market should be free in all cases. My point was that in this particular case , the market would be a better way to solve the problem than a bureaucracy. Therefore, advocating the existence of some bureaucracies and not others does not contradict my argument, nor is it incon…
Your post above does not say why this particular case is better handled by the market.
So, if people really want repairable devices, they would exist. The fact that they do not exist in large numbers indicates that consumers don't really want them very much. If consumers don't want them, why should companies be forced to manufacture them?
Requiring and enforcing repairability in products would therefore cause the government to take action to promote the personal preferences of a small number of consumers. That does not seem justifiable.
I used to do after-market repair medical equipment (MRI's, CT's, X-Ray, etc). One of the biggest frustrations was: $manufacturer wants $5000 to repair a CT. We'd charge $1000. We'd repair the CT, and it would pass all the built-in diagnostic tests. But then when the customer went to make a scan, a pop-up would appear saying "Unauthorized Repair! Call $manufacturer to fix!". $manufacturer repair tech would come in, pl…
3rd party repair + $manufacturer "re-activation" were still cheaper than the original cost quoted by the $manufacturer.
While I hate companies suing people for repairing their own properties, "right" has been overused so many places. What a sensational word! I have the "right" to not being sued! What? I would advocate companies certify other entities as repairing authorities or just do a good job themselves; providing the support. Of course it will reduce their product sale and that would be a huge deal to us consumers as well because…
> While I hate companies suing people for repairing their own properties, "right" has been overused so many places. I don't think it is outrageous to claim ownership to something that I bought. If a company does not want me to repair my own property, put a big "not for sale, only for lease" label on the package.
We are talking about our "right" to force other to do something rather than protecting ourselves from being forced.
It should be business issue, not an actual human right issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does not run off the road... And it pushes the break hard. What kind of ethical dilemma should it have on that example?
It has 0.5 seconds until collision so no hope of stopping. Push the brake all you want, unless that car gets back in its lane, people die.