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New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

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Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#111

Post by hughrr »

hutzlibu wrote: post #110
hughrr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you look at the actual current state of the repair industry it’d scare you off the idea fairly quickly. There are very few competent people and even fewer business where competence is promoted. I’m going to slap Rossman here as well who does some pretty scary hack jobbery and passes it off as a fit for purpose repair rather than a data recovery last resort.

Well, I know my part of bad stories, too. But I think, with removing barriers, the repair industry should improve and rather decline.

Perhaps I’m old and cynical but we’ll see if that actually occurs. I admire your optimism though :)

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#112

Post by wiz21c »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102
joshspankit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve used a grey argument. Apple themselves have argued that one of the reasons they have to limit repair is for public safety (someone could have a battery explode if they pierce it, for example), whereas we could also argue the other side: that if someone modifies their own medical device and gets hurt because of it that they legally only hurt themselves because they had the right to make that choice. IMO it come…

> IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual? This is a really great way to put it, and it applies broadly to so many fundamental disagreements in the tech world. I firmly believe it’s better to trust the individual—so I think users should be able to sideload iOS apps (o…

> IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual?

In the US, I think, some companies sell weapons and nobody seems to care if people can hurt themselves with them.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#113

Post by squarefoot »

xroche wrote: post #28

If I loosely quote Louis Rossmann, one of the issue of right to repair is that more and more companies (Apple leading the trend) are using slightly modified chips from manufacturers, and them make then sign contracts that prevent any part selling to anyone. So technically even you can replace those chips, you can't buy them. And next Apple if putting serial numbers to prevent that even if you get the part, you will h…

> So technically even you can replace those chips, you can't buy them.

They don't even need to resort to this. If the chip requires programming, they keep the chip protected from read and the code locked and bingo: you can buy an identical one but it won't work without the original code. Pretty much any digital product in existence works like that today. One could have the entire BOM of an iPhone available, but without their iron level firmware, all programmable chips would just sit there doing nothing thus making the device unusable.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#114

Post by ping_pong »

vikingerik wrote: post #71
myfavoritedog wrote: post #52

4. Excludes motor vehicle manufacturers, manufacturer of motor vehicle equipment, or motor vehicle dealers and medical devices or a digital electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings. For all the bravado about standing up to powerful interests, this shows you who the most powerful interests are in that space.

Let's interpret this the right way: this doesn't mean "we're not going to handle motor vehicles or medical", it means "motor vehicles and medical are out of scope for this measure." They can be handled separately, and that's reasonable given the greater safety concerns of those industries.

The best way to kill something is by saying "yes, we'll get to that next, don't worry!" and then never get to it.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#115

Post by waych »

Causality1 wrote: post #86
fitchjo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I being a bit naive to think that this has more to do with public safety? In theory, there is some increased level of regulation/review of the car and medical device manufacturers that limits the risk these repairs aren’t done to an appropriate standard? You can make a trade-off between standard of repair and price for your iPhone that only impacts the device, but cars and medical devices not properly repaired cou…

Would you rather have amateur repairs being done by someone who has access to proper documentation or by someone who does not?

This assumes that the first party seller is competent, motivated and capable of using their first party documents to good effect performing repairs. Consider the Apple Genius bar for an easy counter example.

edit: may have misinterpreted what you wrote. Nobody should have to have amateurs perform repairs, whether they are first party or not.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#116

Post by sneak »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102
joshspankit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve used a grey argument. Apple themselves have argued that one of the reasons they have to limit repair is for public safety (someone could have a battery explode if they pierce it, for example), whereas we could also argue the other side: that if someone modifies their own medical device and gets hurt because of it that they legally only hurt themselves because they had the right to make that choice. IMO it come…

> IMO it comes down to this: do we advocate for laws that give companies the ability to decide what is right/safe for the public, or do we advocate for laws that reflect trust in the individual? This is a really great way to put it, and it applies broadly to so many fundamental disagreements in the tech world. I firmly believe it’s better to trust the individual—so I think users should be able to sideload iOS apps (o…

I agree that individuals should control their own devices.

I also agree with Apple's implicit claim that if iOS users could sideload apps, millions of idiot iOS users would get their devices owned after they followed some "follow these seven steps to get free $POPULAR_MOBILE_GAME tokens!" guide they found on the web, making the platform less trustworthy overall.

Apple makes a good argument that buying an iPhone is also buying, in a sense, a remote managed security service for the device at the same time. The net effect of this is that millions of people now have devices mostly free of the most egregious malware (and it's limited to just spyware, delivered via the App Store). For most users, this is a better state of affairs (at least in peacetime, or outside of China/Vietnam/Russia/etc).

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#117

Post by avs733 »

myfavoritedog wrote: post #52

4. Excludes motor vehicle manufacturers, manufacturer of motor vehicle equipment, or motor vehicle dealers and medical devices or a digital electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings. For all the bravado about standing up to powerful interests, this shows you who the most powerful interests are in that space.

These are also two classes of consumer facing product that are most regulated and likely to contain electronics

(I'm excluding cribs...because my partner laughed at me when I suggested building our crib and told me that was fine as long as I followed all the rules)

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#118

Post by squarefoot »

Can anyone comment on this please? (from the nysenate.gov link in the article)

"This bill require original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to make diag- nostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment available to independent repair providers and consumers if such parts and repair information are also available to OEM authorized repair providers."

This seems to imply that if something is being sold as non repairable, it will continue to be, since there would be no authorized repair providers.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#119

Post by cronix »

squarefoot wrote: post #118

Can anyone comment on this please? (from the nysenate.gov link in the article) "This bill require original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to make diag- nostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment available to independent repair providers and consumers if such parts and repair information are also available to OEM authorized repair providers. " This seems to imply that if something is being…

Your take sounds right. Like if Apple replaces phone screens at an Apple facility, they must also make the screens (and supporting equipment) available to other parties. If they don't replace screens, then they don't have to make them available.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#120

Post by znpy »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #106
fitchjo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I being a bit naive to think that this has more to do with public safety? In theory, there is some increased level of regulation/review of the car and medical device manufacturers that limits the risk these repairs aren’t done to an appropriate standard? You can make a trade-off between standard of repair and price for your iPhone that only impacts the device, but cars and medical devices not properly repaired cou…

Louis Rossman gave an example which I believe really happened. A surgery chair that cost tens of thousands of dollars needed a new riser motor. Just an electric motor to move the chair up and down. But the company that makes the electric motor had an agreement with the chair manufacturer not to sell replacement parts. So the only recourse instead of replacing a $500 motor is to replace an entire surgery chair for ten…

> Given the cost of medical care in this country

although in this specific case in example, if the country you're talking about are the US, having access to the $500 motor only means wider profit margins for the hostpital, not necessarily lower bills for hospitalized people.

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