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Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

xataka.com.mx

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Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#61

Post by gdulli »

HeckFeck wrote: post #51
aesthesia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, why don't they already do this? It's totally feasible to design a phone that will brick itself when your contract ends. There's no legal impediment to doing it either.

Don't give them the idea. I can imagine the reasoning: "We've had disposable cameras that were never truly the customer's property, may as well extend it to phones." It could be argued that Apple were already doing this. Remember their updates that knowingly slowed down older phones? They claimed it was for performance reasons, but nowhere informed the user of this practice... Src: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2…

I agree with that. The reason I'm on Android is because my only iPhone became unusably slow 2 years into its life after a new OS update came out. I've never retired any other phone I've had for performance reasons, and I've kept them 3-4 years

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#62

Post by compressedgas »

gnu8 wrote: post #44

I am unclear on what is meant by ROM. Don't most smartphones store their operating system on the same flash memory as user data? If it is all on one writable device, then ROM chips don't enter into this discussion.

The device contains memory that is only writable during ROM image flashing. The rest of the time this storage is not writable. So it is effectively ROM even if it isn't implemented by actual read only memory.

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#64

Post by hanche »

krapht wrote: post #58
jacquesm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disgusting.

You should read the actual court case. The online journalistic coverage is misleading and somewhat exaggerated. There are good reasons for why the case is not being appealed. https://youtu.be/xKEdi6vXMrU Here is one of the expert witnesses in the trial recanting his outage and explaining why Henrik was actually committing trademark infringement.

> There are good reasons for why the case is not being appealed.

I would assume the fact that this was a decision by the supreme court might be one such reason.

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#66

Post by throwlogon »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
izacus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice in automotive is there due to historical legacy - it would never be allowed in modern world. If anything, the carmakers have started to prevent you from doing your own repairs by demanding their own proprietary software to pair car controller modules. That software is licensed only to dealers and trying to use it outside those licensed conditions is a DMCA violation. With BMW pioneering car microtransact…

Well, fuck BMW then.

For many reasons. Anecdotally every BMW owner I know is constantly taking their car in for repairs.

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#67

Post by izacus »

throwlogon wrote: post #66
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, fuck BMW then.

For many reasons. Anecdotally every BMW owner I know is constantly taking their car in for repairs.

They were also the only ones charging yearly fee to add CarPlay client to their infotainment.

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#68

Post by text70 »

class4behavior wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Norwegian decision is a travesty as presented here, how can a repair infringe on a trademark and how on Earth did that not lead to an appeal. Using aftermarket parts is a well established practice in automotive, I see absolutely no reason why that would not extend to phones. Are they going to demand cars are only repaired with OEM parts as well?

>The Norwegian judges made the final decision purely assessing trademark violations on these screens, based on obscure and technical details that are entirely invisible to consumers (...) while Huseby still maintains they were refurbished. (...) >As Huseby puts it, Apple uses intellectual property law as a “weapon” by putting multiple logos and QR-codes on each component part of its screens, knowing that the Chinese…

They are treating this as if the phones are modern day tally sticks. What that amounts to is basically allowing private "taxation".

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#69

Post by matheusmoreira »

gspr wrote: post #29
anonms-coward wrote: post #13

It seems stallman had the foresight to predict things like this in 1997. I think the days where one needs to be licensed to use a debugger might not be far away.

> I think the days where one needs to be licensed to use a debugger might not be far away. GNU/Linux and the BSDs have never before looked so essential to the survival of computing as we know it.

What good is Linux and free software if the hardware won't let us run the programs we want? Computers could ship with a preconfigured Linux distribution that does all sorts of abusive things and since we wouldn't have the cryptographic keys to the machine it's impossible to do anything about it.

In the future, all computers could very well be just like video game consoles: devices which refuse to run software not cryptographically signed by their true owners. Software development kits are restricted to corporations and likely provised under strict licenses and NDAs. Users are supposed to just consume content within the narrow context defined by corporations. We're not supposed to create or change anything. They don't want us to be able to run software they don't approve of.

Re: Repairing your smartphone or installing a ROM will now be a crime in Mexico

#70

Post by jccooper »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
class4behavior wrote: post #20

This is an unfortunate win against the right to repair, which is a concerning issue everywhere around the world. Just recently, in Norway its last court instance found a repair shop in breach of Apple's trademark as they used imported third-party displays. This stifles competition as corporations are in control for how long hardware or software remain usable and who can provide alternative solutions. In the US this t…

That Norwegian decision is a travesty as presented here, how can a repair infringe on a trademark and how on Earth did that not lead to an appeal. Using aftermarket parts is a well established practice in automotive, I see absolutely no reason why that would not extend to phones. Are they going to demand cars are only repaired with OEM parts as well?

That case was not quite that simple. It involved import of third-party refurbished/remanufactured parts still bearing the Apple logo (because they contained some original Apple parts). This is clearly problematic, and something auto parts manufacturers are well aware of. I buy many auto parts clearly made on the same mold as factory parts, but with the logo always removed--sometimes even just ground off.

The defendant in this case was aware of the problem and tried to solve it via blacking out the logo with a marker and describing the provenance of the part during the sales process. One can differ on whether these were sufficient measures, and perhaps note that Apple is making it extra hard to remove their logos, but restricting third parties from selling products I didn't make with my logo on it is fairly fundamental to trademark law.

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