7 ms·

See the section titled “What the Magnuson-Moss Act Does Not Require” of the FTC’s “Businessperson’s Guide to Federal Warranty Law”[1] to understand why this is

See the section titled “What the Magnuson-Moss Act Does Not Require” of the FTC’s “Businessperson’s Guide to Federal Warranty Law”[1] to understand why this is not even close to “enforcing right to repair”. Aside from the fact that the FTC can’t enforce a right to repair law that doesn’t exist, the promise to enforce the Magnuson-Moss Act doesn’t even scratch the surface of what right to repair aims to accomplish. For example, farmers who have famously campaigned for right to repair for years (decades?) aren’t covered by the Act because their equipment is for commercial, not consumer, use. Edit: Even though I think it’s beyond ridiculous to paint this as “right to repair” I am absolutely going to report Microsoft’s Xbox to the FTC for their egregious Magnuson-Moss violations. Maybe that stupid sticker will finally disappear. [1]https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/businesspersons-guide-federal-warranty-law https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/bus...

donmcronald 5y ago
People have no idea how nasty serialization of parts is going to get if it isn't stopped by new legislation. You'll be lucky if you don't have to buy your socks and shoes from the same vendor in 2030 :-(
- dataflow 5y ago
  The issue isn't merely the same vendor, but having to buy parts bundled together. Good luck replacing your hard drive/RAM/whatever separately from the rest of your machine without blessing from the manufacturer.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Isn’t this already the case with Macs and their SSDs tied to the disk controller? Add in stacked memory being unreplaceable and impossible to upgrade. The upgrade path is to throw away the entire machine and buy a new one.
    - dataflow 5y ago
      Apple has been a particularly notable offender of R2R. Others have been (and will continue to be) following suit.
    - nomel 5y ago
      But this is the inevitable, and desired, future of integrated circuits, with more and more being bundled into the SoC. Integration has always had, and will continue to have, very real and desirable benefits to the consumer.
  - eclipxe 5y ago
    Ehhh...I mean with the way things are evolving - it is very likely your long term storage, short term storage, and CPU will all be on the same chip/package. Expecting to be able to replace the components individually will largely be a relic of the past. I see it more as the evolution of overall computing. I mean in the early ages of computers you could replace individual transistors...then you could replace individual logic blocks...a new adder! Etc...as the technology shrunk and become more integrated, our concept of a "computer" evolves. Legislating things like "a hard drive and ram must be separately replaceable" will sound as implausible in a few years as "each transistor needs to be individually serviceable" does today.
    - dataflow 5y ago
      Sure, that's why nobody suggested legislation be written about hard drive and RAM replacement in particular.
  - throwawaycuriou 5y ago
    A curious counterexample of this that's existed for decades is the motherboard. Once one part breaks on that you're throwing out a lot of functioning parts. I've often wondered why the boundaries were defined where they are for its responsibilities. What was it like building PCs before the concept of a the current motherboard architecture existed?
    - ziml77 5y ago
      I'd be surprised if you couldn't get the parts to repair a normal desktop motherboard. But as far as I know there aren't really any repair shops that work on stuff like that. Likely because the motherboards in most desktops are fairly cheap and easy to replace. On laptops, the main board is the most expensive part. More so ever since everything started being soldered on instead of socketed. Maybe the solution is to getting people to repair desktop motherboards instead of tossing them is to turn the cost to the environment of generating e-waste into an actual monetary cost. (Though I can't say I know how you'd do that since making e-waste disposal cost money will mean that people will just dump that stuff in the normal trash)
    - bradstewart 5y ago
      I've replaced many VRMs, capacitors, etc, over the years--even a PCIe socket I melted once. It's been a few years since my overclocking days where I'd burn this stuff out, but it was pretty easy to replace most things on those boards, assuming you were semi-capable with a soldering iron.
R0b0t1 5y ago
The commercial exception is very strange. So I can simply say my product is intended for commercial use only and then ignore the law, regardless of actual end use? Is this the real reason why "commercial grade" is a thing?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 5y ago
  Consumer protection is not really concerned with B2B power struggles.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  The premise is that consumers do not have the resources or leverage to adequately protect themselves (before and after purchase) from businesses. The premise doesn't always match the reality that imbalance still often exists. "commercial grade" is usually just marketing BS.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>I am absolutely going to report Microsoft’s Xbox to the FTC for their egregious Magnuson-Moss violations. Maybe that stupid sticker will finally disappear I sell video games and consoles for a living, and probably repair about 20-30 of them each month. Based on my experience, the reasons that Microsoft don't want you poking around in your Xbox when it's under warranty are completely valid. For any console that hasn't been tampered with, the fault is almost always one of only two or three things that can be diagnosed nearly instantly and repaired in around 15-30 minutes with a near-100% success rate. For a console that has been tampered with by an end-user, suddenly the list of things that could have gone wrong multiplies by an order of magnitude. The diagnostic procedure goes from a simple 1:1 mapping of symptom to fix to a broad tree of debugging steps. The total process can easily take multiple hours and end up nowhere, depending on how many YouTube videos and Reddit threads the previous owner followed blindly. Of course, the consumer is not going to admit that they're an idiot who transformed their console from a simple fix to something that's beyond economic repair, so either Microsoft has to provide them with a brand new machine or they will face legal action/scathing reviews online. Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do?
- gchamonlive 5y ago
  > Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do? Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Stickers are much more cultural than actually preventing damage. Furthermore, you can have stickers that decay over time and void your warranty without you even touching them (those nefarious apple humidity stickers for instance). It is entertaining to see Steve from gamer's nexus bashing warranty stickers at every opportunity.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    > Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Soon that will be a bad example! Cars are quickly moving in this terrible direction. You used to be able to wrench them yourself, but every model year there is less and less serviceable by your friendly shade-tree mechanic. If the manufacturers are not stopped, we'll soon need to take our cars to the "Authori$ed Repair" centers or Dealer$hips to perform even basic maintenance.
asiachick 5y ago
In other words, it's possible someone at Wired was paid or duped into making an article that suggests "It's all good now, no need to keep fighting for the right to repair"
lordlimecat 5y ago
Is the sticker actually a violation of Magnusson-Moss? They cannot enforce what the sticker says, but lying is not necessarily illegal.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  It’s not necessarily a Magnuson-Moss violation (though it could be, if repair service and parts aren’t provided for free) but because the “warranty void if removed” is always untrue it’s an “unfair or deceptive business practice” prohibited by Section 5 of the FTC Act.

donmcronald 5y ago

People have no idea how nasty serialization of parts is going to get if it isn't stopped by new legislation. You'll be lucky if you don't have to buy your socks and shoes from the same vendor in 2030 :-(

dataflow 5y ago
The issue isn't merely the same vendor, but having to buy parts bundled together. Good luck replacing your hard drive/RAM/whatever separately from the rest of your machine without blessing from the manufacturer.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Isn’t this already the case with Macs and their SSDs tied to the disk controller? Add in stacked memory being unreplaceable and impossible to upgrade. The upgrade path is to throw away the entire machine and buy a new one.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    Apple has been a particularly notable offender of R2R. Others have been (and will continue to be) following suit.
  - nomel 5y ago
    But this is the inevitable, and desired, future of integrated circuits, with more and more being bundled into the SoC. Integration has always had, and will continue to have, very real and desirable benefits to the consumer.
- eclipxe 5y ago
  Ehhh...I mean with the way things are evolving - it is very likely your long term storage, short term storage, and CPU will all be on the same chip/package. Expecting to be able to replace the components individually will largely be a relic of the past. I see it more as the evolution of overall computing. I mean in the early ages of computers you could replace individual transistors...then you could replace individual logic blocks...a new adder! Etc...as the technology shrunk and become more integrated, our concept of a "computer" evolves. Legislating things like "a hard drive and ram must be separately replaceable" will sound as implausible in a few years as "each transistor needs to be individually serviceable" does today.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    Sure, that's why nobody suggested legislation be written about hard drive and RAM replacement in particular.
- throwawaycuriou 5y ago
  A curious counterexample of this that's existed for decades is the motherboard. Once one part breaks on that you're throwing out a lot of functioning parts. I've often wondered why the boundaries were defined where they are for its responsibilities. What was it like building PCs before the concept of a the current motherboard architecture existed?
  - ziml77 5y ago
    I'd be surprised if you couldn't get the parts to repair a normal desktop motherboard. But as far as I know there aren't really any repair shops that work on stuff like that. Likely because the motherboards in most desktops are fairly cheap and easy to replace. On laptops, the main board is the most expensive part. More so ever since everything started being soldered on instead of socketed. Maybe the solution is to getting people to repair desktop motherboards instead of tossing them is to turn the cost to the environment of generating e-waste into an actual monetary cost. (Though I can't say I know how you'd do that since making e-waste disposal cost money will mean that people will just dump that stuff in the normal trash)
  - bradstewart 5y ago
    I've replaced many VRMs, capacitors, etc, over the years--even a PCIe socket I melted once. It's been a few years since my overclocking days where I'd burn this stuff out, but it was pretty easy to replace most things on those boards, assuming you were semi-capable with a soldering iron.

R0b0t1 5y ago

The commercial exception is very strange. So I can simply say my product is intended for commercial use only and then ignore the law, regardless of actual end use? Is this the real reason why "commercial grade" is a thing?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 5y ago
Consumer protection is not really concerned with B2B power struggles.
colechristensen 5y ago
The premise is that consumers do not have the resources or leverage to adequately protect themselves (before and after purchase) from businesses. The premise doesn't always match the reality that imbalance still often exists. "commercial grade" is usually just marketing BS.

AussieWog93 5y ago

>I am absolutely going to report Microsoft’s Xbox to the FTC for their egregious Magnuson-Moss violations. Maybe that stupid sticker will finally disappear I sell video games and consoles for a living, and probably repair about 20-30 of them each month. Based on my experience, the reasons that Microsoft don't want you poking around in your Xbox when it's under warranty are completely valid. For any console that hasn't been tampered with, the fault is almost always one of only two or three things that can be diagnosed nearly instantly and repaired in around 15-30 minutes with a near-100% success rate. For a console that has been tampered with by an end-user, suddenly the list of things that could have gone wrong multiplies by an order of magnitude. The diagnostic procedure goes from a simple 1:1 mapping of symptom to fix to a broad tree of debugging steps. The total process can easily take multiple hours and end up nowhere, depending on how many YouTube videos and Reddit threads the previous owner followed blindly. Of course, the consumer is not going to admit that they're an idiot who transformed their console from a simple fix to something that's beyond economic repair, so either Microsoft has to provide them with a brand new machine or they will face legal action/scathing reviews online. Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do?

gchamonlive 5y ago
> Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do? Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Stickers are much more cultural than actually preventing damage. Furthermore, you can have stickers that decay over time and void your warranty without you even touching them (those nefarious apple humidity stickers for instance). It is entertaining to see Steve from gamer's nexus bashing warranty stickers at every opportunity.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Soon that will be a bad example! Cars are quickly moving in this terrible direction. You used to be able to wrench them yourself, but every model year there is less and less serviceable by your friendly shade-tree mechanic. If the manufacturers are not stopped, we'll soon need to take our cars to the "Authori$ed Repair" centers or Dealer$hips to perform even basic maintenance.

asiachick 5y ago

In other words, it's possible someone at Wired was paid or duped into making an article that suggests "It's all good now, no need to keep fighting for the right to repair"

lordlimecat 5y ago

Is the sticker actually a violation of Magnusson-Moss? They cannot enforce what the sticker says, but lying is not necessarily illegal.

elliekelly 5y ago
It’s not necessarily a Magnuson-Moss violation (though it could be, if repair service and parts aren’t provided for free) but because the “warranty void if removed” is always untrue it’s an “unfair or deceptive business practice” prohibited by Section 5 of the FTC Act.