5 ms·

Why? Like I get why as a purchaser of things I would want to be able to downgrade, but under what premise is it desirable that the government should mandate how

• sslayer 5y ago
  The problem is when an upgrade limits or removes features from the time of first purchase - it's akin to changing the terms of an agreement after signing it.
  • AussieWog93 5y ago
    For what it's worth, Sony were successfully sued when they tried this with OtherOS. I don't know of any company that's been seriously challenged for disabling hacks, though.
    • wvenable 5y ago
      Sony paid some users $10 and OtherOS functionality was never restored. Not a good precedent for consumers.
• gaganyaan 5y ago
  > I get why as a purchaser of things I would want to <...> That's actually all you need to say. Anything else is pro-corporate bullshit that you've been spoonfed until you regurgitate it. The rebuttal to the rest of your comment is "just try and buy a TV that isn't actively hostile to the user". But that's a side conversation, the fundamental reality is that companies are legal fiction that don't have rights. They are allowed certain privileges we grant them, and we should not grant them the ability to screw over people that don't understand what the term firmware means.
  • devman0 5y ago
    You can, they are just a lot more expensive. The hostile features are a revenue stream and subsidize the cost of the product. Apparently a lot of users are okay with that.
    • fphhotchips 5y ago
      No, most users don't know. The frog was so well boiled it didn't even notice the water getting warm. The problem is that now things are what they are, changing them back is a behemoth effort without any motivation for those who could make it happen.
      • akerl_ 5y ago
        If part of your premise is that the majority of users has been tricked, you may want to consider the possibility that they just have different priorities than you.
  • akerl_ 5y ago
    I’d appreciate it if you’d not speculate as to my state of mind. I as a purchaser want all kinds of things; this doesn’t mean that I want the government to mandate that companies give them to me. In part that’s because the people who run and work at businesses also have free agency, and in part it’s because I don’t believe that government interference in commerce is a viable approach to getting what I want in the long term.
  • jjeaff 5y ago
    You are oversimplifying things. It sort of overlaps some of the vaccine requirement arguments or perhaps laws that require you lock up your guns. Not updating devices that are connected to the net can and does lead to vulnerabilities that allow huge botnets to be created and deployed against anyone else on the network. I say do what you want with your equipment if it isn't connected to the web. But if it is, you need to have some responsibility for it being used to harm others.
  • strangeattractr 5y ago
• wvenable 5y ago
  > under what premise is it desirable that the government should mandate how companies design and sell products? The premise that benefits individuals and society. The government already mandates how companies design and sell products. This isn't a radical concept. The reason cars get safer and cleaner every year is due to government regulation. The reason that instant coffee cannot be more than 50% bugs and twigs is government regulation. > If people don’t want to pay for gear that behaves in that way, they’re free to not buy it. Or we could just regulate it and then this consumer-hostile issue wouldn't exist.
  • akerl_ 5y ago
    Cars and coffee are regulated in ways that improve health and safety. What is the health and safety impact of not being able to run homebrew on my Nintendo Wii?
    • wvenable 5y ago
      What about environmental and first-sale issues? I have a piece of hardware tied to a company that went out business and it no longer functions. So I'm both deprived of my device and it's now e-waste. Apple preventing repairs? John Deere preventing repairs? These have real-world impacts.
    • popcube 5y ago
      maybe company can stop people's device will influence their monkey?
  • judge2020 5y ago
    > Or we could just regulate it and then this consumer-hostile issue wouldn't exist. But I specifically want a device that only runs code from another company. Why should the government say “only enterprises can establish this absolute security trust relationship with their hardware vendor”?
    • wvenable 5y ago
      Secure boot works fine on PCs -- it's not all or nothing.
• e2le 5y ago
  > but under what premise is it desirable that the government should mandate how companies design and sell products? The Government already does this and with great success, the ban on lead additives in paint would be one example. By that point, it's harmful effects were already known as early as 1786 (efforts to ban lead paint began around 1921) before it's ban in 1976 (US). Perhaps the free market just needed more time? Without government intervention, somehow I suspect we would still see lead paint continue to be bought and sold. I cannot imagine the unthinkable number of individuals that were fucked over through no fault of their own (learning disabilities, poor health, shortened lifespan) because we chose to continue to allow lead paint to be sold on the market. > I don’t see a coherent reason for the government to say “no, you can’t sell that”. What about the environment? By artificially reducing the lifespan of these devices, you're sending them to an early grave only to be unnecessarily replaced by a new device because the corporate overlords demand it. It's unnecessary churn and I'm not sure that we should demand that future generations carry the burden of our poor choices simply because we would prefer to wait until the free market fixes this mess (which may never happen). How long will that take? 10 years? More?
  • johncolanduoni 5y ago
    Lead paint has externalities that affect people other than the purchaser. What externalities does a Nintendo Switch not allowing firmware downgrades have?
  • charcircuit 5y ago
    How is provividing updates reducing the lifespan ofa device? Usually not having long term support of a device including security patches is seen as reducing the lifespan.
    • e2le 5y ago
      Sorry, that's what I meant to say.
    • shkkmo 5y ago
      > How is provividing updates reducing the lifespan ofa device? Nobody claims it does. If a manufacturer goes out of business ot decides to stop providing updates, you can be stuck with a piece of junk if you don't control your device. If a device is designed to only allow automatic updates direct from the manufacturer and you have no control over the version of software your device runs, your perfectly functional hardware can become a useless piece of junk. Since updates often further lock devices down to make it harder run your own software, being unable to revert older versions of the software on your device can directly prevent you from being able to modify your device to make it functional. This is all not just idle speculation, it happens all the time.
• Glyptodon 5y ago
  It seems like they're being allowed a software monopoly that reduces consumer choice and increasing consumer costs.
  • akerl_ 5y ago
    Who is being given a software monopoly? Nintendo controlling the software that runs on their hardware is not a monopoly.
    • account42 5y ago
      They are being granted a monopoly on the bits representing the software they created. That is literally what copyright is.
    • Glyptodon 5y ago
      Maybe a small one, but controlling all the software for a device is definitely a type of monopoly - Nintendo has 100% control of what's allowed and permitted to run on the hardware. If I want to sell Switch users software, I can't without Nintendo's blessing because they have complete control of the market.
      • akerl_ 5y ago
        That’s not really what a monopoly is, at least in any useful sense. Applebees has 100% control over the food that they put on plates inside Applebees, they can ban you from bringing in outside food and beverages. But we wouldn’t say that Applebees has a monopoly on anything. Nintendo has total control over the software that runs on their hardware. Their hardware model is similar to the model that my microwave has. People are welcome to try to DIY mod their Nintendo device the same way I can try to DIY mod my microwave, but that doesn’t mean the government ought to be putting a stop to Nintendo’s “monopoly” on how the hardware they build is built and imaged.
• michaelmrose 5y ago
  Virtually everything you own that was sold in the US had a wide variety of terms set by the US government on your behalf on how it was constructed, advertised, and sold. The question was never if the government should set terms it is what terms. You are also somehow envisioning the government as a separate entity having no relationship to the people as a whole that instead of literally already setting the entire ground rules in which our society exists somehow needs a very high bar to justify any interference whatsoever. The government is all of us and the only justification it requires is the people's interests. 99.999% of people aren't chicken farmers so if they demand cleaner chicken farms so the chicken they eat are less likely to give them the shits then cleaner farms it is and those who who don't like it can situate their farms somewhere else. 99.999% of people aren't Nintendo executives so if the people are smart enough to demand hardware they actually own then Nintendo is free to exit the entire US market. Pray we don't alter the deal further.
  • akerl_ 5y ago
    I can’t speak for other governments, but the US governments (both federal and state) derive their authority and their limitations from their contract with the people. You’d be hard pressed to find a constitutional scholar who believes the US Constitution stretches to grant the US government any power that it determines is in the people’s interests. Notably, one of the most fundamental principles of US government is specifically the notion that the majority, even a supermajority, can’t infringe on the rights of a minority. We’ve screwed this up in plenty of cases, but that doesn’t suggest that the underlying goal is invalid and we should steer into the skid.
    • michaelmrose 5y ago
      There is no right to unrestricted commerce. In many cases new restrictions don't even need new laws just new regulations drafted by bureaucracs defined in existing laws. You seem to believe that one must reach backwards to the constitution in order to justify any new restrictions on your freedoms in a nation where we have happily redefined commerce within a state as subject to regulation based on the commerce clause. Let alone the general welfare clause. In fact powers are so broadly construed that the only barrier is enumeration of a restriction in federal law and non violation of fundamental rights. You have no more fundamental right to sell a locked down device than to build a store without proper fire exits. We didn't need to wait for fire exits to be built and vote with our feet.
• njharman 5y ago
  > under what premise is it desirable that the government should mandate how companies design and sell products Under all circumstances in which the profit motive does not align with societies desires. Safety, health, discrimination, consumer rights, etc.