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Right to repair feels like it's a battle of who owns a product after it is bought. Everyone wanting to operate their business in the way SaaS or subscription s
by blobbers 4y ago
Right to repair feels like it's a battle of who owns a product after it is bought.
Everyone wanting to operate their business in the way SaaS or subscription service is really annoying.
Photoshop gets jealous of saas numbers so they put out the creative cloud.
Printer companies authenticate their ink cartridges.
Coffee makers only accept their own branded cartridges.
Right to repair, right to modify, it all comes down to ownership.
- BoorishBears 4y agoAuthenticating cartridges is so 2008 Leasing ink on a per page basis is in now: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/cv/instantink https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/cv/instantink
- weq 4y agobananas!!!
- blobbers 4y agoThe ink disappears if you don’t pay your subscription fee. It’s amazing libraries have managed to stay true to their goal and not charge membership fees. Should authors be getting residuals on every read of their book in the same way every Netflix play of a movie pays an actor???
- petre 4y agoThe movie industry would cease to be an industry otherwise. It would become all indie movies, Cannes and the like and maybe some state sponsored propaganda. So no Spiderman or X-men for you, just movies about real life, Sweedish movies about the super rich getting marooned on an island after a storm and ending up at the mercy of the housekeeper.
- lelanthran 4y ago> Sweedish movies about the super rich getting marooned on an island after a storm and ending up at the mercy of the housekeeper. TBH, I'd see that.
- tingol 4y agoUhm, that would be great. Not having my Cinema filled with comic book (or whatever the flavor of the decade is) trash but quality passion projects from people that actually care about art sounds amazing. And most money would go to actual artists and not faceless mega corps.
- blobbers 4y agoDid not realize that; I think you likely know more about movie economics than I do. Why only movies about real life? (or said swedish maroon stories)
- nebula8804 4y agoThis is actually not such a bad idea for liquid inks. Terrible idea for toner though. Those liquid cartridges are always drying up essentially causing you to throw away money you spent. For this type of cartridge getting the cartridge replaced frequently puts the burden on them and saves you money if you don't print much. For toner it makes more sense to just buy the cartridge and hold on to it.
- BoorishBears 4y agoI mean the cartridges could just be designed to last longer, I'd bet you their high capacity models for this program do since now the cost benefit leans towards that...
- chongli 4y agoThat would require some incredible chemistry and engineering. It's just a fact of life that liquids are volatile substances and not shelf-stable once the seal is broken. Toner is superior because it's an inert solid powder.
- BoorishBears 4y agoYou realize there's options between "lasts indefinitely" and "dries up if you don't use it every day" right? Even within different lines from the same manufacturers I remember that varied because of the design of the cartridge. And similarly commercial printers would be more aggressive about automatically ensuring the cartridge ran every once in a while than home ones. All things they could (and probably did) tweak when moving to this model
- chongli 4y agoIt's not the cartridge that's the problem, it's the print head. Inkjet printheads have a large number of tiny nozzles that are fed by tiny lines (which resemble a ribbon cable). The Achilles' heel of the technology is that ink can dry up inside the lines and the nozzles and destroy the print head, necessitating replacement. To combat this printer manufacturers have designed the printers with automatic ink-flushing routines which keep them clear of drying ink. This wastes a lot of ink if you aren't printing every day. It's fine to want something better. I, personally, gave up on inkjet printers and switched to laser a long time ago. I have only ever been an occasional printer but I always want a printer available for when I need it. I have no interest in photo printing either, so a laser is perfect for my needs. Perhaps you have different needs. I can imagine it being very frustrating if you want to print the occasional photo and are always finding the ink cartridge empty or dried up. Personally, if I wanted to occasionally print a photo I would probably get it done professionally rather than waste money on yet another inkjet printer.
- toss1 4y agoEXACTLY If you don't want anyone else to work on your products, then you need to only rent or lease them out. If you claim to "sell" the product to the customer, then THE CUSTOMER OWNS IT, and should be able to do whatever T.F. they want, including decompiling, reverse-engineering, breaking locks or codes, etc.. The only thing they should not be able to do is manufacture and resell copies of it. And, if you only lease/rent your product, you are responsible for disposal at the end. Seems like a reasonable distinction and deal to make. Acting like you are selling something when you are really only leasing it out, and withholding information and rights to the object is dishonest. Just because it is profitable does not mean that it is right. This needs to be codified into law.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoYeah the word "sell" and "buy" is false advertising right there, it's very ingrained that buying and selling imply absolute ownership, all the way down to chattel slavery, where "buy" and "sell" are insulting. Very very ingrained.
- Spivak 4y agoWhat you’re describing is already the case, the law you want is that people who sell things have to give you the keys, tools, specs, and parts necessary to do the modifying.
- joshmarinacci 4y agoNot true in the US. Thanks to the DMCA it is illegal to break encryption on objects you own.
- toss1 4y agoCan you please tell me in what country that is the case, and to what extent? What do they do about vendors that don't cooperate, like John Deere, or Sony? (Serious question, not sarc. It definitely is not the case in the US, and the country that already has such laws might be a good indicator of a good place to move).
- amelius 4y agoThe problem is products that are tethered by the manufacturer. This tethering should not be allowed. Anything that a manufacturer does to a product after it is sold should in principle be possible through another party.
- soared 4y agoThis only makes sense if a company is no longer liable for damages if a product has been modified. Then we need to define for every product what is considered a modification, and figure out how to factually determine that. It’s not as simple as it seems.
- analog31 4y agoAt least in the case of motorcycles, they are close enough to cars (and bicycles) that there is probably an extensive history of case law and perhaps even regulations already in place. Car makers are obligated to provide parts to third party mechanics and even consumers. So this is not uncharted legal territory. If nothing else, other industries wrestling with right-to-repair should probably assume that they can model themselves after the automotive industry. There are other industries that have long traditions of repairability, such as home appliances, gas powered garden equipment, and so forth. I've repaired most of the appliances in my house at some point. I've found replacement parts to be readily available and not exorbitant.
- asiachick 4y agoI don't know where to draw the line but assuming self driving cars are a thing they'll arguably need constant new data and constant updates so unlike most cars to date, they aren't things you'll just be able to buy and the sever your connection with the company you bought it from. Motorcycles are probably different for the time being. Not expecting people to really want self driving motorcycles. Like I said, I don't really know where to draw the line. I hate that my multi-colored LED lights have an app that talks to a server. I don't run that app, but my iPhone tells me I need up update the lights and to do so I need to get a 3rd party app. Is that another thing where regulation should require being able to update without an account or is the fact that they had to spend time making the update mean I need some kind of relationship with them?
- userbinator 4y agoI fully agree that this is just one of the many battles in a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely. People call it a conspiracy theory but the trend is very clear to see, and has been accelerating for the past few decades. Thus it is good to see some opposition showing up. "You will own nothing, and be happy." -WEF
- fabianhjr 4y agoIn discourse big capital has done well to erase the distinction between personal and private property. Big capital has been fighting to strengthen private property and eroding personal property. - ¿Drawing a schematic of a thing you own for repair? - ¿Creating a spare part to repair a thing you own? Those infringe on companies private property so you must have no rights over your personal property. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Personal_property#/Personal_versus_private_property https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Personal_property#/Personal_vers...
- pitaj 4y agoI would say that intellectual property is not part of private property. There's also no easy distinction made between private and personal property, and any attempt to define one is nonsensical. There are endless examples where something is both personal and private property, or rapidly switched between the two. Yet another aspect of Marxist theory that fails to hold up to even the lightest scrutiny.
- LocalH 4y agoIntellectual property is a misnomer. The word “property” contains some very physical connotations that ideas and media are not bound by. Unfortunately, too many powerful people have a vested interest in continuing to use the word “property” in conjunction with non-physical items.
- sacrosancty 4y agoI think that's a bit of cultural bias there. Imagine a society without personal property, like some small tribe. Wouldn't they see our property rights as artificial? Maybe their "true" property would be something we don't even recognize like their honor or wife or other things they don't want to share with each other. I have a wheelbarrow in my yard that I'm not using. Why can't anyone else use it? There's no natural reason why they couldn't. It's just there, they can take it and wheel dirt around in it. I might no even know it's happening, but my property rights say they're not allowed to. I think the main feature of property is to disallow others from using it in a way that restricts your own use. For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you. I wonder how you feel about medical information being free to copy? That's not property either, is it? Are you happy with no moral rights for subjects of photographs and no rights to privacy of medical information? Should patients "own" their medical records or should hospitals be free to use them however they like?
- FPGAhacker 4y agoI don’t disagree but this is about warranties. Apple etc make it difficult to just repair, because they glue stuff together and invent weird screws that need specialized tools. Just hard to repair. This legal action is about Harley saying your warranty is void if you have repairs done through a third party. I mean the law says whatever it says and that’s the end of it, but it sounds like crap to me. If I sell you a widget and I guarantee it’ll work for 5 years as long as you have me repair it instead of bob the janitor, I have a hard time seeing the problem. Frankly I think if you have bob the janitor repair your widget it’s now on bob to provide a warranty. But what I think doesn’t matter, whatever the law requires is.
- NonNefarious 4y agoThat's not the point at all. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty act arose out of scams perpetrated by car manufacturers, who tried to invalidate warranties unless you bought "Ford" oil or "Chevrolet" tires. This goes beyond third-party repairs. The law says the company can't invalidate a warranty even if the user MODIFIED the product in question, unless the modification caused the issue for which the customer is seeking warranty service. So the problem is this attempt to invalidate an entire warranty because of irrelevant actions the owner might have taken.
- rasz 4y agoIs a concept of consumer rights really that alien to you? >I guarantee it’ll work for 5 years as long as you have me repair it instead of bob the janitor Its called a lease aka I dont own a thing, I just pay rent. https://www.gmfinancial.com/en-us/business-financing/business-lease.html https://www.gmfinancial.com/en-us/business-financing/busines...
- FPGAhacker 4y agoI’m not saying you can’t have bob the janitor fix it. I’m just not going to guarantee bob the janitor didn’t screw the whole thing up. But knock yourself out, have bob fix whatever. It’s your widget.
- 4y ago
- bobthepanda 4y agoAt least in the consumer foods space, Juicero put paid to going too far in this direction when the product reviewers found you could just as easily manually squish the bags to make juice.
- mcv 4y agoI don't think that's the issue in this case, though. This is about a more subtle issue. From what I understand from the article, Harley and Westinghouse aren't stopping you from repairing your own stuff, it's just that doing so voids their warranty. Presumably on the logic that you may have made changes that they can't be expected to support, or inexpert repairs could have caused damage. And there's some logic to that, but it ignores the fact that if the item is still under warranty, those independent repairs should have been done under warranty too. (I guess emergency repairs where the owner can't afford to wait for the official repairs are the primary reason for such repairs?) And also that such repairs could have been done expertly or have been very limited, so revoking warranty for them may still be unjustified. But I'd say there's a bit of grey area here. I don't think you can expect manufacturers to clean up other people's mess for free under warranty.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoThe case is really about abusive restrictions on warranties by attempting to void warranties if repairs were made by independent dealers. I think it was deemed abusive partly because independent dealers are deemed skilled professionals. But I also thing that it might not have been a restriction on the "right to repairs" if warranty had been void if you had tried to repair yourself (and perhaps they do have such a clause as well).
- BiteCode_dev 4y agoYes, all the companies are rent seeking. They don't want having to keep producing value to deserve the money, they want to just cash in, indefinitely, like nobles used to do.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoLeft out, walled gardens for phones.