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"Right to repair" always seems a weak formulation. It's great to have "rights" but people don't always care to exercise them, and can be dissuaded from exercisi

"Right to repair" always seems a weak formulation. It's great to have "rights" but people don't always care to exercise them, and can be dissuaded from exercising them. Right To Repair sounds nice. It alliterates. But of course we have a right to repair our stuff. That goes without saying. What's really at issue is a duty upon manufacturer's not to obstruct the four R's, to; - refuse - reuse - repair - recycle Let's get specific, instead of a wishy "rights" formulation. No technology must ever by soft-mandated or made a dependency so as to preclude an ethical, environmental or economic choice to not partake in its use, or to substitute other choices. No technology should be encumbered with locks, licenses or mechanisms that affect the post-sale rights of its owner to repurpose or modify as they see fit (all other safety and contention (RF) issues can be dealt with at a another layer of legislation and enforcement.) No impediment shall be made to the access, manufacture and distribution of spare parts or consumables, software updates, power supplies, connectors etc Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components.

neilv 4y ago
resell?
- recycledmatt 4y ago
  Yes, but generally this is protected by the First Sale Doctrine which allows you to resell stuff you already own.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    We’ll need to come back to the elephant in the room: software/video games.
    - recycledmatt 4y ago
      Those are licensed, not sold. This is one concern people have with Right to Repair - that the OEMs would just turn everything into a long term lease and you wouldn’t actually own your stuff any more. Then they can put whatever rules they want on it.
      - _aavaa_ 4y ago
        I agree. Right, but I don’t think that distinction is clear to most people. The next step will be the software. Having hardware you can repair is great, but if you can’t own the software that can run ontop of it you have a dead brick.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        If software is a critical component of an item, and you don't have basic control over that software, then you already don't "own" that item regardless of what the legal title says! Furthermore, if industry does dig their heels in and starts refusing to sell goods outright in favor of their retaining de jure ownership, then that is straight up anticompetitive and they should be prosecuted for it.
arcticbull 4y ago
The other one to call out is 'no impediment shall be made to preclude the use of third-party after-market components except where doing so could cause a serious risk of harm' And, as the peer comment says, precluding re-sale.
weberer 4y ago
>No technology must ever by soft-mandated or made a dependency so as to preclude an ethical, environmental or economic choice to not partake in its use, or to substitute other choices. This bill will be immediately killed by Microsoft's lobbyists. That's half their business strategy.
constantcrying 4y ago
The issue I see is that sometimes certain fabrication methods are neccessarry. Phones are glued shut, making disassembly difficult, but that glue also has a point, screws take up a lot of space and glue allows a water tight bond between components. Same with non user replacable batteries. It can be very difficult to distinguish between effective design decision and mallicious manufacturing.
- nkrisc 4y ago
  I don’t think that distinction necessarily needs to be made if the third-party repair industry is allowed to thrive. If getting your phone repaired and given new life was a common thing everyone did, Pennie’s that couldn’t be repaired or were expensive to repair might not sell as well. As it stands glueing the phone shut isn’t an issue for most consumers because they expect to throw away and buy a new phone every year or two.
  - constantcrying 4y ago
    The glue has a legitimiate purpose. I wouldn't have had my phone for 5 years without it being water tight. Third party repair being allowed to thrive (e.g. being allowed to buy parts) is something totally different to restricting good engineering practices.
    - nkrisc 4y ago
      Right, which is exactly the point I'm making. If third-party repair was common, consumers could decide if the advantages of having a phone glued together outweigh the advantages of a more repairable phone. My whole point was that the solution is not to force phones to be more repairable, but to stop manufacturers from strangling the repair industry and give consumers actual choice.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ericabiz 4y ago
  Most phones are not glued shut, including iPhones starting all the way back to 4/5. iPhone batteries are also not glued in. Source: We run independent repair shops.
reachableceo 4y ago
“Right to repair” is a succinct label / rallying cry for what you have outlined. All of the discussion i have seen seems to settle more or less around what you’ve outlined. I would hope that the text of the law would codify those requirements and ensure the longevity of our devices. Perhaps you can expand your comment a bit , into a blog post and send it to policy makers ?
- zdragnar 4y ago
  When you simplify things, you lose meaning. Beware letting "right to repair" become the next "organic"!
  - themitigating 4y ago
    There's USDA certified organic and they explain it all her https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-... I'm also not sure how you think we should refer to it?
    - greyhair 4y ago
      Oh there you go, spouting facts and information again.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      This misses my point. This all happened after the fact- organic was in wide use before it was regulated, and meant a great many different things. Here, right to repair (outside of NY) is not codified, and people are talking about it in many different ways, with different meanings. If we want to have it codified in a certain way, we cannot simply reduce what we are talking about to a catchphrase and hope that captures everything. We need to be specific in our lobbying of legislatures of what we want right to repair to mean. Per the USDA, organic farming does not mean zero synthetic pesticides (though they must be used with approval first). There are also different levels of organic: "100% Organic" applies to everything but the salt and water contents of a food item "Organic" means 95% of the non-salt and water ingredients must be organic "Made with organic" means only the specified ingredients are organic. If you don't want "Right to Repair" to mean that only 95% of your purchase is repairable, and touching the other 5% voids your warranty and lands you in jail for violating copyright, then now is the time to make 100% repairable be the definition while it is still not legally codified.
julianlam 4y ago
I'd argue that additional incentives (or punishments, if the carrot doesn't work) for manufacturers to use common parts would be welcome. I have a Samsung fridge/freezer with a broken shelf because the parts of the shelf were held together with an insufficiently strong plastic clip. Imagine my surprise when upon research I discovered the fridge was discontinued and the shelf was unique to the fridge. No other model had that shelf, it was like Samsung specifically used that particular plastic mold for this model purely to drive new appliance sales when it inevitably breaks.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I've gotten excellent utility out of my 3D printer for stuff like that.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Make sure to upload designs online... I frequently need to repair some small plastic thing - the latest being making a new piston for my bike pump. When it's a matter of 10 mins online and clicking print, it's great. But when I have to spend a few hours 3d modelling the exact shape, and then reprinting it 3 times because it's slightly wrong, the time-money tradeoff of just buying a new fridge isn't so good...
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      I do, but not every time. I got a DMCA takedown notice on one replacement part I designed. I challenged it and got it reinstated, but it left me a little bitter. Regarding spending hours on design... yeah, that part is a drag. I've done this enough times now that I'm just a lot faster than I used to be, and I also have a pretty good idea of what tiny portions of a design to print to do fit checks. But getting there certainly took some practice.
- dec0dedab0de 4y ago
  Sounds like a business opportunity. If a third party hasn't made any yet they likely will soon. One problem with encouraging common parts is that it may limit innovation, and it may also incentivize a manufacturer to keep a flawed design. It's just as likely that samsung realized the shelves in that model sucked and made a new one. I think it would be better to mandate manufacturers keep stock of replacement parts for X amount of years, and/or they must release design documentation for third parties to make parts.
thereddaikon 4y ago
What a weird thing to get hung up on.
- sodality2 4y ago
  Not when you constantly struggle to fix crappy tech products designed with planned obsolecense in mind. You're lucky to not have dealt with that, I suppose.
  - thereddaikon 4y ago
    I'm talking about their hangup over the term.
    - sodality2 4y ago
      Ah. I might tend to agree about the term, but when discussing a new right to repair law with my father, he said he thought it was not a good law to pass. I asked him if he knew what it was and he thought it was just giving customers the right to fix their devices. I told him about how it really meant providing diagnostic tools, manuals, selling replacement parts, stopping planned obsolescence, etc (aka no more roadblocks by manufacturers) and he immediately changed his whole view on right to repair. So it seems the name might be an obstacle to understanding it.
dalbasal 4y ago
"Right" is a rhetorical device. It doesn't usually mean something specific and clearly defined a priori. In context though, they do often gain specific and clearly defensible definitions. Take, "Free Speech." It's a right. It has history, and has accumulated specific meanings, precedents and such over the years. It's true that The Right itself doesn't tell us what to do about modern medium monopolies and social media platforms... but it does give us a starting point. We agree that the right exists, just not what it is. That's not nothing. Every possible approach has margins, edge cases, implementation difficulties, exceptions and mess. That's true for rights, duties and even minor legal codes, charters and ordinances. Even your examples... "Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary ..." Try turning that into an actively litigated something and you will find all the same problems. What about imports and trade agreement compatibility? What about competing standards. What about the ambiguity of "non-standard," "necessary" or "easy?" What counts and an impediment and how do these duties travel up the value chain? I'm not saying it's all hopeless, just that nothing is clean. Rights, as opposed to duties, are a core part of our political basis (liberalism). They have a better track record of (a) sticking around and (b) maintaining a moral basis. Duties (eg reporting duty) don't tend to work as well. They're more prone to becoming bureaucratic rulesets than an abstract basis for laws and/or regulation.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Actually, this is an issue in the Right-to-Repair movement, is that how R2R is defined actually depends on who you ask. For example, Louis Rossmann would not define R2R as containing "Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components." Also this definition is not legally possible anyway, as CPUs contain embedded fuses to contain unique security keys, serial number information, anti-rollback protections, prevent changing IMEI numbers (which would be fantastic for thieves), contain fixed radio calibration data, and so forth. For him, R2R is the ability to buy parts and use them - but it does not implement design obligations. iFixit wants design obligations in their version of R2R - but this broadens the scope and reduces the likelihood of passage in my view (as does the broadening of the scope of any movement or law). Meanwhile, you actually deal with another problem. The R2R movement loves to completely ignore the (very real) anti-theft and anti-counterfeiting benefits of part serialization. We are talking about a device with more counterfeit parts, more thefts, and more personal information at risk, than any other device ever created, which I think should count for something [1]. Also, while YouTube channels like Louis Rossmann gain my sympathy, they often completely ignore the widespread corruption within mobile phone repair stores, as has been documented elsewhere, somewhat misleading the audience into believing every store is as upright and honest as them when they broadly are not. As long as they keep ignoring that and pretending it is all about repair, instead of coming up with a compromise that promotes anti-theft and repairability, bills are going to be hamstrung. [1] This is also why I think comparing smartphone repair versus, say, dishwasher repair is a little disingenuous on the R2R side. "Why can't I swap parts on my phone, like I can on an appliance?" Well... which one is stolen more, which one has more counterfeit parts available, which one has information that could destroy your life if compromised, particularly if you are a journalist or just take certain photos of yourself? Pick three. Should repairability, necessarily, be treated the same then? I think that's an open debate that's not so easily won as the R2R dishwasher strawman. I don't want my Face ID sensor swapped out by a hostile government with a fake sensor so they can unlock my phone at will, for example.
- emsign 4y ago
  That's a valid objection. The question is whether preventing theft is a) a higher priority than let's say reducing prices and preventing electronic waste and b) whether prominance of smartphone theft hinges on the repairability of the devices. Or rather has just only professionalized the crime scene like with car theft. So while I think it's an intersting objection, I think it might miss the point.
bluGill 4y ago
> all other safety and contention (RF) issues can be dealt with at a another layer of legislation and enforcement. Make sure you write your congressmen about this. That manufactures feel like they are liable if someone modifies their control software is one of the reasons they oppose right to repair. The EPA is really pushing hard to make it impossible to modify engine ECUs - no diesel as manufactured in the past 15 years has been even capable of "rolling coal", and for around 15 years before then it was difficult to make that happen. However there are still a lot of modified trucks out there spewing visible particulates, all because someone decided to modify the programming. > Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components. Define a module in a rigorous way that I can apply. Seriously, parts have been welded together for ages, which turns two pieces of steel into one, were the two separate pieces a module before or not? With the right tools I can pull an IC apart and repair it - the labor is more than just making a new IC (assuming the original drawings still exist), but it is possible. Does that mean an IC is not a module? What about an IC soldered to a board that is then coated in a waterproof coating, screwed into a case - where is the module. This definition of module is critical to any debates on this, and I have no idea how you can objectively create a good definition that covers all cases.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  My dad has a Chevy Silverado 3500, and he hates it for this reason. Every time the machine has a minor breakdown (which happens once in a while) and the ECU detects that it isn't quite as efficient as it should be, it will immediately and completely mercilessly lock your vehicle to 35 miles per hour. Doesn't matter if you drove from Minnesota to California to pick up a heavy delivery in person - you are coming home at 35 MPH, the entire way, unless you stop at a shop on the way for potentially days to get it fixed. And as for what could trigger that, it could be anything. Once a sensor went bad on the emissions filter. It was just one sensor of many - not the actual emissions system. It tripped the 35 MPH lock, and the only way to fix it was to replace the sensor, which required taking the entire freaking back axle off. It was almost an entire day's job for the diesel mechanic. Imagine if you were a small business owner, multiple states away from home, when this happened. That is crushing and instills complete and utter contempt for emissions standards and those who make them very, very quickly. And then we wonder why some people hate EVs, love "rolling coal", and dispute climate change. If that happened to you, I could see very quickly why you'd join the haters club.
bjt2n3904 4y ago
> Designs should not, by the use of adhesives... This is the problem I have with "right to repair" legislation. It turns into "right for bureaucrats to tell engineers how to do their jobs". My phone uses LOCA glue to secure the glass to the display. Does this violate "right to repair"? My phone is held together, not with screws, but adhesives. How about this? Or, GOOD GRIEF! The story in this thread about the ECU in a truck that cripples it for environmental reasons, and requires expensive repairs. Is that covered by "right to repair"? Or does that not apply here?
- dangus 4y ago
  Is that what the legislation says? Or are you just guessing that the legislation will be poorly written? I don't see the consensus by activists in this field as people that are saying "don't use adhesives," "all hardware must be modular," or "compromise design for repairability." I see right to repair activists asking for things like: - Making spare parts available to purchase - Making internal service manuals available with reasonable terms - Forbidding certain types of digital protection on spare parts and firmware that are in place to enforce a market power imbalance (e.g., to force you to buy OEM spare parts without a defensible safety or security reason) - Forbidding anti-competitive parts inventory practices that disadvantage independent third party repair providers (e.g., Apple, who makes third-party repair shops wait until a customer brings in a phone before they can order a common part like a screen...imagine if your car mechanic had to wait until you brought your car in before they could buy brakes, you'd always take the car to the official dealer to get it done faster.) Experienced and even amateur repair technicians have no problems with things like adhesives. Instead, they have problems with companies actively fighting against self-repair.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nine_k 4y ago
> Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components This would forbid production of security tokens (like Yubikey) which are designed to be hard to disassemble and peek inside. Non-standard whatever is how innovation happens. Non-standard fasteners, etc are fine as long as tools to work with them are available (not patented and kept from circulation). The welding and adhesives clause is also problematic. Is a welded car body unnecessarily welded, preventing reuse of its individual metal parts? If so, how are glued-together components of a phone not the same deal? A part of the car body likely costs more than an electronic part of a phone. Otherwise, I'm with you.

neilv 4y ago

resell?

recycledmatt 4y ago
Yes, but generally this is protected by the First Sale Doctrine which allows you to resell stuff you already own.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  We’ll need to come back to the elephant in the room: software/video games.
  - recycledmatt 4y ago
    Those are licensed, not sold. This is one concern people have with Right to Repair - that the OEMs would just turn everything into a long term lease and you wouldn’t actually own your stuff any more. Then they can put whatever rules they want on it.
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      I agree. Right, but I don’t think that distinction is clear to most people. The next step will be the software. Having hardware you can repair is great, but if you can’t own the software that can run ontop of it you have a dead brick.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      If software is a critical component of an item, and you don't have basic control over that software, then you already don't "own" that item regardless of what the legal title says! Furthermore, if industry does dig their heels in and starts refusing to sell goods outright in favor of their retaining de jure ownership, then that is straight up anticompetitive and they should be prosecuted for it.

arcticbull 4y ago

The other one to call out is 'no impediment shall be made to preclude the use of third-party after-market components except where doing so could cause a serious risk of harm' And, as the peer comment says, precluding re-sale.

weberer 4y ago

>No technology must ever by soft-mandated or made a dependency so as to preclude an ethical, environmental or economic choice to not partake in its use, or to substitute other choices. This bill will be immediately killed by Microsoft's lobbyists. That's half their business strategy.

constantcrying 4y ago

The issue I see is that sometimes certain fabrication methods are neccessarry. Phones are glued shut, making disassembly difficult, but that glue also has a point, screws take up a lot of space and glue allows a water tight bond between components. Same with non user replacable batteries. It can be very difficult to distinguish between effective design decision and mallicious manufacturing.

nkrisc 4y ago
I don’t think that distinction necessarily needs to be made if the third-party repair industry is allowed to thrive. If getting your phone repaired and given new life was a common thing everyone did, Pennie’s that couldn’t be repaired or were expensive to repair might not sell as well. As it stands glueing the phone shut isn’t an issue for most consumers because they expect to throw away and buy a new phone every year or two.
- constantcrying 4y ago
  The glue has a legitimiate purpose. I wouldn't have had my phone for 5 years without it being water tight. Third party repair being allowed to thrive (e.g. being allowed to buy parts) is something totally different to restricting good engineering practices.
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    Right, which is exactly the point I'm making. If third-party repair was common, consumers could decide if the advantages of having a phone glued together outweigh the advantages of a more repairable phone. My whole point was that the solution is not to force phones to be more repairable, but to stop manufacturers from strangling the repair industry and give consumers actual choice.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ericabiz 4y ago
Most phones are not glued shut, including iPhones starting all the way back to 4/5. iPhone batteries are also not glued in. Source: We run independent repair shops.

reachableceo 4y ago

“Right to repair” is a succinct label / rallying cry for what you have outlined. All of the discussion i have seen seems to settle more or less around what you’ve outlined. I would hope that the text of the law would codify those requirements and ensure the longevity of our devices. Perhaps you can expand your comment a bit , into a blog post and send it to policy makers ?

zdragnar 4y ago
When you simplify things, you lose meaning. Beware letting "right to repair" become the next "organic"!
- themitigating 4y ago
  There's USDA certified organic and they explain it all her https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-... I'm also not sure how you think we should refer to it?
  - greyhair 4y ago
    Oh there you go, spouting facts and information again.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    This misses my point. This all happened after the fact- organic was in wide use before it was regulated, and meant a great many different things. Here, right to repair (outside of NY) is not codified, and people are talking about it in many different ways, with different meanings. If we want to have it codified in a certain way, we cannot simply reduce what we are talking about to a catchphrase and hope that captures everything. We need to be specific in our lobbying of legislatures of what we want right to repair to mean. Per the USDA, organic farming does not mean zero synthetic pesticides (though they must be used with approval first). There are also different levels of organic: "100% Organic" applies to everything but the salt and water contents of a food item "Organic" means 95% of the non-salt and water ingredients must be organic "Made with organic" means only the specified ingredients are organic. If you don't want "Right to Repair" to mean that only 95% of your purchase is repairable, and touching the other 5% voids your warranty and lands you in jail for violating copyright, then now is the time to make 100% repairable be the definition while it is still not legally codified.

julianlam 4y ago

I'd argue that additional incentives (or punishments, if the carrot doesn't work) for manufacturers to use common parts would be welcome. I have a Samsung fridge/freezer with a broken shelf because the parts of the shelf were held together with an insufficiently strong plastic clip. Imagine my surprise when upon research I discovered the fridge was discontinued and the shelf was unique to the fridge. No other model had that shelf, it was like Samsung specifically used that particular plastic mold for this model purely to drive new appliance sales when it inevitably breaks.

zbrozek 4y ago
I've gotten excellent utility out of my 3D printer for stuff like that.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Make sure to upload designs online... I frequently need to repair some small plastic thing - the latest being making a new piston for my bike pump. When it's a matter of 10 mins online and clicking print, it's great. But when I have to spend a few hours 3d modelling the exact shape, and then reprinting it 3 times because it's slightly wrong, the time-money tradeoff of just buying a new fridge isn't so good...
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    I do, but not every time. I got a DMCA takedown notice on one replacement part I designed. I challenged it and got it reinstated, but it left me a little bitter. Regarding spending hours on design... yeah, that part is a drag. I've done this enough times now that I'm just a lot faster than I used to be, and I also have a pretty good idea of what tiny portions of a design to print to do fit checks. But getting there certainly took some practice.
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
Sounds like a business opportunity. If a third party hasn't made any yet they likely will soon. One problem with encouraging common parts is that it may limit innovation, and it may also incentivize a manufacturer to keep a flawed design. It's just as likely that samsung realized the shelves in that model sucked and made a new one. I think it would be better to mandate manufacturers keep stock of replacement parts for X amount of years, and/or they must release design documentation for third parties to make parts.

thereddaikon 4y ago

What a weird thing to get hung up on.

sodality2 4y ago
Not when you constantly struggle to fix crappy tech products designed with planned obsolecense in mind. You're lucky to not have dealt with that, I suppose.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  I'm talking about their hangup over the term.
  - sodality2 4y ago
    Ah. I might tend to agree about the term, but when discussing a new right to repair law with my father, he said he thought it was not a good law to pass. I asked him if he knew what it was and he thought it was just giving customers the right to fix their devices. I told him about how it really meant providing diagnostic tools, manuals, selling replacement parts, stopping planned obsolescence, etc (aka no more roadblocks by manufacturers) and he immediately changed his whole view on right to repair. So it seems the name might be an obstacle to understanding it.

dalbasal 4y ago

"Right" is a rhetorical device. It doesn't usually mean something specific and clearly defined a priori. In context though, they do often gain specific and clearly defensible definitions. Take, "Free Speech." It's a right. It has history, and has accumulated specific meanings, precedents and such over the years. It's true that The Right itself doesn't tell us what to do about modern medium monopolies and social media platforms... but it does give us a starting point. We agree that the right exists, just not what it is. That's not nothing. Every possible approach has margins, edge cases, implementation difficulties, exceptions and mess. That's true for rights, duties and even minor legal codes, charters and ordinances. Even your examples... "Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary ..." Try turning that into an actively litigated something and you will find all the same problems. What about imports and trade agreement compatibility? What about competing standards. What about the ambiguity of "non-standard," "necessary" or "easy?" What counts and an impediment and how do these duties travel up the value chain? I'm not saying it's all hopeless, just that nothing is clean. Rights, as opposed to duties, are a core part of our political basis (liberalism). They have a better track record of (a) sticking around and (b) maintaining a moral basis. Duties (eg reporting duty) don't tend to work as well. They're more prone to becoming bureaucratic rulesets than an abstract basis for laws and/or regulation.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Actually, this is an issue in the Right-to-Repair movement, is that how R2R is defined actually depends on who you ask. For example, Louis Rossmann would not define R2R as containing "Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components." Also this definition is not legally possible anyway, as CPUs contain embedded fuses to contain unique security keys, serial number information, anti-rollback protections, prevent changing IMEI numbers (which would be fantastic for thieves), contain fixed radio calibration data, and so forth. For him, R2R is the ability to buy parts and use them - but it does not implement design obligations. iFixit wants design obligations in their version of R2R - but this broadens the scope and reduces the likelihood of passage in my view (as does the broadening of the scope of any movement or law). Meanwhile, you actually deal with another problem. The R2R movement loves to completely ignore the (very real) anti-theft and anti-counterfeiting benefits of part serialization. We are talking about a device with more counterfeit parts, more thefts, and more personal information at risk, than any other device ever created, which I think should count for something [1]. Also, while YouTube channels like Louis Rossmann gain my sympathy, they often completely ignore the widespread corruption within mobile phone repair stores, as has been documented elsewhere, somewhat misleading the audience into believing every store is as upright and honest as them when they broadly are not. As long as they keep ignoring that and pretending it is all about repair, instead of coming up with a compromise that promotes anti-theft and repairability, bills are going to be hamstrung. [1] This is also why I think comparing smartphone repair versus, say, dishwasher repair is a little disingenuous on the R2R side. "Why can't I swap parts on my phone, like I can on an appliance?" Well... which one is stolen more, which one has more counterfeit parts available, which one has information that could destroy your life if compromised, particularly if you are a journalist or just take certain photos of yourself? Pick three. Should repairability, necessarily, be treated the same then? I think that's an open debate that's not so easily won as the R2R dishwasher strawman. I don't want my Face ID sensor swapped out by a hostile government with a fake sensor so they can unlock my phone at will, for example.

emsign 4y ago
That's a valid objection. The question is whether preventing theft is a) a higher priority than let's say reducing prices and preventing electronic waste and b) whether prominance of smartphone theft hinges on the repairability of the devices. Or rather has just only professionalized the crime scene like with car theft. So while I think it's an intersting objection, I think it might miss the point.

bluGill 4y ago

> all other safety and contention (RF) issues can be dealt with at a another layer of legislation and enforcement. Make sure you write your congressmen about this. That manufactures feel like they are liable if someone modifies their control software is one of the reasons they oppose right to repair. The EPA is really pushing hard to make it impossible to modify engine ECUs - no diesel as manufactured in the past 15 years has been even capable of "rolling coal", and for around 15 years before then it was difficult to make that happen. However there are still a lot of modified trucks out there spewing visible particulates, all because someone decided to modify the programming. > Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components. Define a module in a rigorous way that I can apply. Seriously, parts have been welded together for ages, which turns two pieces of steel into one, were the two separate pieces a module before or not? With the right tools I can pull an IC apart and repair it - the labor is more than just making a new IC (assuming the original drawings still exist), but it is possible. Does that mean an IC is not a module? What about an IC soldered to a board that is then coated in a waterproof coating, screwed into a case - where is the module. This definition of module is critical to any debates on this, and I have no idea how you can objectively create a good definition that covers all cases.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
My dad has a Chevy Silverado 3500, and he hates it for this reason. Every time the machine has a minor breakdown (which happens once in a while) and the ECU detects that it isn't quite as efficient as it should be, it will immediately and completely mercilessly lock your vehicle to 35 miles per hour. Doesn't matter if you drove from Minnesota to California to pick up a heavy delivery in person - you are coming home at 35 MPH, the entire way, unless you stop at a shop on the way for potentially days to get it fixed. And as for what could trigger that, it could be anything. Once a sensor went bad on the emissions filter. It was just one sensor of many - not the actual emissions system. It tripped the 35 MPH lock, and the only way to fix it was to replace the sensor, which required taking the entire freaking back axle off. It was almost an entire day's job for the diesel mechanic. Imagine if you were a small business owner, multiple states away from home, when this happened. That is crushing and instills complete and utter contempt for emissions standards and those who make them very, very quickly. And then we wonder why some people hate EVs, love "rolling coal", and dispute climate change. If that happened to you, I could see very quickly why you'd join the haters club.

bjt2n3904 4y ago

> Designs should not, by the use of adhesives... This is the problem I have with "right to repair" legislation. It turns into "right for bureaucrats to tell engineers how to do their jobs". My phone uses LOCA glue to secure the glass to the display. Does this violate "right to repair"? My phone is held together, not with screws, but adhesives. How about this? Or, GOOD GRIEF! The story in this thread about the ECU in a truck that cripples it for environmental reasons, and requires expensive repairs. Is that covered by "right to repair"? Or does that not apply here?

dangus 4y ago
Is that what the legislation says? Or are you just guessing that the legislation will be poorly written? I don't see the consensus by activists in this field as people that are saying "don't use adhesives," "all hardware must be modular," or "compromise design for repairability." I see right to repair activists asking for things like: - Making spare parts available to purchase - Making internal service manuals available with reasonable terms - Forbidding certain types of digital protection on spare parts and firmware that are in place to enforce a market power imbalance (e.g., to force you to buy OEM spare parts without a defensible safety or security reason) - Forbidding anti-competitive parts inventory practices that disadvantage independent third party repair providers (e.g., Apple, who makes third-party repair shops wait until a customer brings in a phone before they can order a common part like a screen...imagine if your car mechanic had to wait until you brought your car in before they could buy brakes, you'd always take the car to the official dealer to get it done faster.) Experienced and even amateur repair technicians have no problems with things like adhesives. Instead, they have problems with companies actively fighting against self-repair.

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nine_k 4y ago

> Designs should not, by the use of adhesives, welding, non-standard fixings, unnecessary integration, traps, and fuses, prevent the easy disassembly and reuse of modular components This would forbid production of security tokens (like Yubikey) which are designed to be hard to disassemble and peek inside. Non-standard whatever is how innovation happens. Non-standard fasteners, etc are fine as long as tools to work with them are available (not patented and kept from circulation). The welding and adhesives clause is also problematic. Is a welded car body unnecessarily welded, preventing reuse of its individual metal parts? If so, how are glued-together components of a phone not the same deal? A part of the car body likely costs more than an electronic part of a phone. Otherwise, I'm with you.