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> Exemptions: game consoles, alarm systems, agricultural and forestry equipment So basically, you have the right to repair things as long as it's not a John De

• candiddevmike 3y ago
  Clearly they don't want you to release the magic smoke Does documentation mean how to replace the operating system/firmware and any necessary signing keys?
• imbusy111 3y ago
  The agricultural exemption really sucks, but the force was probably too strong. We'll get John Deere next time.
• dghughes 3y ago
  >Exemptions: game consoles, alarm systems, agricultural and forestry equipment I don't understand how people seem to think their food just appears out of thin air. Farming is a 24/7 job and is hard on equipment. Repairing farm equipment is at least 50% of the job. Games consoles, alarm systems, or trees don't feed anyone. Maybe if farmers go on strike now of all times the fall which is harvest time and let the food rot. Let's see how long people can go without or with reduced availability of food. "Oh no my tractor broke down and I can't repair it"
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • awesomeMilou 3y ago
    I agree. I'm honestly surprised by how much shit US farmers are willing to take from John Deere. Not to make this political, but you'd expect a group that largely votes Republican to be a bit more radical and unfair in fighting an unethical company.
    • digging 3y ago
      They're probably tired, scared, and unorganized. John Deere's bullshit only makes them more scared and unorganized, and not less tired. I'm sure they're not taking this shit because they're ok with it, but farmers have to take a lot of shit from a lot of powerful organizations to get by.
      • jimnotgym 3y ago
        > unorganized If they are anything like British farmers they would rather get shafted by John Deere than work together with their neighbours.
    • colpabar 3y ago
      Well, if/when they ever do fight back, they will immediately be labelled right wing nutjobs by the mainstream media and no one will care about who/what they're fighting against, and you'll see lots of "well, I usually support right to repair, but those trump hats were really scary and john deere's position is actually kind of reasonable" comments here.
  • 6510 3y ago
    I think if we've learned anything during corona it should be that there are different tiers of economic activity. 4) that what we absolutely need, 3) that what would be nice to have, 2) that what serves no purpose/we would be better of without and 1) that what we've failed to ban. If we strictly define those we can then proceed to rate those who consume our attention and those tasked with governing by the ratio of time they spend on each. No doubt we are all guilty pondering niceties rather than necessities. Imagine an idea for a startup that is necessary.
• segmondy 3y ago
  You have to start somewhere. I rather the right to repair cover 90% of things than 0% of things. We can eventually fight for right to repair the rest.
  • freedomben 3y ago
    Agreed. As much as I hate that John Deere escaped this one, we can regroup now and will have a getter position of bargaining since it's only "expanding" an existing law rather than creating a new one from scratch.
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      We can regroup? The people who write these laws have all the power already. They just have to write things down and if you don't do the things they get some of your company's money or occasionally can lock you in a box.
      • freedomben 3y ago
        By "we" I mean those of us who have no direct power, but work to convince those with power to pass the laws. The legislature isn't going to do it without that
  • TheGlav 3y ago
    We did start somewhere. We started with "we are allowed to do with our own property whatever we want." this law codified removal of those rights.
    • lallysingh 3y ago
      Please explain
    • justapassenger 3y ago
      Did you read the article or the law? This law requires manufacturers to provide parts, tools and documentation for how to repair their products. It didn't change anything about rights of people to do whatever they want with their property.
• willio58 3y ago
  I feel like they had to exempt those ones to avoid the lobbyists. I think this is a good first step. First, it applies to all new industries that pop up. Also, I think it will be good to collect evidence that right to repair benefits consumers and the environment. That might provide the footing the state would need to fight for right for repair for those specific products
  • TheGlav 3y ago
    Agricultural product producers are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to "right to repair". There's no reason why farmers shouldn't be able to fix their own equipment. These companies make it so farmers can't fix their tractors, they have to go to a dealership. Farmers that, for over a hundred years, have been doing repairs on their own in the field (literally) to get their tractor working again so harvest finishes, still aren't allowed to fix their own equipment. It's not a "reasonable" exemption when there is decades of precedence. Adding a computer to these things should not stop someone from doing this work, and there's no reasonable explanation why someone shouldn't be able to repair something they've had the rights to repair for decades.
    • shagie 3y ago
      Agricultural equipment falls into industrial equipment which has different liability concerns for the manufacturer. If you modify a Ford truck and that modification kills you, you're liable. If you modify a John Deer tractor and John Deer didn't do everything in their power to stop you from making an unsafe modification, they're liable. Furthermore, if a farm worker gets killed, maimed, injured from the framer's modification, the farmer is immune from liability and it is still John Deer that would be liable. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/workers-compensation-for-agricultural-workers/ https://nationalaglawcenter.org/workers-compensation-for-agr... > Whether or not someone is eligible for workers’ compensation depends on their state and the industry they work in. There are no requirements at the federal level that mandate states to have workers’ compensation laws. Nevertheless, every state, except for Texas, requires most employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. However, the majority of state workers’ compensation laws specifically exclude or limit agricultural employers from the workers’ compensation requirement.
• garba_dlm 3y ago
  what if we take earth to be flat but "flat" in the sense of 'euclid-ness' like in a Manifold[1] ? or maybe we gotta work on accepting that it may be possible for two completely different, even opposing theories, to explain similar things? (in completely different ways?) it's just that one is easier (for some use cases) than the other one, and to fight over which is right is all wrong. I think that in the future the whole debate will be understood as an instance of the blind men and the elephant[2] but we just don't have the mathematics (nor the philosophy...) for this. either it's not invented or it hasn't managed to become widespread [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant yes, that's right, I just tried to apologize for flat earth. your cue to downvote me away from sight. maybe I just want to make bridges... impossible bridges... between suckers lagging but still trying to understand and others who refuse or are unable to explain
• judge2020 3y ago
  Exempting game consoles is funny, because it proves the question is "How much money can a company make from their products?" Because we know that consoles are typically sold at a loss or barely break-even point, at least at launch (and some for their entire lifetime - like with Xbox[1]), with their cut of digital & physical sales funding the continued R&D of the consoles. The only difference with iPhones is that Apple both makes money up-front on the hardware and on the backend with app/game sales. If Apple were to cut the price of the iPhone, or fill it with diamonds (or an actually-valuable rare material like Tungsten) to bring the COGS up to the MSRP, would the EU and Cali suddenly bow to Apple and let them off the hook on being a gatekeeper/anti-R2R practices? 0: https://www.thegamer.com/standard-ps5-break-even-profit-june/ https://www.thegamer.com/standard-ps5-break-even-profit-june... 1: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/322561-microsoft-says-it-has-never-made-a-profit-on-xbox-hardware-sales https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/322561-microsoft-says-it-...
  • GabeIsko 3y ago
    I think legistlators would make the case that while general purpose computing devices should have right to repair laws, game consoles are machines dedicated to frivolous entertainment and that consumers shouldn't mess with them. It's very silly, but I think it does present activists a schism to exploit. Apple believes that it's phones are a closed ecosystem that they have the sole right to distirbute software and, until recently, provide hardware repairs for. But legislators clearly understand that smart-phones serve an important societal function. Thus they should be subject to right to repair. They will come around eventually on electronic entertainment, There is tons of politcal pressure around farming equipment, and consumer alarm systems (think ring) are due for a whole heap of government regulation.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  If this legislation somehow turns out to be a mistake would you rather it affect everything everywhere or be scoped in this way?
• GabeIsko 3y ago
  Lol, these exemptions are pretty hilarious. I can get the logic of regulations that prevent tampering with alarm systems for safety reasons, or potentially dangerous heavy machinery like that found in agricultural equipment. Carving them out of right to repair is super silly. Still a net win for right to repair. On the game side, everyone is just going to play on a steam deck in the future anyway.
  • diggan 3y ago
    Sadly, agriculture is a large part of the "right to repair" movement and one of the groups that would benefit the most from it, as they've been repairing their own equipment for a long time and John Deere et al have been closing down as much as they can so people can't repair their own stuff. And that's the group of people make it possible for us to stuff down all this food we're consuming, and somehow lawmakers find it OK to not give them more rights...
    • GabeIsko 3y ago
      Oh yes, I definitely agree, and I support the rights of farmers to repair the equipment they use. The carve out for agricultural equipment is clearly a concession to John Deere lobbying. John Deere sees value in IoT data gathered from its equipment to do all sorts of predictive analysis. That very much undercuts the basis of American food production, which relies on government subsidies for a variety of reasons. I ultimately believe that this value is derived by front running American farming subsidies, a complex form of insider trading. An existential crises is brewing in American farming that repairing tractors is on the forefront of. However, fixing a combine harvester is definitely a different prospect to modifying your game console or cell phone. We can acknowledge that. I still think that farmers are capable of repairing and modifying the equipment they depend on to make a living and provide all of us with food. But there definitely needs to be some form of safety regulation.
• matrix_overload 3y ago
  If you are new to the third-world politics, I'll give you a 101: you "donate" enough cache to the ruling party - you get your business exempted from regulations, you don't - you get squashed. All you can see in this case is who paid and who didn't.
  • sneak 3y ago
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=F9cO3-MLHOM https://youtube.com/watch?v=F9cO3-MLHOM
• gnopgnip 3y ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good. This right to repair law still covers ~97% of the economy.
• bbor 3y ago
  The best defense is: Politics is not a game of morals, virtues, or arguments, but a game of power, manipulation, and maneuvers. In that context, I think we can agree this is a win :) It'll be easier to override that clause down the line than it was to pass this bill.
• anigbrowl 3y ago
  No, we are not there yet, but we're part-way there. Some people just look for the negative aspect of everything rather than admit that a step might represent progress toward a goal.
• nix0n 3y ago
  By the time this takes effect, all large cars will be classified as farm equipment and all small cars will be classified as game consoles.
• nsxwolf 3y ago
  How did Sony and Microsoft avoid this fate and Apple didn’t?
• derefr 3y ago
  The alarm systems, I kind of understand, insofar as there are 1. security certifications depending on these being present and functioning, and nobody's going to certify equipment with arbitrary third-party repairs; and 2. these devices always work only with some kind of subscription paid to a security company anyway, since the point of them is to send some signal to said company to get something to happen.
  • szundi 3y ago
    Yes alarm systems are connected to fear of insurance fraud. Although! Right to repair does not forbid insurance companies to forbid it. But can I please repair my home alarm system, thanks.
    • derefr 3y ago
      The problem is that it's basically impossible to tell when an alarm system has been working all along, vs. failed and was then repaired by a third party — including flashing it with subtly different third-party firmware found online somewhere — and now is "working" again with no visible change to behavior (but where it'll now help you commit insurance fraud.) As such, there's no way for the insurance companies to make such a forbidding rule, and have it be enforceable. There are no "inspectors" or "auditors" that can be sent to look at your alarm system who could possibly notice that it's been "repaired" in this manner. Pretty much the only (industry-wide) thing that can be done to curb such repair attempts, is to outlaw the tools (like reverse-engineered third-party firmware) required to do so. (Of course, any given alarm device maker could do what Apple has done with iPhones, and just make all major components of the devices proprietary, and have all components do signing handshakes before talking to each-other, where they reject each-other unless they've both been mutually first-party signed and activated. This would put high logistical barriers in the way of repairing the device — you'd have to get your hands on first-party parts, that the OEM won't sell you. But there's no system-level incentive that either the state or the insurance companies are in position to create, that would get them to do that.)
• jvanderbot 3y ago
  So let me get this straight. I can now claim right to repair for all my cars, computer, phones, tvs, furnaces, smart meters, water heaters, smart bulbs, lamps, tablets, laptops, smart speakers, speakers in general, microwaves, gym equipment, and lawnmowers (not agricultural or forestry!). I call that a win. Sorry we didn't catch em all yet.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• tzs 3y ago
  I bet you haven't heard all the arguments. Here's one that came to mind when I read the actual text of the repair law as to why there might be two of those three exceptions. For agricultural and forestry equipment there is already extensive California law dealing with them in the the California Business and Professional Code (BPC). To wit, the "Fair Practices of Equipment Manufacturers, Distributors, Wholesalers, and Dealers Act" which is Chapter 28 of Division 8 ("Special Business Regulations") of the BPC. Alarm systems are also regulated under the BPC. This new "Right to Repair Act" is part of the Public Resources Code. It is is Division 30, Part 3, Chapter 8.6. Division 30 is "Waste Management". Part 3 is "State Programs". Chapter 8.6 was the "Cell Phone Recycling Act of 2004" so presumably is getting renumbered to 8.7, and the "Right to Repair Act" is being inserted right before that, after the "Rechargeable Battery Recycling Act of 2006" (Chapter 8.4) and a chapter called "Electronic Waste Recycling" (Chapter 8.5). (Why is this done as waste management under the Public Resources Code rather than under whatever California's consumer protection code is called? I have no idea!) It seems at least plausible that the exceptions other than the video game console exception are there because legislators feel that changes to how those things are handled should be done separately via changes to the BPC.