6 ms·
Here is the bill for consumer electronics: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=1483&Year=2025&Initiative=false#documentSection https://app.leg.wa.gov
by jasonthorsness 1y ago
Here is the bill for consumer electronics:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=1483&Year=2025&Initiative=false#documentSection https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=1483&Year=202...
Text as passed (for pasting into LLM :)):
https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/House%20Passed%20Legislature/1483-S.PL.pdf?q=20250604085723 https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Ho...
I wondered what it would mean for small manufacturers and they are not exempt however o3 believes "in practice, your duty is limited to providing whatever service manuals, firmware-pairing utilities, and spare parts you already possess (or have made for warranty work) and making them available at cost, digitally for free."
EDIT: as people below have posted, o3's "at cost" is misleading, the text actually says "at costs that are fair to both parties"
- rafram 1y agoPretty much all of that o3 output is wrong. You could at least check its work before posting.
- sokoloff 1y agoWhy would anyone believe that spare parts would need to be provided at cost? I’m a proponent of right to repair, but that would be an absurd over-step (and be a strong force to ensure that no spare parts are available to anyone).
- bilekas 1y agoTo play devils advocate here, maybe the idea is that if the part is not eligible for third party sales by way of patents etc, then the manufacturer should not be allowed to simply charge more for a replacement part that that of a newer model? That's the only kind of example I can think of.
- abeppu 1y agoIDK about "at cost" but shouldn't _some_ price regulation of spare parts be included? With no limits, any manufacturer might say "The price for any spare part is the cost of the original item + a significant additional fee, because our process will be to pull a complete new unit from the warehouse, and have someone disassemble it and send you the one part."
- MichaelZuo 1y agoManufacturers can already legitimately say the additional price for 1 spare part for a $5 part is actually $250,000 dollars because the last mould has worn out…? Typically nobody would actually go through with placing any orders beyond that point, unless they’re the pentagon.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThey might want to talk to their legal departments before claiming such a thing if it isn't actually true. Lawsuits involve discovery.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoHow does this relate to my comment or any other comment in the chain? I don’t think anyone suggested manufacturers could get away with lying all the time.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bluGill 1y ago250k for a single mold if they don't have drawings of the final size of the last is reasonable - high but reasonable. Building molds is still a lot of trial and error that CAD cannot help with. Plus time for one off on an assemble line is not cheap since it is often half an hour of nobody in the factory working except the two people switching out the mold. once you have a mold you can make thousands and so the cost ammortizes out if you need that many. my company has looked into spending billions for a chip fad of obsolete processes just to get some no longer in prodction parts. So far not worth it.
- dcow 1y agoTough luck then. The point of the law is to make it easier for people to repair the things they rightfully own. Not kill business by requiring all companies to indefinitely manufacture parts for anything they’ve ever sold.
- glitchc 1y agoActually this is probably the best way to ensure that price gouging does not happen. The fixed and NRE costs are already included in the price of the original device. Charging those again for replacements would be double-dipping. And the law still leaves it up to OEMs to decide how to cost the replacement, so there's some wiggle room there. This is an intelligently crafted bill.
- sokoloff 1y agoI don’t agree that Gillette making a profit on razor blades is “double-dipping” and certainly not in a way that I want to prevent. The main point I made is the upthread summary (which appears to be unreviewed ChatGPT spew, adding noise rather than signal to the discussion) of the law is incorrect in an obvious way that the actual bill is not.
- glitchc 1y agoComparing consumables like blades to replacements like screens is intellectually dishonest. Those two are not the same thing and there is no merit to your argument.
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoThe razor blades thing is a problem specifically with the patent system. The intent of a patent is that you invent something useful and get a temporary monopoly over it as the incentive for the invention. The premise is that the value of the patent is proportional to the value of the invention, and therefore the incentive we want to create for inventing it. If you invent something which is no improvement over the status quo then nobody is going to pay you a premium for it. The problem comes when you patent an interface, like the connector between a razor handle and a blade. Because then even if the connector is nothing special, the replacement blades have to use that connector and then you get artificial demand for the connector, not because it's such a great connector but because the customer is in the market for blades for their existing razor. It's a mechanism of cheating the patent system by collecting a premium disproportionate to the value of what you invented. This is even worse in tech products because a phone costs a lot more than a razor, so if you need a part, the amount they can stick you for because there is only one place to get the part is proportional to the value of a $900 phone instead of a $7 razor. And on top of that, they're not trying to sell you replacement parts, they're trying to turn your existing phone into slag so they can sell you a new phone. Which is why the most important thing is that you can get repair parts from third parties, who both provide competition for parts and actually want to sell them because their primary business is selling repair parts instead of selling new phones.
- rafram 1y agoThe bill actually says “at costs that are fair to both parties,” not “at cost” as in losing money. You’re arguing over what ChatGPT imagined the bill said (and GP posted without verification), not what it actually said.
- Aloisius 1y agoGetting parts at cost? So I could find some manufacturer using a part I want and order it at their cost rather than having to go to a retailer? Is there anything that allows a manufacturer to require you send in the broken part after or any limit to how many times something can be "repaired"? Because I'd like to purchase a very large number of NVIDIA GPUs at cost.
- ZeWaka 1y agoVery interesting, there's a carveout for video game consoles: > Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require any original manufacturer or authorized repair provider to make available any parts, tools, or documentation required for the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of a video game console and its components and peripherals. Wonder if Valve/Xbox/Nintendo asked for that, this being Washington State.
- tadfisher 1y agoValve already provides parts and documentation for the Steam Deck through a partnership with iFixit.
- ender341341 1y agoGiven the support valve provides for the steam deck I'd be surprised if it was them. They seem much more interested in having a viable alternative to keep Microsoft from walling windows in such a way to kill steam than caring that they make the actual devices. I would 100% percent expect both Microsoft & Nintendo to have had a hand in that though.
- ZeWaka 1y agoYeah, I figure so - they were just the first company in Washington to come to mind given that I own their product, unlike the others :)
- freedomben 1y agoYes exactly. If anything, I would expect Valve to support this bill based on how repair-friendly they are. I will admit that over the years I've become a huge Valve fanboy because of their amazing contributions to Linux and making the Steam Deck an open platform, but Valve has really done a ton to make the world a better place. Yes it benefits their business too, but they definitely could have gone more evil than they did, so there's still reason to praise them.
- RajT88 1y agoI've often wondered how much cross-talk there is between the two companies, given that the Nintendo America HQ is smack in the middle of the sprawling Microsoft campus. There's got to be some, I should think.