5 ms·

I might need an ELI5 here. "Right to repair" as in "right to choose someone who repairs"? Don't think anyone stops you from repairing your own stuff yourself.

• throawayonthe 1y ago
  Many manufacturers take active measures to prevent or discourage you from repairing your own stuff yourself
• jrajav 1y ago
  It's almost never been a question of how to execute the repair - rather, it's a matter of repercussions for repairing 'yourself' (or authorizing a third party to on your behalf). Actors like John Deere and Apple have taken steps that are actively hostile to self-repairs, from voiding service agreements that have nothing to do with the repaired parts, up to bricking your device.
• GuB-42 1y ago
  > Don't think anyone stops you from repairing your own stuff yourself. They do. By making the parts needed for repairs unavailable to you. And by making it really hard for other manufacturers to make compatible parts.
• _kidlike 1y ago
  easiest example: most components of a macbook laptop have their serial number baked in the OS (or some hardware controller, idr). So even if you can find a legit macbook part from another laptop, and you can even replace it yourself (which is also impossible but that's another story), the laptop won't boot. In order for it to boot, you need a special device which "official apple repair" people have, which can bake-in the new part's serial number.
  • scottyah 1y ago
    Great from a security perspective, as far as mass stealing and swapping/scrapping parts for resale is concerned. I wonder how they'll prevent it now.
  • dgb23 1y ago
    What's the purpose of that other than making it harder to repair? Is there any good faith argument to made made here?
    • onesociety2022 1y ago
      Security measure - otherwise someone can intercept your MacBook during delivery, replace the original component with a fake one that has a backdoor and ship it to you and you start using it completely oblivious to the fact it has been hacked.
      • josephcsible 1y ago
        That might be an argument to reject non-genuine components, but it's not an argument to reject genuine components just because they've previously been installed in a different device. (And even if it's possible to modify a genuine component to add backdoors, this still doesn't help, since they could just modify the one that came out of your MacBook too.)
    • skeaker 1y ago
      In theory people will steal Apple devices, then when they learn that digital locks make them impossible to use they will gut them for parts and sell those. Serial locking would defeat that. In practice, yes, it pretty much just exists to make them millions off of forced overpriced in-house repairs.
    • Nextgrid 1y ago
      They will say "security", and unfortunately half of HN will gobble it up no-questions-asked. The security argument can be achieved just as well by giving the user the master key (on a Yubikey-style HSM if needed) to unlock the protection. The fact it's not done that way clearly shows the primary security they care about is that of Apple's bank account.
    • trailbits 1y ago
      It does remove any incentive for a thief to steal a Macbook. They can't strip it for parts and sell those parts if they won't work.
• charcircuit 1y ago
  It's purpose is to legally force other companies to serve the interests repair shops over consumers. Instead of letting the free market, consumers, dictate what aspects of a device are important repair shops want to be able to profit off of every device and stay relevant even if it results in worse products for the consumer.
  • junon 1y ago
    The free market arguably hasn't worked like that in ages.
    • no_wizard 1y ago
      Thats because there isn't one and there hasn't been for a long time, and I'm not talking about libertarian fever dreams. Regulatory capture and legislated protection for big corporations at the expense of smaller ones are rampant. They don't want real competition and they don't want real regulation, only regulation that will make it hard for others to enter the market without significant cost.
  • thomastjeffery 1y ago
    The entire point is that companies are vertically integrating the repairs market into their product business. This directly removes competition from the market. The regulation here is to preserve the free market you are advocating for here.
    • charcircuit 1y ago
      It's possible consumers prefer the vertically integrated model of repair. Increasing competition doesn't necessarily make things better for consumers.
      • thomastjeffery 1y ago
        The overwhelming majority of consumers are also employees. What's better, low prices and low wages, or high prices and high wages? The "Chicago school of macroeconomics" holds the first position. I'm highly critical of that position. Even if you do agree with the Chicago school, there is a problem: by vertically integrating the repairs market, you take away the consumer's ability to repair their own products. The consumer is forced to pay the business to do the repairs, instead of doing it themselves for free. That's objectively more expensive for the consumer. By allowing companies to vertically integrate repairs into their product business, we have allowed them to create an entirely new market of rent-seeking. This both monopolizes a service (preventing competition) and adds extra cost to consumers. It doesn't matter what your ideological stance is on economics: this is objectively bad for consumers.
• 8note 1y ago
  generally the DMCA made it illegal to do many repairs, as they involve circumventing some rights management lock