What if I want to buy a car that has no lights,breaks and pollutes 100x more then the norms?
There are many hardened phones that are repairable.
Edit: also a main issue with repairability is DRM and evil companies trying to use the copyright law so you won't publish repair manuals and schematics. Your ceramic phone won't suffer if someone shares a manual about it's internals
.
I was not talking about hardened phones, quite the opposite, a pure design item, so small and precise that any breakage of the shell could destroy it - that's the current direction of the market, which I like very much. Who exactly will I hurt with my phone, and when exactly is it going to gain around 1 metric ton and be hurtling down a highway? Since when is it fashionable to justify regulation with completely unrelated health/safety issues?
And how exactly does this change the fashion of buying the latest iPhone-looking phone every second year? The older devices are perfectly functioning, they just don't look like the owners wish. Most people I know have a drawer full of 100% working phones, some broken displays here and there but that is trivial to have repaired today.
Don't iPhone look very similar? why do people need a new one?
There are probably many answers depending on person, some just want latest and greatest, some people were affected by the battery issue(while it was hidden from them), some people break the phone and don't have an Apple store near or don't have the time to wait for a repair and they get a new phone. Sometimes the updates make the old phones slow or incompatible and websites and applications are pushing you to buy a new one.
Apparently they are different enough that people mod them to look like year-later models. Since these wouldn't have different capabilities it can only be for asthetics or social signaling.
We're talking about Europe, iPhone is the minority here. Most phones are Androids, so no battery issue of iPhone is much relevant, same with Apple Stores.
Any phone (including iPhone) can be taken to nearly any service shop and it will probably be repaired within a day for an affordable price (if they have all parts, which they can order no problem; tools are not a problem a tall).
They also don't want the latest and greatest because that costs them way too much, most phones are mid market here, and the capabilities of these phones don't change much (same hardware for a number of years is not an exception) - but the design does. And no, the display notch is a very distinct status symbol that made the upgrade very much needed, same with multiple cameras on the back.
The few people who are buying Apple can choose between Apple stores, official Apple resellers and also a huge selection of unofficial (called "post-warranty") service shops. Not sure if it's OK with Apple, but it's definitely legal here, and it doesn't seem like these people have any problems with getting parts, getting tools or repairing the phones, but I agree that there should be an official way of doing so.
It's true that some phones became unusable with and because of software updates - that is wrong, but also an unrelated issue.
But the point still stands - older phones are perfectly capable (and these phones are very repairable, too), just not beautiful enough. Some people having drawers of them signifies that even though these phones work, there is no demand for them.
As a society we have to make choices. We prefer having repairable items over beautiful unrepairable ones, as the latter has been abused as an excuse to deny repairability even when possible.
Do we? I am not really sure we do. I think it's very hard to talk about what "the society" wants, and I know that it differs very much around 150 km to the north from me (where the border is) and that it is also roughly the opposite around 300 km to the south from me (where another border is).
> I think it's very hard to talk about what "the society" wants
People vote for representatives, those representatives enact legislation, and the free press reports on it, causing a feedback effect. Over time we have a picture of what society wants. It's really not that hard.
Obviously, there are many different interconnected societies in the world and not all of them have representative democracy or a free press. Maybe that was your objection?
During the last EU parliament elections, 28.4% people voted (in my country of 10 million). These 28.4% have chosen 21 representatives into a parliament of 736, which means 2.85% of all seats.
I think it's clear why this tells us nothing about what the society here wants. It might be said that the EU was the voice of the nations before they removed the unilateral agreement requirement, but not today.
Nobody here (parties, the representatives) is even talking about the right to repair, how can you be so sure the society here wants it?
> I think it's clear why this tells us nothing about what the society here wants.
On the contrary, it very clearly tells us that your society is apathetic about the EU and does not care about decisions made in the European parliament.
In my own country, 2/3 voted in the latest EU parliament elections. The debates here were dominated by environmental policy, so I'm really not surprised that legislation like this is now being considered in the EU parliament.
> On the contrary, it very clearly tells us that your society is apathetic about the EU and does not care about decisions made in the European parliament.
Exactly, that is the only thing that is clear. And the reason is that we have much greater political problems to deal with so the EU is not that relevant to us, especially not issues like right to repair (which is not an issue to anyone I know and google gives me mostly no online discussions in our language). It still does not give anyone the right to shovel us "what the society wants". Our society didn't want the Lisboa agreement, but our politicians signed it anyways - so what exactly does our society want and what exactly should the EU be saying about it?
Even if 100% of people voted, still the 2.85% of voice don't seem like much space to express what our society wants, you know? And why there should only be space for one central opinion? That doesn't seem that diverse.
> Our society didn't want the Lisboa agreement, but our politicians signed it anyways - so what exactly does our society want and what exactly should the EU be saying about it?
Then vote for a different set of politicians and leave the EU. The UK paved the way. I believe in you!
> Even if 100% of people voted, still the 2.85% of voice don't seem like much space to express what our society wants, you know? And why there should only be space for one central opinion? That doesn't seem that diverse.
Humans aren't borgs, but that doesn't mean we can't generalise about the general tendencies of society. Do you want me to admit that not everyone in a society has the same opinion? Seems a bit pointless, but sure, I'll admit that.
Yes in the end its a preference, we have to make choices and I too would like to have the choice to buy unrepairable item. We too are "the society" so if we want to still have the option we have to fight the law. One thing to do is obviously do not vote for or support the law .
It was a metaphor for how things are wrong in the grand scheme of things even if they are possible and available. Repairability of things makes for less waste, if you ignore that fact and knowingly buy a phone which is going to end up in a bin after 2 years with no possibility to get proper recycling and repairing, you have a similar mindset to the SUV buying bunch. That is what he is trying to say (I think).
Eh, no, my country is one of the best of EU in recycling and waste management. I dispose of all waste exactly as I should in a clear, structured and very practical way. (any) phones are taken back for recycling by most sellers, for example.
Which country is that ? You can easily check recycling import/export per country online so that should be trivial to fact check. Pro tip: it doesn't look good for US/EU.
It is not my fault what the state does with it after I correctly dispose it. I am not sure how that looks for my country and I mostly don't care - not my job to do, I (have to) pay taxes for that.
I can't change anything about that. I need to pick my battles. I am doing my part exactly as I should, now the politicians need to do theirs. These things are already unlawful - what can I do to fix it? The administration nor the justice is an elected body.
> Edit: also a main issue with repairability is DRM and evil companies trying to use the copyright law so you won't publish repair manuals and schematics. Your ceramic phone won't suffer if someone shares a manual about it's internals .
I certainly think that you should have the absolute right to attempt to repair your device, and you shouldn't be legally prevented from doing so.
On the other hand, I would like a secure, lightweight device, which lasts as long as possible on battery. All of those things will suffer if people who don't understand how modern phones achieve those things attempt to force them to be made up of piecewise-replaceable components.
The idea is not that you should be able to swap your battery as easy as you can with an Nokia 3310 but that you or a competent person could swap the battery with tools made for that purpose. Also I should have the right to use components from a broken iPhone into a different broken iPhone so I get a working iPhone(and if you claim security then wipe the phone before you allow this swap).
> The idea is not that you should be able to swap your battery as easy as you can with an Nokia 3310 but that you or a competent person could swap the battery with tools made for that purpose.
On many modern devices, you don't have "a battery", you have battery cells fit into every available space and wired together. You're certainly welcome to try replacing those. I just don't want to see that reverted to a discrete battery design.
> Also I should have the right to use components from a broken iPhone into a different broken iPhone so I get a working iPhone
By all means! And "components" here may well mean "single integrated board", as it does on many laptops and phones.
> On many modern devices, you don't have "a battery", you have battery cells fit into every available space and wired together. You're certainly welcome to try replacing those. I just don't want to see that reverted to a discrete battery design.
Source for this. No device has unpackaged unprotected battery cells just floating around.
They may have many discrete batteries to use up all of the available space, but each unit is self contained with protection electronics and can be swapped independently of the others.
I didn't say "unpackaged" or "unprotected". But I've seen the internals of multiple devices that have simple plastic wrappers (not hard shells) around the various battery cells, with wires connecting those plastic wrappers, and they don't have duplicated battery electronics, just one set.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to the right of being allowed to swap parts. If you can't make parts yourself but you can take salvageable parts from a broken device. Why should you be prevented from doing this repair? Also, why should third party manufacturers be prevented from making compatible parts?
> I'm not sure how that is relevant to the right of being allowed to swap parts. If you can't make parts yourself but you can take salvageable parts from a broken device. Why should you be prevented from doing this repair?
As I stated earlier in this thread, you should absolutely have the right to attempt such repairs. I just don't believe that there should be requirements to make devices use more modular components, at the potential expense of other desirable properties.
Those are pouch batteries, they never need a hard shell.
Each one will have a tiny PCB with protection circuitry on it. It’s the only way to prevent them from accidentally catching fire or exploding.
Batteries are far more complex than most people expect. Especially lithium batteries found in phones. The chemistry is super sensitive, and anything except careful monitoring of each battery pack risks catastrophic failure. Hence the tiny PCB on each battery pack.
> I just don't want to see that reverted to a discrete battery design.
WHY?! You'd end up with stuff 3-5mm thicker, but basically the same weight. Let's drop the "thinner" fetish once and for all, nobody cares about some mm of "wasted" space (that usually improves cooling anyway) inside a devices case and it being a bit chunkier, as long as it's almost just as lightwieght!
Fffs, let's go back to getting gold plated or diamond encrusted laptops and watches for showing off status! That's way better than the thinner/lighter nonsense...
Sure, getting smth. thinner bc technology actually improves (eg. displays) is cool, but shaving micrometers by packing everything close together is stupid.
(Oh, and we could start fixing our brains to think the same about cases for... people! Eg. housing. Like in kill the micro-apparments disease, there's enough room on the planet for all to leave confortable... in bigger rooms, and with chunkier laptops if that makes them more recyclable. "Space" IS mostly "free" ya know - very little of Earth's surface is actually usable for stuff like agriculture, energy production, mining etc.)
Firstly there is component level repair, faulty chips on a circuitboard can be de-soldered and replaced. It is not rocket science, it's perfectly normal level of repair and is worthwhile on a $500+ device.
Then there is no phone that literally has a single board, there are other components such as the camera, earpiece, screen, etc. that are still replaceable.
Most cars are repairable, there is an industry of alternative parts, you go to a mechanic, he plugs the laptop with the software , find the problem, then you chose from a website with parts the one you want , you have different alternatives. Also you can visit places with scraped cars and you can find parts there for cheap. There is no DRM at the moment to stop you reusing a door from a different car or a door made by any third party(not sure about latest models, maybe Tesla does this).
I am not familiar with the latest models, do they changed that dramatically and I am out of date? Can't a competent mechanic replace any part on your new car?
Yeah, Tesla does (though perhaps not with doors, yet). And if you look at the industrial tractor industry, you can see the future where it applies to even more and more vehicles.
The legislation (at least ones like this) are not implemented thoughtlessly. Its likely that just allowing parts which have a short service life to be replaced would be enough.
Also anything which is structural is likely not going to be the part which maintenance needs to be done on
The cookie problem we have is because the sites are actually tracking you m so maybe they should have forced to say "We are tracking you, please accept". Coockies used for actual technical reasons like to store a session ID do not need warnings. GDPR improved on that by forcing the websites to show me what are collecting and with who are sharing the data. I like this transparency, if you want to track me then tell me the details and I will decide if I visit your page or maybe find a different one.
I'd rather be continuously tracked by a thousand websites and volunteer my birthday and location history to them than ever click a cookie or GDPR popup again.
Then you'll be out of luck. Same as you cannot legally buy leaded fuels in most countries anymore, even tho you might prefer them, and same as Bayer will not sell you Heroin(tm) to treat your cough anymore.
I for one would love this. It used to be that you got a complete circuit schematic when buying a new TV.
Perhaps we don't need to go that far, but just removing the moats that prevent people from building compatible hardware would go far. That toners include DRM chips just to protect consumer unfriendly business models still bothers me. It's just e-waste for no good.
You can buy your stuff in China or whereever if you really want to.
And I wouldn't include any used goods sold between actual people (not the corporation people) and grandfather in any products that were first put on the market before a certain date (and make that date a few years in the future as a grace period). And maybe even progressively introduce different restrictions.
But yes, by and large it has the same effect and yes, I think that this effect is to be desired.
No, I think it should be illegal for companies to sell new products. Which has the same net result as a buying ban for the new goods markets (and used goods market over time).
Now the question that needs careful consideration is what constitutes "unrepairable" legally? It has to be sensible and legally ironclad.
As far as I can tell,there is indeed a long-term goal behind this. The idea to shift the economy towards sustainable consumption and a proper circular economy that ideally reduces waste close to zero.
I hope this doesn't result in a GDPR-like effect, but for phones instead of websites: "We're sorry, but iPhones aren't available in your region" followed by a redirect to google.com
Right to repair will eventually appear in US too.
Also what will your customer think that you won't sell to him unless you sigh off the right to repair your broken phone (Apple will not repair simple issues instead replacing your phone, this is a waste considering that some smart people can open the device and fix it if allowed)
Given the size of the european market and the median wealth in it, it won't. And if it did, someone else would quickly come to replace whoever left.
Companies don't follow all those regulation for the fun of it, they do it because there is a lot more money to gain by doing it than by leaving that market.
Also if other jurisdiction don't follow on that (or on GDPR too, while we're at it) I don't know how they explain it to their citizens. We european are not magical people, we just tend to remember a bit more that our govs and laws are there by our authority, and to serve our needs.
I have seen very few sites actually doing this. The only one I remember is Chicago Tribune, and I cannot remember any site where I didn't just shrug and move on.
Also, Apple in particular cannot really afford to leave the EU. About 23% of their profits were generated in the EU in 2019. Other big names are in essentially the same boat.
On that note, it actually may be everyone but Apple saying that. Not sure about the laptops, but at least their iPhones are surprisingly repairable compared to Samsung, LG, OnePlus and more. And they use recycled metals inside, too.
Being guaranteed the right to repair from every manufacturer is great and, more importantly, much needed. Nonetheless, most people abide by the culture fabricated by those very corporations, which is defined by an annual release cycle of devices which are minimally upgraded deliberately, their selling point usually being something visibly different from the previous year's smartphones--currently, being foldable or having a gazillion lenses on its back. If the users keep falling for those kinds of tricks and spending a whole month of their salary to buy a phone every year, the status quo isn't going to change. Of course, an easier way to recycle our phones wouldn't hurt, either. Even forcing companies to recycle first, manufacturing new components from scratch only if absolutely necessary, would be a beneficial measure, I reckon.
Not everybody is changing the phone or computers as often. Say if someone gifts me an old iPhone and the battery is getting old I do not have any Apple store around to replace it, I will be forced to trash a working phone because sending it to the country capital for an approved person to install an approved battery is probably more expensive then buying a new phone.
Assuming high-tech early adopters continue to buy new devices as they are released, repairability and recyclability can still make a large difference to the secondary market for refurbished and reused devices.
If devices are locked down and become 'bricks' once their original owner is finished with them -- then they're unable to provide any more value.
Alternatively if they can be erased, upgraded and continue to function -- and ideally share components with other devices -- then the device and production cost continue to generate value.
We have a problem with quantifying and justifying that 'second-order value' since we often think only of the initial consumer's payment (be it one-time or recurring).
The cycle can be broken, though. Look at PC sales these days. PCs became good enough to meet most people's everyday home or office needs, and hardly anyone upgrades automatically every 2-3 years any more unless they genuinely need more powerful hardware.
Meanwhile, aggressive marketing particularly to impressionable younger customers has kids and those who influence them raving about a notch or a third camera or whatever it is this week, even though the benefits of these relatively small changes are often negligible. This seems to be more of a cultural problem, possibly with a side order of exploiting vulnerable targets in dubiously ethical ways, than a technical problem.
>This seems to be more of a cultural problem, possibly with a side order of exploiting vulnerable targets in dubiously ethical ways, than a technical problem.
That's exactly what I've said on my previous comment:
>The culture fabricated by those very corporations
The article says this is needed in order to reduce greenhouse emissions. I don't feel that's true. In my country in Europe nothing is done to reduce pollution from the cars and plastic usage. Year after year more products are built with plastic instead of glass or metal.
Are you sure? I mean, European directives are not always implemented perfectly, but all countries do try to. It may be that your country is doing something, it's just not noticeable, yet. This is long term stuff, results are only apparent years or decades after the laws come into effect.
I live in my country and I know some things about it. Germany allows people to sell old cars in Eastern Europe. My country will take those cars without any limits. This is the Europe that I'm living in.
Crossing the street in the morning is an exercise of how long can you hold your breath.
Same thing in Finland. There are new cars here and there but if you take a stroll around a dealership's lot, there are lots of cars shipped from Germany that have been used for a few years.
I think the average age of a registered vehicle here is around 10 years; it's not uncommon at all to see >20yo cars in local traffic and parking lots.
Really depends on their condition when purchased, but 15+ year old cars is pushing it. Not worth buying imo, but I guess as long as they're allowed people will buy them. I think the taxes are higher on really old cars?
There are people who simply can't afford or don't want to put any more than a few thousand eur into a car. The other thing is that you can buy a 10-year-old car that is in good condition, and drive it as long as its lasts.. which can be many many years. (My first car was about 20 years old when I got it for free, and my current car was more than 10 years old when I bought it -- now about 13 years, and still feels almost like brand new to me :P)
Taxes are higher depending on emissions, but it's rarely enough to offset the purchase price. For example, if you buy a stinky 90s car that emits 200gCO2/100km, tax would be around 300 eur/year today. A new car that emits 120g/100km is going to be somewhere around 150 eur.
Also, first cars. The usual advice for new drivers is "get a cheap used car and drive it for a while, instead of dumping (equivalent of) a couple thousand EUR into a newer (used) one, and then crashing it into a gate".
Most Eastern European countries are actually doing well compared to the big wealthy countries in terms of CO2. (Not necessarily in terms of other air quality stuff.)
Yeah they need to have stricter emissions tests. To be fair, I've seen plenty of surprisingly old cars in the UK, which literally billowed smoke and were visibly rusted... So it's not only Eastern Europe with these problems.
Personally I prefer used imported cars, as well haha. It's just, if it passes technical inspection and emission tests, why not? An 8 year old VW or Toyota with all the options that's been well kept for 7000 Euros seems better to me than a 16,000 Euro new base model.
For getting around a city, public transport is good enough, though.
Another problem is just the number of cars - many cities have more cars than they can handle. Hopefully more cities will ban diesel cars or all cars in some parts...
I am thinking that extracting metals from mines is also polluting, the big issue with plastic is the fact is contaminating waters, for CO2 emissions the major problem is the burning of oil/petrol and I think construction(creating cement creates a lot of CO2).
About glass, some people say that sicne glass is heavy you will use more fuel to move it around(I have no idea if this is true).
It depends, most of the time the issue is a small component from a big system failing. This large companies should not block a competent repairman to diagnose and replace the broken part. I am not asking companies to make Lego phones just don't block people with DRM,copyright and supply chain restrictions.
Companies often have the monopoly on repair for their products because they don’t make the parts and diagnostic tools available. Yes, they ask money for repair, but there also plenty of repairs they flat out refuse to do. Apple refuses to repair phones with water damage for example. Repairs that repair shops might be happy to do, if they had the access to parts.
Scrape off rust, replace chips that have been shorted.
Does depend on chips being available and some knowledge on how to diagnose the damages (e.g.: board schematics).
Here's an example of new age Macbook pro's dying from little water ingress (design oversight). And a combination of knowledge and a simple chip can fix your nearly write off Macbook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU
I would be very surprised if Rossman charged more for that repair than the cost of a new Macbook.
Apple loves to say that their products are so expensive and complicated that manual repairs just aren't worth doing. But observably, in the real world, even with all of the crap Apple puts in front of repair shops to slow them down, that isn't true. Third-party repairpeople still manage to regularly beat Apple's prices.
Apple does not allow the companies that make chips from their laptops to also sell those chips for people that want to repair this laptops. So this repair people need to "illegally" obtain the chips from someone at the factory.
Apple also threatens you with lawyers if you host or share schematics for repairing products. The new repair partner program from Apple is also a joke and created to appear they are trying to fix the problem.
Maybe it's a joke to you. For me it's fine. People pay real money in order to have Apple quality. If all you need is "a computer", go ahead, there's plenty around any corner.
Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly if everyone is allowed to sell stuff in its name.
There's a big difference between someone saying "I'm a repair shop that is capable of fixing Ford vehicles" and "I'm an official Ford Certified repair shop". Both are allowed to fix your car. The third party shop can order parts to repair your car.
And nobody curses Ford's name when they go to a crappy shop and spend $2 on a new headlight that fails in a week. That's the shop's fault.
Nobody is saying anyone can call their junk an "official apple product". Why would this not be the same as the car scenario? If you don't want to risk issues, don't go to sketchy repair shops.
So the logic is that we shouldn't do anything because nothing has been done yet ?
Europe probably has the strictest car emissions laws (so strict manufacturers have to cheat to comply with it), and many of its country banned single use plastic bags, straws, &c.
You should look into VW's scandal and check how much they got fined. Last time I checked it was multiple billions. Something like 10%+ of their annual profit.
The only thing you might get away with is bribing a cop for a speeding ticket in some rural part of an eastern EU country. Anything else will eventually be discovered and you'll be fined accordingly.
I could understand your personal point of view if you live east of Poland though.
I'm not sure what's so bad east of Poland but I'm not there.
However, as I said, with a small bribe you can take out any particle filter here. It's common knowledge.
Besides that, did those VW cars got banned from the streets? No! Does VW pay for my health issues? No! Those money are normal taxes to conduct business in Europe.
> I'm not sure what's so bad east of Poland but I'm not there
It's known for being a bit less strict and a bit more corrupt than the west. At least from what I gathered from my bulgarian, polish and greek friends and from my own experience over there.
Idk where you live but in France we have mandatory vehicle inspections every 2 years and you definitely can't bribe these guys. You'll get fined if you get caught, like everything else. How else would it work, we can't have daily inspections on every single thing that could potentially be made illegal.
I agree with your last point though, but that's the german auto mafia, these guys get away with a lot.
You seem uninformed about multiple EU initiatives, we've been deploying reneables, cleaning up the grid, etc. Our car emissions standards are much stricter than US/China/Russia.
Unlike in the US, exporting plastic to the third world is actually illegal. And plastic is a distinct and separate problem to CO2.
I'm uninformed about the place were I live? I don't know what I smell every day, going to and back to work? You have quite some nerve ;)
Let me tell you some stories about illegal stuff.
A few days ago you could smell chemicals in the air every morning. In the middle of the city. There was a big scandal and they said UK exported their shit here. European style. Nothing really came off of it.
And about right to repair I have bad experience: broken cable is enough for lots of buyers to throw away electronic appliances. Let’s be honest: majority of users will cause more harm than do good when repairing something. Another thing is planned obsolescence when electronics die right after warranty period ends. Buddy had this with high end washing machine and I had this with display recently.
This maybe happens if the product is cheap or if you have the enough money so wasting your time sending a product to a repair person costs you more. But don't forget that a major issue is companioes like Apple using copyright laws to forbid sharing of repair manuals, sharing of diagnostic software and forbiding selling of components to other people then Apple.
Allowing people sharing a repair manual, a diagnose software won't harm any consumer.
I think the whole thing should be thought of as built-to-be-repaired, rather than right-to-repair.
Build with simple easy to replace common components. No black boxes. Obviously some products fit this more nicely than others. Simple devices like washing machines vs smartphones.
Washing machines and other products that have been smartened should have mechanical mode fall-backs so that cheap electronic controllers susceptible to failure which may cease production, don’t doom the usefulness of a product.
If you read more into the law, they want to have parts and documentation available to professionals mostly. The consumer might still get them, but the goal is not to be user-friendly.
Like with your car, sure I can change my fuel pump, but most people will go their mechanic, and their mechanic can buy parts from the manufacturer. The law is promoting this kind of service.
Right now if your TV has a broken part, it might be impossible to fix, even with a pro. Maybe a really good one might change some electronics, but not an OEM part swap.
I just bought a new TV after my previous one crapped out. It was exhibiting the exact same symptoms when it was repaired under warranty a few years back. Decided it would be cheaper in the long run to buy a new TV, get a new warranty than to spend $800 on parts and labor to repair. That was my 2nd Samsung in a row to die a few years after a warranty repair. Avoiding Samsung TVs for a long while.
Why? Most of the time you design your stuff deliberately to not be easy to repair, see Apple, see every mobile phone/notebook with a non-replaceable battery.
Just don't do that and you're fine. Publish your schematics too, they are not a company secret, they are for your customers.
> Let’s be honest: majority of users will cause more harm than do good when repairing something.
What kind of argument is that? Right to repair isn't about you and me fiddling about with with broken appliances.
It's about qualified and licensed people in repair shops being able to acquire parts and schematics to do their job. No one is arguing that your average Jane or Joe should be ones doing the repair! That's just another
strawman that is easily dismantled...
Same in Europe and still completely besides the point.
Also, this argument keeps ignoring that the ominous "anybody" is required to have access to a repair shop, tools, and the skills required.
Once you take into account all these factors it quickly becomes apparent that not "anybody" will repair cars, appliances, and electronics by themselves; regardless of legislation.
The people who do care (farmers in the US, electronics repair shops, that dude on YT who repairs Teslas, ...) incidentally are the ones with the skills, the tools, and the incentive.
The licensed part comes into play as soon damage regulation due to improper use/repair occurs. This isn't a concern for private individuals (in the car example: there's a mandatory in-depth technical inspection every other year in Europe, so an improper repair results in a failed inspection anyway), though your insurance may become null and void depending on the circumstances.
Which parts of the potential legislation do you have concerns about with regard to difficulty for new entrants?
Product obsolescence does seem to be a concern that the EU wishes to address:
"The Commission will propose legislation on Sustainable Product Policy, to ensure that products placed on the EU market are designed to last longer, are easier to reuse, repair and recycle, and incorporate as much as possible recycled material instead of primary raw material. Single-use will be restricted, premature obsolescence tackled and the destruction of unsold durable goods banned."[0]
I also think that legislating to ensure that issues such as energy efficiency, durability, repairability and recycling must be considered during the design phase are great progress too, as outlined in the Circular Economy Action Plan[1].
It's important to raise those concerns and get involved to help shape the process and outcomes.
> Let’s be honest: majority of users will cause more harm than do good when repairing something.
Yep, let's make everything a black box that can only be repaired under the watchful eye of a corporation, and they retain the right to refuse the repair and charge whatever the fuck they want. That's surely gonna work out well. That's surely gonna work out well.
Siemens machine and Philips display. Siemens successfully disappeared, Philips acted ethically and sent refurbished one, because in the last days of warranty I managed to open support case.
Depending on how this is handled it could backfire and we end up with more pollution as people discard used parts. For some items, like adding easily swap of batteries may open the devices to easier contamination. However if right to repair is contained to authorized repair centers; which is currently how warranties are preserved in many countries; then it might still pass provided someone with the right tools can do it safely.
As for the software side this may be a tough one as many times a change in chipset can make features available in newer models that are not in older models and the real question is, how far back must they provided like software upgrades that new models have? iOS goes back quite a ways, is that not enough now? That my prior iMac no longer had support from Nvidia (2013 model) is whose fault? Apple's or Nvidias?
What people need to understand is that replacement parts may involve complete assemblies because there is no feasible means to replace some of the pieces in common tablets and phones. So take a dryer, you might need to replace an entire motor but depending on how the regulation is written that may not be sufficient.
tl;dr it all sounds well and good until those who have no understanding of repair start writing regulations that could lead to less reliable items, more electronics and batteries in the trash, and even most costly items.
There is a world of difference between technical obstacles and deliberate ones. Apple structures their contracts so that the manufacturer is not allowed to sell components to any third parties, making repair impossible. You could be forced to throw out a five grand laptop because you are not allowed to buy a $5 chip, that can be easily replaced.
I was looking for a video of mah bout Louis! He's so informative and I love watching his streams...I had no idea what right to repair was until I saw him talk about it.
It's insane how much power we let companies like apple have over products we purchase from them.
There are several arguments in that comment that are fair and reasonable, sometimes. However, they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. We should not allow owner-hostile vendors to hide behind them as excuses for measures like lock-in mechanisms and planned obsolescence that are not necessary.
If an item really does have the potential to become harmful in some way if it is not properly used and maintained, the burden should be on the vendor and/or manufacturer to demonstrate that in order to justify any restrictions on its use or maintenance. Such demonstrations and restrictions should be subject to regulatory oversight by consumer protection agencies or similar bodies. If they are found to be unjustified by a competent authority then the burden should be on the vendor and/or manufacturer to either make things right or compensate those who bought the product (including reasonable consequential losses, not just the purchase price).
Of course, one needs to responsibly dispose of discard components. Electrical recycling is a far different story than plastic recycling. A lot of electronics have rare/expensive components that are worth recovering like gold and rare earth's.
When you buy a physical object, such as a home, a car, a shirt, or a smartphone, shouldn't you be be able to repair it, modify it however you want, use it for different purposes, loan it to friends, sell it to others, and so on -- you know, all the rights and benefits associated with the concept of private ownership? And when you buy a software object, shouldn't you have the same rights and benefits?
When you lease a car, you do not own it. The bank owns the car and depending on the country of residence, the dealership is possibly on the hook for a guaranteed buyout price. The lessee is certainly not allowed to "tune" the car without the consent of the bank/dealership. They are usually not even allowed to service it anywhere but at an authorized garage.
This is different from outright purchase of the car, where you can literally drive it to the nearest scrap yard and have it crushed right after purchase :)
I think it would be very helpful to demand that all leases are labeled properly. Where we are it says "Buy" on the ad, "Buy" on the button, and "Lease" deep inside the 30-page Terms Of Service.
It's very reasonable to say that the vendors created an expectation of ownership to push their sale.
If you didn't notice that I called them "vendors" instead of "leasers", it adds to my point.
I don’t think banning the concept of licensing would be helpful.
Other things being equal, I would agree. However, if market forces push us into a choice between ordinary people being able to own things and use them freely against ordinary people being forced to pay rent on everything forever and use things only as some higher power dictates, it's not going to take long to make that choice. This is the choice that we are heading towards with the increasing use of software and, in particular, the repurposing of laws originally intended to prevent exploiting the work of others to create software so that they constrain the ordinary use of a product by the person who bought it.
Withing the next 10-15 years 95% of household appliances and furniture will have a chip in them, to enable some type of IoT functionality.
All of them will be licensed, almost abolishing private ownership. If we idly accept licensing of everything, we will enjoy what will be basically serfdom.
People that were writing these laws never imagined they would prevent you from repairing a cat-feeder or a lighting system. They were intended for another purpose entirely. Maybe it's time we stopped misusing those laws and created a separate body of law for this specifically.
> Withing the next 10-15 years 95% of household appliances and furniture will have a chip in them, to enable some type of IoT functionality.
This is already happening. I work in an engineering consulting, specialising on consumer electronics. I have to admit, the wider industry is becoming a part of the issue: everybody wants to become like Apple.
We have an enormous tide of new clients incoming, with prime majority of them having no previous experience doing anything with electronics whatsoever.
If we ignore customers with out in the clouds fantasies, we will be losing like 3/4 of the new business, on another, we will be loosing our engineers who will be leaving to work on something more interesting and merit worthy.
The hottest buzzword among Silicon Valley accelerator bred entrepreneurs I see is "product-as-a-service," which basically you buying a product, but still having to pay to use it even after you already own it.
We have a joke that soon even toilet paper rolls will come chipped, and the paper will not work unless you pay somebody on the internet.
Agreed on appliances, but I don't believe that 95% of new furniture like tables and couches will contain an IoT chip within 15 years. Hardly anyone is working on that.
I think open source software and possibly hardware as CNC/3D printing/etc form the checks and balances against this.
It's sort of unfortunate. I can see having an idea, and wanting to start a business, but not have people copy it wholesale. But I can also see that people who do start companies go the full-tyranny route - closed source, phone app only, invasive data collection, until purchasing something is a compromise on every level.
>I didn't even mention the words "licensing" and "banning."
Even if you don't mention them explicitly, you still have to acknowledge the difference because one of your examples was "software object".
When consumers pay money for software, it almost always licensed and not bought. If you buy MS Windows 10 from Amazon.com, you purchased a license. If you truly want to "buy" Windows 10 in the same sense as your other non-software examples, you'd have to convince Microsoft to sell you the "ownership of the codebase" or have enough billions to acquire the entire Microsoft corporation to "own" Windows 10.
Expecting to get a "codebase" when buying a software product would be the same as expecting getting blueprints for all the parts your car is made of. The concept of "buying a licence" is forced and by no means the only possible, if one wants to use a piece of software.
I wasn't saying that consumers "expect" the source code when they so-called "buy" the software. I'm explaining an example of what copyright law already _is_ so mentioning "software objects" is already getting into discussion of licenses even if you don't use explicitly use the word "license". There are 2 meanings:
- "buy software" the legal ownership sense : as in buying the copyright which is usually something companies (not consumers) do when they buy the intellectual property rights. E.g. Adobe Inc buys Macromedia Dreamweaver. This is the true ownership.
- "buy software" the casual sense : which just means the consumer getting a CD or a digital download to install a copy of the software. This the license not the ownership.
They are 2 different things that use the same word "buy" and just because a commentary omits the word "license" doesn't mean the above distinctions go away.
It's a similar distinction for many types of intellectual property. Photographers of weddings usually don't let couples buy the wedding photos in a legal ownership sense. Instead, they sell some prints with a license for use. Same with musicians selling "songs" to the public. People bought a license and not the copyright. Paul McCartney doesn't even "own" the songs he wrote with The Beatles. Thus, Paul McCartney can't do "anything he wants" with the song "Yesterday". He can't "resell the song" to somebody else like a used book. Instead, he has to ask for Sony's permission.
Does anyone "force" couples to license photos instead of buy them? In one sense, no. The bride & groom could conceivably contract with a photographer on a "work for hire" basis and thus own the copyrights to the photos. But most couples don't do that. Newspapers and magazines do establish "work for hire" with freelance photographers so they can own the photographs but most wedding couples don't.
As other commenters mentioned, the real issue is the slippery word "buy" that defies consumers' natural intuition of what that means. If you're really leasing/renting/licensing something, you need to make that clear.
You mentioned buying a software product, but that is not commonly done by consumers. We all license software. Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it. The replies mention changing software copyright for consumer products. I can imagine that to be a good idea, but I don't see the EU making GPLv3 software mandatory for software products. I don't see a way forward yet.
What does the GPLv3 have to do with any of this? Copyleft-licensing software doesn't mean the original author gives up any of their own copyright privileges. How do you think dual licensing works?
> Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it.
No, when people use the word "buy" here, they're using it in the same way I might buy a physical book.
When I buy a book, I'm free to write in it, scan it, transcribe it, rip it in half, reglue the spine, put a dust cover on it, or resell it. I'm not free to republish it or violate the author's copyright.
When I buy a piece of software, I should be free to hotpatch the DLL, back up the product, put wrappers around it, examine it, write about it, or resell it. That doesn't mean the owner should lose their copyright. You're conflating two unrelated concepts -- the abolition of copyright and the erosion of basic consumer ownership rights that have been established for centuries.
In fact, the EU already has a right to resale for digital software. And yet, despite that consumer-friendly rule, not every piece of software in the EU is currently GPLv3 licensed.
All that people are saying is that our rights as consumers shouldn't go away just because we bought a digital book instead of a physical one.
In the context of software bundled with a device, the software should be considered accesory if the device needs it to be useful for its main purpose. Often software is used instead of a chip because it's cheaper, easier to correct mistakes, more flexible in general. But the hardware is sold, and so the accesory software should not be used as an excuse to apply the license model to physical products.
We don't have to accept it, people aka the power of majority does the rules. I see no benefits or the people shilling it are doing a bad job. Either way it's for us to accept it or make the concepts.
You are wrong. While the majority can create the rules the people that matter aren't the majority but creators and skilled professionals. When someone creates something they have absolute power over it until they reveal it to the world. They can even choose to destroy what they create rather than reveal it.
When the majority (consumers) decide they want everything for free and that they want absolute power over the creations of others creators will simply stop revealing what they create and stop making their creations available for purchase. Instead creating things for private use.
> When someone creates something they have absolute power over it until they reveal it to the world.
The vast majority of these "creators and skilled professionals" are doing work for hire for the same people who own everything else, and have absolutely no control over the product of their labor.
It doesn't matter whether the creator underwrites their own costs or a corporation does it, the same problem applies. If those who fund creative works cannot collect returns on their investment they will stop funding the work.
I think if this law is passed, companies will start subscription service where you'll be renting phones instead of owning then. Then onus and exclusive right for repair/replacement will stay with the smartphone company.
If you're currently licensing the software on your phone instead of buying a copy of it, then the situation today isn't really better.
You pay the full cost of the device, but you don't own it, and companies retain the exclusive right for repair/replacement. But, they don't have any onus for repair/replacement, and you need to pay full price for a new device if your current one gets damaged.
An honest rental system might be preferable. At least then people would know what they're getting into. At least when I rent a device, there's some real obligation for the actual owner to fix it when it breaks. At least then companies who legitimately sell their devices and don't block repair efforts would have a marketing edge.
By all means, let people rent software. Just make sure companies are correctly marketing that as a rental.
Aren’t we just allowing the idea of licensing contract overwhelm ourselves for little reasons?
When you buy a book, you own the hardware but not IP. You’re “licensed a nonexclusive irrevocable right to use, that allows reverse engineering but without sublicensing clauses” aka you can’t xerox the full book and sell it for $5. When you buy a sandwich, same except hardware can be eaten.
Really the deal of “mandatory licensed” software is that you can’t pirate it, and that should already be covered by laws. It should not require a million page contract and those contract mustn’t be much more than blank pages.
That's the classic predicted outcome for any new regulation... which rarely turns out to be true. Consumers will want to buy their own phones and as long as that is true, businesses will adapt to the new regulations to satisfy this need.
I am not sure we will return quite to that model. For a trip down memory lane: The US specifically had an FCC decision (Carterphone - 1978) designed to to remove the leverage that landline providers had over the market with regards to forcing customers to rent or buy a phone from only them.
My u-verse dsl modem, owned by AT&T and rented to me, got an update pushed to it recently with lots of telemetry. no recourse. Comcast does similar things with their cable modems, such as opening them up as semi-public access points.
I own my home, but I'm not allowed to pour oil on the ground even though it would only destroy my own grass. I own my car, but I'm not allowed to remove the headlights and drive at night.
Exactly where we place the limits is up for debate, but I think I conclusively proved to everybody reading this that there need to be limits the only question is where.
Of course, but note that in both of your examples those limits are in place to make sure you don't inflict significant costs or damages on the rest of humankind. The limits you mention prevent you from making roads unsafe for everyone else at night and from poisoning the ground on which everyone else lives.
This misses the fundamental point being discussed.
Having the right to modify and repair does not mean a carte blanche to ignore and circumvent building and electrical regulations. You do have the right to remove, replace or add additional outlets providing that the regulations are complied with, and you can purchase outlets from any vendor which sells products compliant with the regulations.
Availability of first-party and third-party parts would greatly open up the market for electronic goods of all kinds. So long as they comply with the necessary regulations and perform equivalently to the original parts, it would be a vast improvement upon the current state of affairs.
You're completely right. The distinction is that it's not the firm building your house forbidding you from pouring oil on the grass. It's government regulation. The same approach should be towards people, as an example, modifying the radio in their phones.
Well, there are potential issues with people repairing their own phones. They could use the wrong (or counterfeit) part and cause the phone to emit radiation that interferes with nearby communications. Or they could use the wrong (or counterfeit) battery or even damage the battery during replacement, potentially causing a fire hazard.
Typically people aren't replacing the antennas or radio amps, so I'd keep the radiation issue in the theoretical bin.
As for bad parts and bad repair jobs, sure. I would think that owners are incentivized to buy parts that are safe and to install them correctly.
Of course some battery batches will be bad, but that's true for authentic parts too. Remember the Samsung Note battery issues?
The purpose is not for you to fix your phone motherboard, a competent repair person with access to tools, schematics and repair software would do that. If bad quality of batteries are on the market the solution for fixing that is not to prevent people replacing the phone batteries, it would be like if bad petrol is sold somewhere and then car manufacturers use it as an excuse to force you to buy "genuime petrol" so your engine would continue to work.
> I own my car, but I'm not allowed to remove the headlights and drive at night.
The issue there is driving at night on public roads. You can, with your own car, remove your headlights. The car manufacturer can't show up and sue you for that.
> I'm not allowed to pour oil on the ground even though it would only destroy my own grass
That's not the only thing it would destroy (ground water, local wildlife, etc). You are allowed to style your hedges in the shape of a middle finger, or pluck all your grass out blade by blade (save for any HOA restrictions you agreed to).
I think this discussion got off-track. The question is about whether the company that sold you the car is allowed to impose EULA-type limits on how you modify, use, or resell it, above and beyond safety laws that apply equally to ever person and product.
> I own my home, but I'm not allowed to pour oil on the ground even though it would only destroy my own grass.
I believe there are technical differences in how ownership of the land works in different jurisdictions throughout the world. The land or the earth below your grass might not be as yours as an article of clothing you're wearing.
One distinction I see is between repair and modification.
If you own your car, and the headlight burns out, why shouldn't you be allowed to repair it back to the original factory state? Why should you be forced to pay someone else to do this?
If someone tries to argue that you're going to do it wrong, it seems like the onus should be on them to prove that your repair was bad and dangerous.
A more compelling argument might be -- what things are you not permitted to do to your home or car because of a private entity such as the manufacturer.
> shouldn't you be be able to repair it, modify it however you want, use it for different purposes, loan it to friends, sell it to others, and so on
all of these are completely different actions, have different standing in front of the law, have different repercussions etc etc
the way i see these kinds of initiatives: i think they're healthy, i think we need them, but i also notice how they're from a bygone era where cars where fixed in the driveway. that age has passed, and sure, we need a new paradigm. but i still wouldn't trust a random person vs a dedicated service center to fix my phone. can we make those phones so simple that anyone can repair them? would this entail any performance drawbacks?
> notice how they're from a bygone era where cars where fixed in the driveway. that age has passed
Do you feel that age has passed because manufacturers now block people having the info needed for repair, or are you meaning the complexity of cars has increased?
Perhaps the age of fixing cars in the driveway may return, if manufacturers aren't able to block the info needed.
At present, more technically advanced people seem to piece together their own CANbus diagnostic tools. But off the shelf products that work for "every model" should be practical if this legislation works.
Absolutely better regs around access to diagnostics (e.g. CAN bus as you mention) is part of the story. But for the bigger internal stuff, tolerances are a lot tighter than they were 20 years ago, which can make it hard to do a good job of in your driveway. Certainly some superficial repairs are made much harder than they should be, but a lot of that is more modular too so you aren't saving a ton doing it at home. At least you can find out which control unit should be replaced if you can read the diagnostics properly :)
Interesting point about the tolerances, hadn't though of that. For making your own machined parts (eg crankshaft, engine block/heads), that makes sense.
Though, making your own engine block is pretty far from a "home garage thing" anyway.
People used to just buy those parts from a local supplier or wrecker, then fit them in their garage at home. That doesn't seem like it should have changed.
Nitpicking.. but I think homes are not a good analogy, because many/most homes in apartment buildings are owned by the housing corporation of the building, or whatever the entity type in in the jurisdiction happens to be.
> shouldn't you be be able to ... modify it however you want
Not necessarily. Consider products that require radios like satellite internet transceivers. If you were allowed to "modify it however you want" you could easily modify it to put up a continuous wave and effectively DoS the satellite gateway, causing an outage for all other customers on the entire beam which is obviously something the ISP wants to avoid at all costs.
Hence, many companies only allow you to lease the transceiver, not own. And even if you did literally own it, they obviously don't want you modifying it for fear of harming the service of other customers.
It's one thing if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster to burn cool patterns into your toast. It's quite another if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster such that nobody else's toaster in the neighborhood works anymore.
Of course if you buy something, change it and start messing with other peoples lives you are breaking the law. Doesn't really have anything to do with a right to repair.
Shouldn't the restriction be placed on the use of the shared resource (the air)? That is, modifying the transceiver should be fine on its own.
What I'm trying to point out is that your comment seems to suggest restricting users from making any (all) modifications, even if they wouldn't affect anyone but themselves, because they might make a modification would affect others. I think one should be allowed to make any modifications as long as they're made responsible for how those modifications affect others. And even if a modification potentially (not through every use) negatively affects others, they should only face consequences when the use actually affected others or went against regulations of the shared resource (the air).
I'd say it's fine to modify it to be able to do that, as long as you don't actually turn it on and make it disrupt other people. For example, a car is very capable of crashing into people, but even though it can do that we expect people not to use cars in that way. Even though cars can be dangerous if used irresponsibility, there are legitimate reasons to have cars. Similarly, there are legitimate reasons to modify radios, and we should just expect people to use them responsibly the same way we expect car owners to use their cars responsibly.
The obvious flaw in this argument, outside of what others have already mentioned (doing that is independently illegal), is that you don't need to modify an official device to do something like that. Building a radio jammer out of fundamental component parts is not a complicated affair.
It's like arguing that people shouldn't be able to modify their home batteries because they could use them to purposely damage the power grid. That's kind of a ridiculous scenario to worry about when the same infrastructure is already vulnerable to utterly pedestrian physical sabotage. It's a facile rationalization for imposing restrictions that have an ulterior motive.
The more impactful and subtle part of this discussion includes what constraints, rights and responsibilities does this place on manufacture?
If we decide you have an inalienable right to repair the phone I made for you, does that mean I have to facilitate it? Does it mean I can't put technical barriers in place to make it harder for you? Do I have to offer you any sort of support & warrantee if you have modified it?
Can I refuse to offer you a sale on the object, and just offer a lease? Etc. etc.
I bought a few dumbphones from Amazon because I am scared that smartphones will be so pervasive and that dumbphones will be slowly phased out and you will be unable to buy them anymore. Smartphones are difficult to repair because the circuitry is hermetically sealed and you need specialist tools to open them up and tinker. Dumbphones, not so much. The parts are accessible and can be swapped out with working parts easily.
I haven't heard 'feature phones' since I used to read consumer electronics news sites (like Engadget, then This is my Next/The Verge) years ago.
I don't think anyone else uses the term; to the layman, they're 'dumb phones', to contrast with 'smart' (although increasinly 'smart phones' are just 'phones').
Or since those are American sites, perhaps it's actually a variation of regional colloquialisms.
Yes, I understand it, I'm just saying I haven't heard anyone other than a consumer electronics journalist use the term. Everyone says 'dumb phone' (to mean the same thing) if the distinction is important.
Only a few feature phones (dumb phones) even support 4G LTE. If you buy a phone without LTE support then it will become useless once carriers switch off their 3G GSM / CDMA base stations.
There's a market for that geared towards senior citizens (they show up in daytime tv ads).
They'll exist as long as there's a market for it.
That said, the definition of 'dumb' phone is going to vary, and senior citizens in 30 years will be seeking what looks like today's iPhone, or an android phone. Maybe.
I bet we move to a different medium that is easier on seniors bodies. Many seniors complain they can’t see the screen and their dexterity isn’t good enough to use smart phones easily. Judging based on my anecdotal experience with the elderly and those needing accommodations speech to text, text to speech, accessibility features and airplay are commonly used and I think this trend will continue.
There are a few hobbiests who've been working on smartphones powered by small chipsets like the Raspberry Pi Zero using off the shelf parts.
There are also rather a lot of KaiOS smart phones with the form factor of a flip phone, although I don't know how easy to repair they are or how many of them work on US networks.
>Don't buy from bad companies and it doesn't affect you.
Don't eat at bad restaurant and you won't get poisoned! You do not need warranty for your phone, don't buy from bad companies. We do not need safety checks for foods and medicine just don't buy from bad companies.
The issue is that companies put billions into PR, so even if Apple is a bad company it has a good image and it's products are a status symbol, the consumers can't compete with those billions.
I think you did not understand the point and responded from reflex. Let me simplify it down;
Consumers try to explain that throwing away good devices because the battery is old is bad for the world is not effective enough because it is fighting billions spent in PR that shows you that you need the new device because is slimmer,smarter,cooler and the big companies is doing the best to recycle this products(we send them in China where the smartest of our employees(that are definitely not children) are recycling every atom. So continue buying new things, you don't want your friends thinking you are poor and have the old models don't you?
Is it clear now? You are not forced to buy anything, unless you are forced by a job or social group to use certain apps but you would probably argue that you are not forced and you can quit your job and find other friends.
I know of children demanding iPhones because with an Android is impossible to iMessage(or video chat) with their friends.
I also know cases where a child from a modest family spent the money he earned on Fortnite cash. There is a group pressure to own certain things otherwise you are excluded.
Anyway my main point is about some regular citizens fighting a giant PR(propaganda) campaign is not easy. I follow some of Louis Rossman videos where he shows how politicians debate the right to repair and it is so clear how Apple and big companies PR succeeded in having those politicians putting more importance on copyright over repair schematics(because trade secrete). preventing repairing consoles(because pirates) and preventing replacing bateries(because fires and explosions). How much money and effort is needed to make a contra PR move to show people that batteries don't just explode if the repair person does not a paper that he is Apple genius or that making repair components accessible and repiar schematics accessible will not make video games more easy to pirate. Then there is also the idea that if you have access to rep[air your tractor then you can do dangerous stuff , thing that is ridiculous considering you can repair your car and then use it on a public road (not like tractors that are mostly used on private property)
Few weeks ago I decided to switch to Lineage OS. For that I bought a used OnePlus 3T on EBay. Now the exceptional fact about OnePlus is that they provide official repair service even for relatively old phones. Most recent model is OP 7T.
Replacement of the battery cost in total 40 Euro. That's shipping back and forth, the battery and the replacement. Very much impressed me how fast that procedure took. altogether only 4 days. How awesome is that?
Definitely. I replaced the camera on my last phone, because the lens cracked. Unfortunately, about a week after that repair, my phone fell out of my pocket while getting out of the car, and that repair was beyond my capability... I try and buy phones with a removable/swappable battery, bit those are becoming increasingly rare. I wont buy a phone without a microsd slot, though.
The success of the whole story is going to depend on whether they will be able to push it on everyone else. Otherwise we're going to have normal phones for everyone except EU, and bulky, outdated, but repairable "europhones" in Europe. Probably good for local producers though.
I don't think the right to repair is about the design being specifically repairable (i.e. uses exclusively sockets and through-hole components), rather it's about avoiding things which are deliberately constructed to prevent repairing them and legal barriers to reverse engineering items in order to repair them.
Examples are components which, while identical to the component requiring replacement, will refuse to work until coded to match the intended device with some proprietary cable (which is really a normal cable with a couple of wires reversed or some other dick move).
It could have other interesting implications. Like, no more grinding labels off of chips so a customer has a fighting chance of replacing things. That would be a nice world to live in, I think.
The "dick moves" can probably be tracked and forbidden, but IMO it's not the main reason why modern gadgets are hard to repair. Rather if you optimize for size, price, power consumption, performance, security, IP protection, development time etc., and just don't prioritize repairability, it naturally grows up this way.
Regarding cables: it would be nice if it was mandated to use an internationally recognized spec from certain designated bodies, such as IEEE.
If someone such as Apple wants to use Lightning because they find existing specs to be deficient, they should get the spec standardized before theyre allowed to implement a device using it. Specifications should ideally be unencombered by patents or for a fair and reasonable license.
Additionally implementers of a spec should be required to have their implementations verified that they adhere to the spec by an independent lab, such as UL (Underwriters Lab), and be fined into nonexistence if they forge the lab's marks.
This should also cut down on the snake oil cables, such as $90 gold plated HDMI cables.
I'd like to have standard rechargeable batteries in products. Not necessarily "hot" swappable (though that would be nice for devices like cellphones). But at least available in standard forms, and replaceable by someone with a screwdriver in a few minutes.
I'm sick of "renting" batteries that are permanently installed in devices that would otherwise work for tens of years, but their batteries wear out after only a few years. I'm sick of paying inflated prices for batteries that have bizarre configurations and that go out of production.
I understand there are significant engineering challenges for some things (e.g., earbuds that are basically some electronics wrapped around a lithium cell). But there's no reason a set of headphones couldn't have a replaceable cell (I'm looking at you, Bose). I'm happy to have slightly heavier headphones and slightly thicker laptops and tablets if it increases the device lifetime and reduces e-waste.
Not gonna happen without a mandate, that's for sure. Gotta keep customers on the upgrade treadmill.
Have you looked at how much stuff is packed in those AirPods? There’s certainly not enough room for a screwable cap and a consumer-safe lithium battery, while retaining rigidity and weatherproofing.
Bedsides, how many AirPods are likely to be dying from poor battery life compared to being lost, damaged or upgraded?
If this did happen, I suspect there would be more instances of people losing the battery cap, or throwing it away because of undiagnosed battery terminal faults, or of children dying because they swallowed the impossibly small pill shaped battery...
You could screw something on there. Just make the part that hangs outside your ear 2 mm thicker. It wouldn't be in your ear. Apple wants those things to fail, battery life to run out and not be replaceable. It's completely obvious.
How much are you willing to pay for such batteries?
For larger electronics that take double A batteries, this exists, but at a premium! These things are lithium-whatever and USB rechargable, but at $5 per, easy to dismiss. While dismissing them, consider where the "those don't count" retort is coming from. It's fair to point out that electronics have gotten small enough to the point that they don't fit AA batteries any more, but these batteries haven't taken over in situations where they are available, so even if they came in AAAA (quadruple-A size - like what's inside of a 9-volt) size that were usable in smaller electronics, I doubt the market would decide they are better.
Worse is better, and in this case, the iPhone, and everyone copying its permanently installed battery, is worse.
I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount to replace a failing rechargeable battery. If it's 20 or 30 bucks to get another three years out of a pair of wireless headphones, okay. I suspect that with standardized cells (perhaps a few dozen sizes? certainly more than the gamut of A/AA/AAA/C/D etc cells we currently have in the consumerverse, because device form factors vary widely) they would be cheaper.
But having to essentially defeat an end-user-hostile industrial design should be strongly discouraged.
Most rechargeables seem to have standard cells, but they are welded together in a weird proprietary package. Technically though they have standard rechargeables.
Another issue is I don't want batteries in my keyboard, mouse, or electric razor. All these things I use next to another thing with a power source. It's pointless to have them be rechargeable. Yet it's becoming harder and harder to find keyboards, mice, and razors that are wired. Cordless mice in particular are a blight on society because the extra weight of the batteries aggravates carpal-tunnel and is a health hazard.
> I'm sick of "renting" batteries that are permanently installed in devices that would otherwise work for tens of years, but their batteries wear out after only a few years.
Also alarming is all the Apple crap where the hard drive, that lasts at most 2 years, is impossible to replace without great risk to the device, special replacement gaskets, etc, and when you do it turns out the original had a proprietary temperature sensor that means your replacement dies in 6 months.
RAM welded to the motherboard on general purpose computers is another design horror that harms the environment and should be banned. All RAM should be upgradable on devices that cost more than $1000.
Also the era of cell phones without SD slots must end.
> Also alarming is all the Apple crap where the hard drive, that lasts at most 2 years
Source? I’ve never experienced this using even low quality hard drives. If you’re including SSDs, then between 15 to 20 Apple products over the past decade plus have not had an issue within 2 years.
This obviously depends a lot on usage. Rotational drives are sensitive to physical shocks (common for portable devices; people drop them), while SSDs have a limited number of writes. This basically makes them wear items which a well-designed device should make easy to replace -- much like the battery.
I agree. I have an older mbp with a glued battery and trying to get it replaced has been horrendous. Apple Store wants a lot of money and they then 'forgot' to call me when I went in with an appointment resulting in a bunch of wasted time, the authorized independent shops are super hobbled in that they have to keep the laptop for days and order a battery, and the online market for replacement batteries has been shady. It is plain and simple planned obsolescence and I really despise it. Edit: my personal laptop, a HP Elite X360, has a user-replaceable battery - I wish I could persuade my work to let me use/buy another for work stuff. Edit2: text fixes.
How is the "right to repair" different from "I want access to the design documents, source code and the entire supply chain for spare parts"? Where do we draw the line?
Well, for starters we can at least draw the line so you're able, as a rule, to replace your own battery without having to find the closest Apple store (possibly hours away in some countries) and hand the device over and wait who knows how long for service...
And at that point, why shouldn't you be able to swap in a new screen if it breaks? Maybe you're not clever enough to do it yourself, but I'm sure some local small business owner can hire and train people to be experts in screen and battery replacement. Then a repair for your device is 5 minutes away instead of an hour+ and demand is spread across providers (who can compete on price and quality).
Being European I'm under the opinion Europe is filled with delusion. We have no technology to show for and the insanity Europe is trying to force on innovators is getting out of control.
No Silicon Valley would have meant no internet, no computers and no wearable magic toys. If Apple is forced to adjust the iPhone they should just flip the middle finger and refuse to sell in Europe and these shenanigans will end.
Many believe that one of the most important innovations of the last 10 years is the Rust programming language and in particular its borrow checker, which is the result of a long investigation by programming-languages designers into "linear" or "use-once" variables. The main inspiration for this long investigation was probably a paper published in 1987 by a French logic professor:
(I read many thousands of papers on programming-language design in the 10 years before 1987 and don't recall anyone investigating "use-once" variables or related ideas whereas soon after 1987 many designers were investigating that part of the "design space" and citing the French logic professor.)
Also it was Scandinavian professors who invented object-oriented programming (via the language Simula in the late 1960s). So Europe remains more innovative than most of the world (and remains wealthier than most of the world as a result).
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadThere are many hardened phones that are repairable.
Edit: also a main issue with repairability is DRM and evil companies trying to use the copyright law so you won't publish repair manuals and schematics. Your ceramic phone won't suffer if someone shares a manual about it's internals .
Any phone (including iPhone) can be taken to nearly any service shop and it will probably be repaired within a day for an affordable price (if they have all parts, which they can order no problem; tools are not a problem a tall).
They also don't want the latest and greatest because that costs them way too much, most phones are mid market here, and the capabilities of these phones don't change much (same hardware for a number of years is not an exception) - but the design does. And no, the display notch is a very distinct status symbol that made the upgrade very much needed, same with multiple cameras on the back.
The few people who are buying Apple can choose between Apple stores, official Apple resellers and also a huge selection of unofficial (called "post-warranty") service shops. Not sure if it's OK with Apple, but it's definitely legal here, and it doesn't seem like these people have any problems with getting parts, getting tools or repairing the phones, but I agree that there should be an official way of doing so.
It's true that some phones became unusable with and because of software updates - that is wrong, but also an unrelated issue.
I guess that suffices to conclude that you have an extremely a-typical social circle.
People vote for representatives, those representatives enact legislation, and the free press reports on it, causing a feedback effect. Over time we have a picture of what society wants. It's really not that hard.
Obviously, there are many different interconnected societies in the world and not all of them have representative democracy or a free press. Maybe that was your objection?
I think it's clear why this tells us nothing about what the society here wants. It might be said that the EU was the voice of the nations before they removed the unilateral agreement requirement, but not today.
Nobody here (parties, the representatives) is even talking about the right to repair, how can you be so sure the society here wants it?
On the contrary, it very clearly tells us that your society is apathetic about the EU and does not care about decisions made in the European parliament.
In my own country, 2/3 voted in the latest EU parliament elections. The debates here were dominated by environmental policy, so I'm really not surprised that legislation like this is now being considered in the EU parliament.
Exactly, that is the only thing that is clear. And the reason is that we have much greater political problems to deal with so the EU is not that relevant to us, especially not issues like right to repair (which is not an issue to anyone I know and google gives me mostly no online discussions in our language). It still does not give anyone the right to shovel us "what the society wants". Our society didn't want the Lisboa agreement, but our politicians signed it anyways - so what exactly does our society want and what exactly should the EU be saying about it?
Even if 100% of people voted, still the 2.85% of voice don't seem like much space to express what our society wants, you know? And why there should only be space for one central opinion? That doesn't seem that diverse.
Then vote for a different set of politicians and leave the EU. The UK paved the way. I believe in you!
> Even if 100% of people voted, still the 2.85% of voice don't seem like much space to express what our society wants, you know? And why there should only be space for one central opinion? That doesn't seem that diverse.
Humans aren't borgs, but that doesn't mean we can't generalise about the general tendencies of society. Do you want me to admit that not everyone in a society has the same opinion? Seems a bit pointless, but sure, I'll admit that.
That's nice of you. I am not a leaver, I believe in European cooperation, maybe even federalization - but I don't believe in centralization.
We have to come to term with the fact that owning such devices isn't good for humanity in the long term.
> Who exactly will I hurt with my phone
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...
https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/27/europe-s-electronic-wast...
https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/czechs-become-eu-leaders-in-plast... ;-)
> I mostly don't care
Yeah, I figured out that part. The good thing is that there are less and less people like you in this world.
I certainly think that you should have the absolute right to attempt to repair your device, and you shouldn't be legally prevented from doing so.
On the other hand, I would like a secure, lightweight device, which lasts as long as possible on battery. All of those things will suffer if people who don't understand how modern phones achieve those things attempt to force them to be made up of piecewise-replaceable components.
On many modern devices, you don't have "a battery", you have battery cells fit into every available space and wired together. You're certainly welcome to try replacing those. I just don't want to see that reverted to a discrete battery design.
> Also I should have the right to use components from a broken iPhone into a different broken iPhone so I get a working iPhone
By all means! And "components" here may well mean "single integrated board", as it does on many laptops and phones.
Source for this. No device has unpackaged unprotected battery cells just floating around.
They may have many discrete batteries to use up all of the available space, but each unit is self contained with protection electronics and can be swapped independently of the others.
As I stated earlier in this thread, you should absolutely have the right to attempt such repairs. I just don't believe that there should be requirements to make devices use more modular components, at the potential expense of other desirable properties.
Each one will have a tiny PCB with protection circuitry on it. It’s the only way to prevent them from accidentally catching fire or exploding.
Batteries are far more complex than most people expect. Especially lithium batteries found in phones. The chemistry is super sensitive, and anything except careful monitoring of each battery pack risks catastrophic failure. Hence the tiny PCB on each battery pack.
WHY?! You'd end up with stuff 3-5mm thicker, but basically the same weight. Let's drop the "thinner" fetish once and for all, nobody cares about some mm of "wasted" space (that usually improves cooling anyway) inside a devices case and it being a bit chunkier, as long as it's almost just as lightwieght!
Fffs, let's go back to getting gold plated or diamond encrusted laptops and watches for showing off status! That's way better than the thinner/lighter nonsense...
Sure, getting smth. thinner bc technology actually improves (eg. displays) is cool, but shaving micrometers by packing everything close together is stupid.
(Oh, and we could start fixing our brains to think the same about cases for... people! Eg. housing. Like in kill the micro-apparments disease, there's enough room on the planet for all to leave confortable... in bigger rooms, and with chunkier laptops if that makes them more recyclable. "Space" IS mostly "free" ya know - very little of Earth's surface is actually usable for stuff like agriculture, energy production, mining etc.)
Then there is no phone that literally has a single board, there are other components such as the camera, earpiece, screen, etc. that are still replaceable.
I am not familiar with the latest models, do they changed that dramatically and I am out of date? Can't a competent mechanic replace any part on your new car?
This is done to ensure that "strippers" will not steal a car for the parts since the most valuable parts can't be sold.
Also anything which is structural is likely not going to be the part which maintenance needs to be done on
Unfortunately there hasn't been any significant follow through yet.
Yep. All those dark pattern cookie banners are illegal under GDPR.
Manufacturers just shouldn't be allowed to produce them.
Perhaps we don't need to go that far, but just removing the moats that prevent people from building compatible hardware would go far. That toners include DRM chips just to protect consumer unfriendly business models still bothers me. It's just e-waste for no good.
And I wouldn't include any used goods sold between actual people (not the corporation people) and grandfather in any products that were first put on the market before a certain date (and make that date a few years in the future as a grace period). And maybe even progressively introduce different restrictions.
But yes, by and large it has the same effect and yes, I think that this effect is to be desired.
Now the question that needs careful consideration is what constitutes "unrepairable" legally? It has to be sensible and legally ironclad.
Here's the official website of the initiative: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/index_en.h...
Companies don't follow all those regulation for the fun of it, they do it because there is a lot more money to gain by doing it than by leaving that market.
Also if other jurisdiction don't follow on that (or on GDPR too, while we're at it) I don't know how they explain it to their citizens. We european are not magical people, we just tend to remember a bit more that our govs and laws are there by our authority, and to serve our needs.
Toxic kids toys are not sold in Europe, is it bad?
Europe has the right to set their own quality standards, companies have the right to not respect them and say goodbye to European market
What's wrong with that?
It could also start a new wave of European brands which are seriously lacking right now
Also, Apple in particular cannot really afford to leave the EU. About 23% of their profits were generated in the EU in 2019. Other big names are in essentially the same boat.
It's a bit of a nuisance. But overall, I feel this GDPR is doing more good than harm.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
If devices are locked down and become 'bricks' once their original owner is finished with them -- then they're unable to provide any more value.
Alternatively if they can be erased, upgraded and continue to function -- and ideally share components with other devices -- then the device and production cost continue to generate value.
We have a problem with quantifying and justifying that 'second-order value' since we often think only of the initial consumer's payment (be it one-time or recurring).
Meanwhile, aggressive marketing particularly to impressionable younger customers has kids and those who influence them raving about a notch or a third camera or whatever it is this week, even though the benefits of these relatively small changes are often negligible. This seems to be more of a cultural problem, possibly with a side order of exploiting vulnerable targets in dubiously ethical ways, than a technical problem.
That's exactly what I've said on my previous comment:
>The culture fabricated by those very corporations
Crossing the street in the morning is an exercise of how long can you hold your breath.
I think the average age of a registered vehicle here is around 10 years; it's not uncommon at all to see >20yo cars in local traffic and parking lots.
Taxes are higher depending on emissions, but it's rarely enough to offset the purchase price. For example, if you buy a stinky 90s car that emits 200gCO2/100km, tax would be around 300 eur/year today. A new car that emits 120g/100km is going to be somewhere around 150 eur.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhous... [see fig 4 about targets for 2020 and actual changes in emissions for 2017 and 2018]
Personally I prefer used imported cars, as well haha. It's just, if it passes technical inspection and emission tests, why not? An 8 year old VW or Toyota with all the options that's been well kept for 7000 Euros seems better to me than a 16,000 Euro new base model.
For getting around a city, public transport is good enough, though.
Another problem is just the number of cars - many cities have more cars than they can handle. Hopefully more cities will ban diesel cars or all cars in some parts...
Things are changing, slowly.
About glass, some people say that sicne glass is heavy you will use more fuel to move it around(I have no idea if this is true).
Besides that, most Apple phones since 2016 or so are water resistant.
Does depend on chips being available and some knowledge on how to diagnose the damages (e.g.: board schematics).
Here's an example of new age Macbook pro's dying from little water ingress (design oversight). And a combination of knowledge and a simple chip can fix your nearly write off Macbook. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU
For most manufactures the incentives now is to minimize repairability. Increasing the repair cost.
Having some regulation in place to limit repairability prevention may tip the scale a bit towards repairing.
Apple loves to say that their products are so expensive and complicated that manual repairs just aren't worth doing. But observably, in the real world, even with all of the crap Apple puts in front of repair shops to slow them down, that isn't true. Third-party repairpeople still manage to regularly beat Apple's prices.
Apple also threatens you with lawyers if you host or share schematics for repairing products. The new repair partner program from Apple is also a joke and created to appear they are trying to fix the problem.
Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly if everyone is allowed to sell stuff in its name.
And nobody curses Ford's name when they go to a crappy shop and spend $2 on a new headlight that fails in a week. That's the shop's fault.
Nobody is saying anyone can call their junk an "official apple product". Why would this not be the same as the car scenario? If you don't want to risk issues, don't go to sketchy repair shops.
So what? Apple's interests don't matter, unlike its customers'.
It's always better to avoid throwing something away by repairing it that trying to recycle it.
Europe probably has the strictest car emissions laws (so strict manufacturers have to cheat to comply with it), and many of its country banned single use plastic bags, straws, &c.
The only thing you might get away with is bribing a cop for a speeding ticket in some rural part of an eastern EU country. Anything else will eventually be discovered and you'll be fined accordingly.
I could understand your personal point of view if you live east of Poland though.
However, as I said, with a small bribe you can take out any particle filter here. It's common knowledge.
Besides that, did those VW cars got banned from the streets? No! Does VW pay for my health issues? No! Those money are normal taxes to conduct business in Europe.
It's known for being a bit less strict and a bit more corrupt than the west. At least from what I gathered from my bulgarian, polish and greek friends and from my own experience over there.
Idk where you live but in France we have mandatory vehicle inspections every 2 years and you definitely can't bribe these guys. You'll get fined if you get caught, like everything else. How else would it work, we can't have daily inspections on every single thing that could potentially be made illegal.
I agree with your last point though, but that's the german auto mafia, these guys get away with a lot.
Like the most important industries in most countries of the world, sadly.
And it's completely renewable
Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco&t=579s
You could still argue they are not doing enough, but at least some credit is due.
Let me tell you some stories about illegal stuff.
A few days ago you could smell chemicals in the air every morning. In the middle of the city. There was a big scandal and they said UK exported their shit here. European style. Nothing really came off of it.
Money talks.
And about right to repair I have bad experience: broken cable is enough for lots of buyers to throw away electronic appliances. Let’s be honest: majority of users will cause more harm than do good when repairing something. Another thing is planned obsolescence when electronics die right after warranty period ends. Buddy had this with high end washing machine and I had this with display recently.
Allowing people sharing a repair manual, a diagnose software won't harm any consumer.
Same with my laptop
Build with simple easy to replace common components. No black boxes. Obviously some products fit this more nicely than others. Simple devices like washing machines vs smartphones.
Washing machines and other products that have been smartened should have mechanical mode fall-backs so that cheap electronic controllers susceptible to failure which may cease production, don’t doom the usefulness of a product.
Right now if your TV has a broken part, it might be impossible to fix, even with a pro. Maybe a really good one might change some electronics, but not an OEM part swap.
Just don't do that and you're fine. Publish your schematics too, they are not a company secret, they are for your customers.
What kind of argument is that? Right to repair isn't about you and me fiddling about with with broken appliances.
It's about qualified and licensed people in repair shops being able to acquire parts and schematics to do their job. No one is arguing that your average Jane or Joe should be ones doing the repair! That's just another strawman that is easily dismantled...
In the US, anyone can repair a vehicle and not void the warranty. No license needed.
Once you take into account all these factors it quickly becomes apparent that not "anybody" will repair cars, appliances, and electronics by themselves; regardless of legislation.
The people who do care (farmers in the US, electronics repair shops, that dude on YT who repairs Teslas, ...) incidentally are the ones with the skills, the tools, and the incentive.
The licensed part comes into play as soon damage regulation due to improper use/repair occurs. This isn't a concern for private individuals (in the car example: there's a mandatory in-depth technical inspection every other year in Europe, so an improper repair results in a failed inspection anyway), though your insurance may become null and void depending on the circumstances.
Product obsolescence does seem to be a concern that the EU wishes to address:
"The Commission will propose legislation on Sustainable Product Policy, to ensure that products placed on the EU market are designed to last longer, are easier to reuse, repair and recycle, and incorporate as much as possible recycled material instead of primary raw material. Single-use will be restricted, premature obsolescence tackled and the destruction of unsold durable goods banned."[0]
I also think that legislating to ensure that issues such as energy efficiency, durability, repairability and recycling must be considered during the design phase are great progress too, as outlined in the Circular Economy Action Plan[1].
It's important to raise those concerns and get involved to help shape the process and outcomes.
[0] - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
[1] - https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_ci...
Yep, let's make everything a black box that can only be repaired under the watchful eye of a corporation, and they retain the right to refuse the repair and charge whatever the fuck they want. That's surely gonna work out well. That's surely gonna work out well.
Which display was that?
Governments can ban certain designs (those w/o replaceable parts) from the market, but they can't make other products cheaper.
Guaranteed result: fewer products to choose from, and higher prices for customers.
Forward, comrades!
As for the software side this may be a tough one as many times a change in chipset can make features available in newer models that are not in older models and the real question is, how far back must they provided like software upgrades that new models have? iOS goes back quite a ways, is that not enough now? That my prior iMac no longer had support from Nvidia (2013 model) is whose fault? Apple's or Nvidias?
What people need to understand is that replacement parts may involve complete assemblies because there is no feasible means to replace some of the pieces in common tablets and phones. So take a dryer, you might need to replace an entire motor but depending on how the regulation is written that may not be sufficient.
tl;dr it all sounds well and good until those who have no understanding of repair start writing regulations that could lead to less reliable items, more electronics and batteries in the trash, and even most costly items.
Watch this testimony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLIW7mQ8CI4
It's insane how much power we let companies like apple have over products we purchase from them.
If an item really does have the potential to become harmful in some way if it is not properly used and maintained, the burden should be on the vendor and/or manufacturer to demonstrate that in order to justify any restrictions on its use or maintenance. Such demonstrations and restrictions should be subject to regulatory oversight by consumer protection agencies or similar bodies. If they are found to be unjustified by a competent authority then the burden should be on the vendor and/or manufacturer to either make things right or compensate those who bought the product (including reasonable consequential losses, not just the purchase price).
It looks like a "right to repair" for appliances has already been adopted. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-...
Note e.g. the requirements for monitors: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/c-201...
This is in many ways the opposite of the cookie law in that it specifies pretty precisely what outcome has to be achieved.
This is different from outright purchase of the car, where you can literally drive it to the nearest scrap yard and have it crushed right after purchase :)
Even this right is being eroded - see Tesla. You can drive it to the scrap yard, but someone else can't always drive it back out.
It's very reasonable to say that the vendors created an expectation of ownership to push their sale.
If you didn't notice that I called them "vendors" instead of "leasers", it adds to my point.
Other things being equal, I would agree. However, if market forces push us into a choice between ordinary people being able to own things and use them freely against ordinary people being forced to pay rent on everything forever and use things only as some higher power dictates, it's not going to take long to make that choice. This is the choice that we are heading towards with the increasing use of software and, in particular, the repurposing of laws originally intended to prevent exploiting the work of others to create software so that they constrain the ordinary use of a product by the person who bought it.
All of them will be licensed, almost abolishing private ownership. If we idly accept licensing of everything, we will enjoy what will be basically serfdom.
People that were writing these laws never imagined they would prevent you from repairing a cat-feeder or a lighting system. They were intended for another purpose entirely. Maybe it's time we stopped misusing those laws and created a separate body of law for this specifically.
This is already happening. I work in an engineering consulting, specialising on consumer electronics. I have to admit, the wider industry is becoming a part of the issue: everybody wants to become like Apple.
We have an enormous tide of new clients incoming, with prime majority of them having no previous experience doing anything with electronics whatsoever.
If we ignore customers with out in the clouds fantasies, we will be losing like 3/4 of the new business, on another, we will be loosing our engineers who will be leaving to work on something more interesting and merit worthy.
The hottest buzzword among Silicon Valley accelerator bred entrepreneurs I see is "product-as-a-service," which basically you buying a product, but still having to pay to use it even after you already own it.
We have a joke that soon even toilet paper rolls will come chipped, and the paper will not work unless you pay somebody on the internet.
Unfortunately not: https://futureiot.tech/ikea-sets-up-smart-home-business-unit...
It's sort of unfortunate. I can see having an idea, and wanting to start a business, but not have people copy it wholesale. But I can also see that people who do start companies go the full-tyranny route - closed source, phone app only, invasive data collection, until purchasing something is a compromise on every level.
If a house, a car, a shirt, or a phone is offered to you for sale, and you buy it, then you should own it.
FWIW, I agree with you. Please don't attack a straw-man!
Even if you don't mention them explicitly, you still have to acknowledge the difference because one of your examples was "software object".
When consumers pay money for software, it almost always licensed and not bought. If you buy MS Windows 10 from Amazon.com, you purchased a license. If you truly want to "buy" Windows 10 in the same sense as your other non-software examples, you'd have to convince Microsoft to sell you the "ownership of the codebase" or have enough billions to acquire the entire Microsoft corporation to "own" Windows 10.
- "buy software" the legal ownership sense : as in buying the copyright which is usually something companies (not consumers) do when they buy the intellectual property rights. E.g. Adobe Inc buys Macromedia Dreamweaver. This is the true ownership.
- "buy software" the casual sense : which just means the consumer getting a CD or a digital download to install a copy of the software. This the license not the ownership.
They are 2 different things that use the same word "buy" and just because a commentary omits the word "license" doesn't mean the above distinctions go away.
It's a similar distinction for many types of intellectual property. Photographers of weddings usually don't let couples buy the wedding photos in a legal ownership sense. Instead, they sell some prints with a license for use. Same with musicians selling "songs" to the public. People bought a license and not the copyright. Paul McCartney doesn't even "own" the songs he wrote with The Beatles. Thus, Paul McCartney can't do "anything he wants" with the song "Yesterday". He can't "resell the song" to somebody else like a used book. Instead, he has to ask for Sony's permission.
Does anyone "force" couples to license photos instead of buy them? In one sense, no. The bride & groom could conceivably contract with a photographer on a "work for hire" basis and thus own the copyrights to the photos. But most couples don't do that. Newspapers and magazines do establish "work for hire" with freelance photographers so they can own the photographs but most wedding couples don't.
As other commenters mentioned, the real issue is the slippery word "buy" that defies consumers' natural intuition of what that means. If you're really leasing/renting/licensing something, you need to make that clear.
You mentioned buying a software product, but that is not commonly done by consumers. We all license software. Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it. The replies mention changing software copyright for consumer products. I can imagine that to be a good idea, but I don't see the EU making GPLv3 software mandatory for software products. I don't see a way forward yet.
> Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it.
No, when people use the word "buy" here, they're using it in the same way I might buy a physical book.
When I buy a book, I'm free to write in it, scan it, transcribe it, rip it in half, reglue the spine, put a dust cover on it, or resell it. I'm not free to republish it or violate the author's copyright.
When I buy a piece of software, I should be free to hotpatch the DLL, back up the product, put wrappers around it, examine it, write about it, or resell it. That doesn't mean the owner should lose their copyright. You're conflating two unrelated concepts -- the abolition of copyright and the erosion of basic consumer ownership rights that have been established for centuries.
In fact, the EU already has a right to resale for digital software. And yet, despite that consumer-friendly rule, not every piece of software in the EU is currently GPLv3 licensed.
All that people are saying is that our rights as consumers shouldn't go away just because we bought a digital book instead of a physical one.
When the majority (consumers) decide they want everything for free and that they want absolute power over the creations of others creators will simply stop revealing what they create and stop making their creations available for purchase. Instead creating things for private use.
The vast majority of these "creators and skilled professionals" are doing work for hire for the same people who own everything else, and have absolutely no control over the product of their labor.
You pay the full cost of the device, but you don't own it, and companies retain the exclusive right for repair/replacement. But, they don't have any onus for repair/replacement, and you need to pay full price for a new device if your current one gets damaged.
An honest rental system might be preferable. At least then people would know what they're getting into. At least when I rent a device, there's some real obligation for the actual owner to fix it when it breaks. At least then companies who legitimately sell their devices and don't block repair efforts would have a marketing edge.
By all means, let people rent software. Just make sure companies are correctly marketing that as a rental.
When you buy a book, you own the hardware but not IP. You’re “licensed a nonexclusive irrevocable right to use, that allows reverse engineering but without sublicensing clauses” aka you can’t xerox the full book and sell it for $5. When you buy a sandwich, same except hardware can be eaten.
Really the deal of “mandatory licensed” software is that you can’t pirate it, and that should already be covered by laws. It should not require a million page contract and those contract mustn’t be much more than blank pages.
No, it's not that simple.
Reference article:
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/16/business/new-era-for-the-...
Exactly where we place the limits is up for debate, but I think I conclusively proved to everybody reading this that there need to be limits the only question is where.
I am allowed to remove my headlights, but I'm not allowed to drive on the roads if I have removed my headlights. The restriction is on roads.
I own my home, but I'm not allowed to replace the GFCI outlets in my bathroom with non-GFCI outlets.
Having the right to modify and repair does not mean a carte blanche to ignore and circumvent building and electrical regulations. You do have the right to remove, replace or add additional outlets providing that the regulations are complied with, and you can purchase outlets from any vendor which sells products compliant with the regulations.
Availability of first-party and third-party parts would greatly open up the market for electronic goods of all kinds. So long as they comply with the necessary regulations and perform equivalently to the original parts, it would be a vast improvement upon the current state of affairs.
Being able to repair things is very different, it is _in_ the common interest and likely against the interests of the manufacturers.
As for bad parts and bad repair jobs, sure. I would think that owners are incentivized to buy parts that are safe and to install them correctly. Of course some battery batches will be bad, but that's true for authentic parts too. Remember the Samsung Note battery issues?
Also if we want to prevent fires because of batteries then we should make Apple products illegal because it happened that Apple products had issues too https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall
The issue there is driving at night on public roads. You can, with your own car, remove your headlights. The car manufacturer can't show up and sue you for that.
> I'm not allowed to pour oil on the ground even though it would only destroy my own grass
That's not the only thing it would destroy (ground water, local wildlife, etc). You are allowed to style your hedges in the shape of a middle finger, or pluck all your grass out blade by blade (save for any HOA restrictions you agreed to).
I believe there are technical differences in how ownership of the land works in different jurisdictions throughout the world. The land or the earth below your grass might not be as yours as an article of clothing you're wearing.
If you own your car, and the headlight burns out, why shouldn't you be allowed to repair it back to the original factory state? Why should you be forced to pay someone else to do this?
If someone tries to argue that you're going to do it wrong, it seems like the onus should be on them to prove that your repair was bad and dangerous.
all of these are completely different actions, have different standing in front of the law, have different repercussions etc etc
the way i see these kinds of initiatives: i think they're healthy, i think we need them, but i also notice how they're from a bygone era where cars where fixed in the driveway. that age has passed, and sure, we need a new paradigm. but i still wouldn't trust a random person vs a dedicated service center to fix my phone. can we make those phones so simple that anyone can repair them? would this entail any performance drawbacks?
curios to see where this whole thing leads.
Do you feel that age has passed because manufacturers now block people having the info needed for repair, or are you meaning the complexity of cars has increased?
Perhaps the age of fixing cars in the driveway may return, if manufacturers aren't able to block the info needed.
At present, more technically advanced people seem to piece together their own CANbus diagnostic tools. But off the shelf products that work for "every model" should be practical if this legislation works.
Though, making your own engine block is pretty far from a "home garage thing" anyway.
People used to just buy those parts from a local supplier or wrecker, then fit them in their garage at home. That doesn't seem like it should have changed.
People into automotive (and boat, uav) CAN stuff have figured out ways to reverse engineer much of it though.
Not necessarily. Consider products that require radios like satellite internet transceivers. If you were allowed to "modify it however you want" you could easily modify it to put up a continuous wave and effectively DoS the satellite gateway, causing an outage for all other customers on the entire beam which is obviously something the ISP wants to avoid at all costs.
Hence, many companies only allow you to lease the transceiver, not own. And even if you did literally own it, they obviously don't want you modifying it for fear of harming the service of other customers.
It's one thing if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster to burn cool patterns into your toast. It's quite another if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster such that nobody else's toaster in the neighborhood works anymore.
What I'm trying to point out is that your comment seems to suggest restricting users from making any (all) modifications, even if they wouldn't affect anyone but themselves, because they might make a modification would affect others. I think one should be allowed to make any modifications as long as they're made responsible for how those modifications affect others. And even if a modification potentially (not through every use) negatively affects others, they should only face consequences when the use actually affected others or went against regulations of the shared resource (the air).
It's like arguing that people shouldn't be able to modify their home batteries because they could use them to purposely damage the power grid. That's kind of a ridiculous scenario to worry about when the same infrastructure is already vulnerable to utterly pedestrian physical sabotage. It's a facile rationalization for imposing restrictions that have an ulterior motive.
If we decide you have an inalienable right to repair the phone I made for you, does that mean I have to facilitate it? Does it mean I can't put technical barriers in place to make it harder for you? Do I have to offer you any sort of support & warrantee if you have modified it?
Can I refuse to offer you a sale on the object, and just offer a lease? Etc. etc.
Our B2B customers are in many cases Network operators.
Occasionally they request tens of thousands of unlock/repair requests for phones from competing networks for which they have won an enterprise tender.
Love/Hate relationship.
I don't think anyone else uses the term; to the layman, they're 'dumb phones', to contrast with 'smart' (although increasinly 'smart phones' are just 'phones').
Or since those are American sites, perhaps it's actually a variation of regional colloquialisms.
They'll exist as long as there's a market for it.
That said, the definition of 'dumb' phone is going to vary, and senior citizens in 30 years will be seeking what looks like today's iPhone, or an android phone. Maybe.
There are also rather a lot of KaiOS smart phones with the form factor of a flip phone, although I don't know how easy to repair they are or how many of them work on US networks.
But really people bought Apple products and want the company to act differently. Don't buy from bad companies and it doesn't affect you.
Don't eat at bad restaurant and you won't get poisoned! You do not need warranty for your phone, don't buy from bad companies. We do not need safety checks for foods and medicine just don't buy from bad companies.
The issue is that companies put billions into PR, so even if Apple is a bad company it has a good image and it's products are a status symbol, the consumers can't compete with those billions.
I think you did not understand the point and responded from reflex. Let me simplify it down;
Consumers try to explain that throwing away good devices because the battery is old is bad for the world is not effective enough because it is fighting billions spent in PR that shows you that you need the new device because is slimmer,smarter,cooler and the big companies is doing the best to recycle this products(we send them in China where the smartest of our employees(that are definitely not children) are recycling every atom. So continue buying new things, you don't want your friends thinking you are poor and have the old models don't you?
Is it clear now? You are not forced to buy anything, unless you are forced by a job or social group to use certain apps but you would probably argue that you are not forced and you can quit your job and find other friends.
Is this really a problem?
As an educated 10%er, seeing Apple products is an immediate red flag that the person falls for marketing.
I also know cases where a child from a modest family spent the money he earned on Fortnite cash. There is a group pressure to own certain things otherwise you are excluded.
Anyway my main point is about some regular citizens fighting a giant PR(propaganda) campaign is not easy. I follow some of Louis Rossman videos where he shows how politicians debate the right to repair and it is so clear how Apple and big companies PR succeeded in having those politicians putting more importance on copyright over repair schematics(because trade secrete). preventing repairing consoles(because pirates) and preventing replacing bateries(because fires and explosions). How much money and effort is needed to make a contra PR move to show people that batteries don't just explode if the repair person does not a paper that he is Apple genius or that making repair components accessible and repiar schematics accessible will not make video games more easy to pirate. Then there is also the idea that if you have access to rep[air your tractor then you can do dangerous stuff , thing that is ridiculous considering you can repair your car and then use it on a public road (not like tractors that are mostly used on private property)
Easily repairable equipment could fail more often or have a shorter life on average because of the necessary design compromises.
Data could show if this is the case.
Few weeks ago I decided to switch to Lineage OS. For that I bought a used OnePlus 3T on EBay. Now the exceptional fact about OnePlus is that they provide official repair service even for relatively old phones. Most recent model is OP 7T.
https://www.oneplus.com/de/support/repair-pricing/details?co...
Replacement of the battery cost in total 40 Euro. That's shipping back and forth, the battery and the replacement. Very much impressed me how fast that procedure took. altogether only 4 days. How awesome is that?
Works fantastic.
Examples are components which, while identical to the component requiring replacement, will refuse to work until coded to match the intended device with some proprietary cable (which is really a normal cable with a couple of wires reversed or some other dick move).
If someone such as Apple wants to use Lightning because they find existing specs to be deficient, they should get the spec standardized before theyre allowed to implement a device using it. Specifications should ideally be unencombered by patents or for a fair and reasonable license.
Additionally implementers of a spec should be required to have their implementations verified that they adhere to the spec by an independent lab, such as UL (Underwriters Lab), and be fined into nonexistence if they forge the lab's marks.
This should also cut down on the snake oil cables, such as $90 gold plated HDMI cables.
I'm sick of "renting" batteries that are permanently installed in devices that would otherwise work for tens of years, but their batteries wear out after only a few years. I'm sick of paying inflated prices for batteries that have bizarre configurations and that go out of production.
I understand there are significant engineering challenges for some things (e.g., earbuds that are basically some electronics wrapped around a lithium cell). But there's no reason a set of headphones couldn't have a replaceable cell (I'm looking at you, Bose). I'm happy to have slightly heavier headphones and slightly thicker laptops and tablets if it increases the device lifetime and reduces e-waste.
Not gonna happen without a mandate, that's for sure. Gotta keep customers on the upgrade treadmill.
Bedsides, how many AirPods are likely to be dying from poor battery life compared to being lost, damaged or upgraded?
If this did happen, I suspect there would be more instances of people losing the battery cap, or throwing it away because of undiagnosed battery terminal faults, or of children dying because they swallowed the impossibly small pill shaped battery...
Worse is better, and in this case, the iPhone, and everyone copying its permanently installed battery, is worse.
https://amazon.com/AA-Batteries-Rechargeable-ECO-Friendly-Re...?
But having to essentially defeat an end-user-hostile industrial design should be strongly discouraged.
I can dream.
I would imagine a battery with power wires + a legitimate connector.
Another issue is I don't want batteries in my keyboard, mouse, or electric razor. All these things I use next to another thing with a power source. It's pointless to have them be rechargeable. Yet it's becoming harder and harder to find keyboards, mice, and razors that are wired. Cordless mice in particular are a blight on society because the extra weight of the batteries aggravates carpal-tunnel and is a health hazard.
Also alarming is all the Apple crap where the hard drive, that lasts at most 2 years, is impossible to replace without great risk to the device, special replacement gaskets, etc, and when you do it turns out the original had a proprietary temperature sensor that means your replacement dies in 6 months.
RAM welded to the motherboard on general purpose computers is another design horror that harms the environment and should be banned. All RAM should be upgradable on devices that cost more than $1000.
Also the era of cell phones without SD slots must end.
Source? I’ve never experienced this using even low quality hard drives. If you’re including SSDs, then between 15 to 20 Apple products over the past decade plus have not had an issue within 2 years.
"Hot swappable" usually means you can swap it while the machine is turned on. At least, that's how people use the term when talking about harddrives.
Hot-swapping a battery works by replacing a battery while the device operates from a secondary power source (e.g. charger or secondary battery).
Swappable is better.
And at that point, why shouldn't you be able to swap in a new screen if it breaks? Maybe you're not clever enough to do it yourself, but I'm sure some local small business owner can hire and train people to be experts in screen and battery replacement. Then a repair for your device is 5 minutes away instead of an hour+ and demand is spread across providers (who can compete on price and quality).
No Silicon Valley would have meant no internet, no computers and no wearable magic toys. If Apple is forced to adjust the iPhone they should just flip the middle finger and refuse to sell in Europe and these shenanigans will end.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-linear/#Int
(I read many thousands of papers on programming-language design in the 10 years before 1987 and don't recall anyone investigating "use-once" variables or related ideas whereas soon after 1987 many designers were investigating that part of the "design space" and citing the French logic professor.)
Also it was Scandinavian professors who invented object-oriented programming (via the language Simula in the late 1960s). So Europe remains more innovative than most of the world (and remains wealthier than most of the world as a result).