Consumer Technology Right to repair

[Remarkableriots]

The 'right to repair' bill gains backing from President Biden and Apple co-founder Wozniak | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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Perhaps another step toward a more open-source future for the technology industry.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

(sad trombone sound)

 

There’s Just One Problem With Biden’s Executive Order Spree - The American Prospect

PROSPECT.ORG

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The administration’s staffing deficiencies could imperil the entire agenda.

 

[TwinIon]

Executive orders can only do so much, and I think it makes sense for Biden to use a EO to pass this kind of thing off to the agencies in charge. What I'm less clear on is why Right to Repair legislation isn't just going through congress. It's a bi-partisan issue that has very few detractors and does have proponents of all ages and backgrounds.

 

I was listening to an interview with the CTO of John Deere and his objections to RTR is so weak and obviously not the reason they actually want to prevent it. He basically argues that there are things that they don't want people messing with because they could interfere with safety or something regulated like emissions. At the same time he's quick to admit that people could make those kinds of physical modifications to old tractors. Their liability hasn't changed, only their ability to profit has. His only argument is that software is harder and less obvious than hardware, but that feels pretty weak to me.

 

I feel like if this was a court case, we'd hear from John Deere more or less what we heard from Apple during the Epic trial. Apple's bottom line argument is that they feel that by creating the phone and the OS they're owed a piece of any transaction that happens on the device. I imagine John Deere feels basically the same. By having created the machinery they feel they're owed a cut of any profitable maintenance done, and everything else is just justification for getting that cut.

 

I'm slightly more sympathetic to the idea of preventing RTR in the case of truly autonomous vehicles, but I think that default should be that if you own a thing, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. If the government finds a case, like autonomous vehicles, where there is a compelling public interest in limiting the right to repair, they can make that carve out.