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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Over the last year, we've noted the surge in so-called "right to repair" laws, which would make it easier for consumers to repair their electronics and find replacement parts and tools. It's a direct response to the rising attempts by companies like John Deere, Apple, Microsoft and Sony to monopolize repair, hamstringing consumer rights over products consumers think they own, while driving up the cost of said product ownership. John Deere's draconian lockdown on its tractor firmware is a large part of the reason these efforts have gained steam over the last few months in states like Nebraska.
In New York, one of the first attempts at such a law (the "Fair Repair Act") has finally been making progress. But according to New York State's Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Apple, Verizon, Toyota, Lexmark, Caterpillar, Asurion, and Medtronic have all been busy lobbying to kill the law for various, but ultimately similar, reasons. And they're out-spending the consumer advocates and repair shops pushing for this legislation by a rather wide margin:
"The records show that companies and organizations lobbying against right to repair legislation spent $366,634 to retain lobbyists in the state between January and April of this year. Thus far, the Digital Right to Repair Coalition—which is generally made up of independent repair shops with several employees—is the only organization publicly lobbying for the legislation. It has spent $5,042 on the effort, according to the records."
Source: techdirt.com
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:09PM (8 children)
Good ideas on how to make corporate life for Apple, Verizon, Toyota, Lexmark, Caterpillar, Asurion, and Medtronic a big pain?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:36PM (6 children)
One way is to vote with your dollars. As a single consumer that doesn't have much effect on the companies, but at least you can then complain with a clear conscience. It also does make a difference to talk to your circle of acquaintances about why you won't buy from Apple or the others anymore.
The same principle becomes more effective if you happen to be a manager with budget to spend. When the salesman from company X shows up and wants to sell you a gross of something, tell him no thanks and why you're saying no thanks. Salespeople are very vocal whiners when they lose sales, and usually have the ear of the MBAs who run most companies. In short, the PHBs tend to listen to the whiny salespeople.
Legislation in America is the least effective way to accomplish anything because the party that pays the biggest bribes gets what it wants.
Longer term, one way to put a permanent end to all of these corporate shenanigans is to change the economic behavior and mindset of the average person. "Disintermediation" is one B-school term for it. Holding a monopoly on buggy whip manufacturing doesn't help you much if everybody stops buying buggy whips. Holding every patent known to man on film doesn't help you much if suddenly everybody stops taking pictures with film cameras and uses the digital camera in their phone instead.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:48PM (5 children)
Disintermediation sounds to hard for many consumers considering their behavior in general.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:59PM (4 children)
Perhaps the concept is, but if it's done right the outcome proceeds swiftly. The film example is one. It's so much easier to pull your phone out, snap a picture, and instantly see if you need to take another because the first one wasn't so good, than to take a roll of film to a store and wait some period of time for the film to be developed before you can know if it was a good picture or not. Nobody had to touch any kind of legislation to make that happen, and it happened so swiftly that Kodak went bankrupt in a couple years. That's far too fast for business school trained managers to cope with.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:22PM (3 children)
Maybe that is the gigantic blind spot for the managerial clique. Speed and insight?
So how does one outdo the lobbying to prevent repairing? distributed plans for 3D printers? or cheap x-ray machines?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:09PM (2 children)
Something like that. You'd also need a hopper to recycle existing material into a new object. I saw one for plastics a few years ago that re-extrudes the plastic as coil you can put into a Makerbot, etc. My little brother the mech-e melted down soda cans and cast links for the tread on an RC tank, so seems you could do something like that to make a backyard smelter for metals.
Wouldn't take long before you had all the raw material you needed to produce whatever you wanted. Kids tired of their old toys? Throw them in the hopper and process them into new ones.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)
Good luck with your home microchip fab.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:28PM
Thanks man :)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:46PM
Hack all their insecure IoT gadgets and use them for pure evil.