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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-don't-actually-own-anything dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:22PM (3 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:22PM (#515469) Journal

    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?

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:09PM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:09PM (#515492) Journal

    So how does one outdo the lobbying to prevent repairing? distributed plans for 3D printers? or cheap x-ray machines?

    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)

      by mhajicek (51) on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:51PM (#515514)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:28PM (#515605)

        Thanks man :)