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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 Runaway1956 on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:32PM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:32PM (#515500) Journal

    If we had spines, we would stand up, en masse, and TELL the corporations that they don't get things their way. We want what we want, and we'll have it, or you can all go out of business.

    Then, back it up with some serious boycotts, and maybe take a few of them to court. Contracts our asses - we're tired of being coerced to sign contracts that benefit only the corporation! Take your goods and stuff 'em, we aint' buyin' here no more!

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:56PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:56PM (#515549) Journal

    Like a fund which consumers can apply for a corporation to be shitlisted. The fund will then announce a boycott, sue them, reverse engineer and publish, investigate the board etc.. ?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:32PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:32PM (#515608)

    Enough people have stood up, but the thing is without a high profile politician / judge / whatever you can't get traction. Money buys influence and power, masses of people have a very limited amount of power and are much harder to organize than some bank account numbers.

    It is probably the biggest problem for our democracy, the will of the people is so easily ignored and manipulated. Insanely hard question: how do we fix that?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:52PM (4 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:52PM (#515623)

      Simple: we don't.

      The solution is for people to stop buying from these companies. No, enough people have no stood up; if they had, these companies would be out of business or at least in dire straits financially. But they're not, they're prospering, even though they do all have competitors which are not on this list.

      The will of the people is not being ignored or manipulated here: the vast majority of the voters don't give a shit about this issue, and really have no idea what it means. They just buy shit, and then when it breaks they take it back to the factory-authorized dealer to have it repaired at an exorbitant price and think that's normal. Politicians work for ALL the people, not a tiny minority that cares passionately about some issue. Sometimes they'll do stuff for a small minority, but only when that minority is extremely vocal, and not opposed by some other group that's far better funded and tells them about how their view is better for business and jobs.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:30PM (3 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:30PM (#515651) Journal

        Exactly. I have some companies that I don't buy from. This is a nerd site - I don't like Microsoft's practices, and I don't buy from them. I don't like Intel's business practices, so I don't buy from them. Unfortunately, I am part of a minority, in both cases, so my "boycott" is pretty meaningless. If the number of people who refuse to buy Microsoft and/or Intel were to multiply ten thousand fold in the next few days, THEN we might have an impact. Probably negligible, but we'd be noticed. If, instead, our numbers increased a million fold, instead of ten thousand, we would have a bigger impact. That impact WOULD be noticed, when all of us spent money on an alternative. That impact would show a decline in revenue at Microsoft or Intel, and at the same time, an increase in the competition's revenues. THAT would be noticed.

        But, the numbers are against us, or me. Most people don't know enough to give a damn. Most people who know enough still don't give a damn. So, neither Microsoft nor Intel gives the smallest damn that I am boycotting them.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @09:33AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @09:33AM (#515900)

          No boycott action is truly meaningless. Not noticeable perhaps, but not meaningless. Deprived of $1 of profit, 1 web page hit, one cpu sale at a time.

          I avoid halal certified food and shops, if possible.
          Do they notice? No
          I sent them a letter to tell them that they lost a sale stating why.
          No single drop of rain thinks it is responible for the flood, but I would like to be the pebble that started the landslide knowing that for it to happen one event had to come first.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 26 2017, @10:46PM (1 child)

          by kaszz (4211) on Friday May 26 2017, @10:46PM (#516176) Journal

          Microsoft is kind of actively being smacked with viruses. Perhaps that will change peoples mind given enough beatings?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @05:16AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @05:16AM (#516308)

            It took the windows 10 spyware and forced reboots to get me to install linux as my primary OS