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posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 09 2018, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly

California legislators are considering drafting laws that would make it easier to fix things. It is now the 18th state in the US trying to make it easier to repair or modify things, electronic or not.

Right to repair legislation has considerable momentum this year; 18 states have introduced it, and several states have held hearings about the topic. In each of these states, big tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, John Deere, and AT&T and trade associations they're associated with have heavily lobbied against it, claiming that allowing people to fix their things would cause safety and security concerns. Thus far, companies have been unwilling to go on the record to explain the specifics about how these bills would be dangerous or would put device and consumer security in jeopardy.

It's particularly notable that the battle has come to California because many of the companies that have fought against it are headquartered there. Apple, for instance, told lawmakers in Nebraska that passing a right to repair bill there would turn the state into a "Mecca for hackers." The Electronic Frontier Foundation—which is notoriously concerned about digital security—has explicitly backed this legislation in California. Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney for the EFF, said that the bill "helps preserve the right of individual device owners to understand and fix their property."

Yep. Hackers. And note that is what Apple does not want. Like many things this boils down to the issue of who controls the many computers you ostensibly own.

From Motherboard at vice.com: The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to Silicon Valley.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Friday March 09 2018, @12:45PM (5 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Friday March 09 2018, @12:45PM (#649927) Journal

    There is another side to "Right to Repair", the flip side is "Right to Know How Stuff Works"

    If we keep on the path we are presently on, with all sorts of law being passed to keep us ignorant of how our technology works, so a "rightsholder" can use this ignorance to his advantage by programming our technology to act as his enforcement agent, we are going to raise a whole nation of ignoramuses. Future employers will find few people who have even basic technical skills.

    My employers could count on my previous skills as a radio-TV repairman that I at least knew how a radio worked. How many of us could pick up an ATMEL328 and design hardware and software to do something? Yes, we still have quite a few, but this enforced ignorance of how our stuff works is sure making us vulnerable to cyber attacks. +Fravia over at +HCU used to go into all sorts of detail, using sharewares as example, of how to reverse software to alter its workings if it wasn't doing what you expected, or how to modify it more to your needs. Not much different than being able to see the leak in your roof, and know how to go patch it. Or me being able to fish through the circuits of a television to remove the leaky capacitor or offvalue resistor that was causing the service call. Now stuff can be programmed to misbehave and we are blind to it. Most of us have no earthly idea what our stuff is really doing. Am I spewing packets? What's in 'em? Am I being used as a botnet to launch DOS attacks on someone else behind my back? Is my machine mining cryptocurrency? Is some program going through my machine emailing keylogger files?

    Ignorance is not bliss.

    People who want to use our own machines as their rights enforcement agent need us to be ignorant so we can't see how they protected the program. Understandable.

    But the very same techniques are used to implement nasty malware.

    This is getting like the dark ages where the religious priestly class was doing whatever they could to keep people ignorant, so they would continue to believe whatever the priestly class said... until Gutenberg upset their apple cart big-time. I can just see a bunch of men wearing their fish-hats hounding the Congress of the day that having the people aware of what was in their holy books was ruining their business like a guy at a magic show spilling the beans of how the trick works.

    Having us ignorant is much more damaging than someone else not being able to use our machine as their rights enforcement agent... having us ignorant is paramount to having us ignorant of how to read, so a businessman can put anything he wants into a contract, without us knowing what that contract says, but still getting assurance from our Congress that their contract is still a legally binding agreement.

    Mr Congressman! Help! I put this hefty termination fee clause in my business contract, people are reading it, and become aware that when they find I deliver nowhere the speed I alluded to, they will be charged $1000 termination fee, and they won't sign up! This is a clear violation of my business model. A violation, I tell you. I tell 'em right out I have the fastest STARTING speed - its my business model to get the login at full speed so I can begin billing, then slow way down so I can reserve that speed for other logins. I have a Right to collect that termination fee. But they won't sign because they read. Please codify LAW for me to make it illegal to for people to talk about how to read! I don't want them fishing through my contract! Geez, that's how I make a fine living! I need LAW. ( shakes hand of Congressman ).

    We are getting like a nation full of eaters, but no chefs! All done by machine, so the man who has the patent on hot dogs can ask whatever the monopoly price is knowing its illegal for someone else to grill one off. The one percenters want to stay that way, and make sure they keep competition squashed. They can use a goon squad to burn down each others means of production. Or they can use Congressmen and the LAW they are chartered to author, and have public law enforcement do the dirty work.

    Having Congressmen craft special law is a pretty good way of raising an artificial barrier to entry to keep your competition at bay. "Free" enterprise, my ass.

    When I was a kid, there were all sorts of places I could get a job in building/designing the high-tech stuff of the day.

    Now, its offshored. And guys like me are on "assistance". Or worse. As the money is made not through designing or building stuff, its done through marketing and sales of stuff that someone else made. Overseas.

    So most of our money is not made by building, rather its money manipulation. Banking. The FIRE sector ( Finance, Insurance, Real Estate ). These don't produce a damned thing but drag down a lot of resources. We use computer cycles mining bitcoin. Geez, why don't you guys pay me to sit around and masturbate. Again, a lot of activity producing nothing of any real value.

    History tells me nations full of eaters, but few chefs, will only hold together long enough until the men who produce acquire the wealth of those who just eat.

    I just had to go rant again, eh?

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 09 2018, @02:01PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday March 09 2018, @02:01PM (#649950) Journal

    You didn't mention copyright, which is routinely abused to lock away knowledge and keep people in the dark.

    Buying groceries is stealing from the fast food industry. Reading an instruction manual is stealing from service workers! Owning your own car is stealing from rental car agencies! Parking your car yourself is stealing from valets! Junkyards are dens of subversives and thieves! Learning is copying, copying is stealing, and therefore learning is stealing. Thief! Thief!

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 09 2018, @03:09PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 09 2018, @03:09PM (#649991) Journal

    I just had to go rant again, eh?

    With those high prices for lithium batteries, what else can a man do?
    (grin)

    How many of us could pick up an ATMEL328 and design hardware and software to do something?

    Personally, I prefer ATTINY84A - lower footprint and the number of I/O pins/timers is quite enough for most of the projects.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @05:26PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:26PM (#650089)

    History tells me nations full of eaters, but few chefs, will only hold together long enough until the men who produce acquire the wealth of those who just eat.

    AKA greed.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:56PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:56PM (#650123)

    a fellow disciple of +Fravia
    that guy was a great pedagogue, mighty reverser,awesome linguist and...
    RIP +fravia