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.
Related Stories
Last year dozens of 'Right to Repair' bills were introduced throughout the US, but defeated. Maybe this time its time has come.
Right to Repair bills, designed to foster competition in the repair industry, require manufacturers to allow repair, and even provide manuals, diagnosic software, and parts. Manufacturers oppose these laws as it can cost them more to address devices repaired by third parties, because repairs are a source of revenue, and because repaired items are less likely to be replaced with new ones.
[O]ne of the most effective anti-repair tactics is to spread FUD about the supposed security risks of independent repairs.
Without a concerted and coordinated effort to counteract this tactic, legislators receive primarily well-heeled opposing views, and vote accordingly.
Hacking Ventilators With DIY Dongles From Poland:
As COVID-19 surges, hospitals and independent biomedical technicians have turned to a global grey-market for hardware and software to circumvent manufacturer repair locks and keep life-saving ventilators running.
The dongle is handmade, little more than a circuit board encased in plastic with two connectors. One side goes to a ventilator’s patient monitor, another goes to the breath delivery unit. A third cable connects to a computer.
This little dongle—shipped to him by a hacker in Poland—has helped William repair at least 70 broken Puritan Bennett 840 ventilators that he’s bought on eBay and from other secondhand websites. He has sold these refurbished ventilators to hospitals and governments throughout the United States, to help them handle an influx of COVID-19 patients. Motherboard agreed to speak to William anonymously because he was not authorized by his company to talk to the media, but Motherboard verified the specifics of his story with photos and other biomedical technicians.
William is essentially Frankensteining together two broken machines to make one functioning machine. Some of the most common repairs he does on the PB840, made by a company called Medtronic, is replacing broken monitors with new ones. The issue is that, like so many other electronics, medical equipment, including ventilators, increasingly has software that prevents “unauthorized” people from repairing or refurbishing broken devices, and Medtronic will not help him fix them.
[...] Delays in getting equipment running put patients at risk. In the meantime, biomedical technicians will continue to try to make-do with what they can. “If someone has a ventilator and the technology to [update the software], more power to them,” Mackeil said. “Some might say you’re violating copyright, but if you own the machine, who’s to say they couldn’t or they shouldn’t?”
I understand that there is an ongoing debate on the "right to repair". However, many manufacturers increasingly find ways to ensure that "unauthorised" people cannot repair their devices. Where do you stand on this issue? During the ongoing pandemic, do medical device manufacturers have the right to prevent repair by third parties?
A legislator in Canada has proposed a bill to ensure that individuals and indpendent shops can repair brand-name devices. If on the off chance that the bill becomes law, major hardware vendors will have to change how they sell their products.
[...] On Thursday, Coteau introduced a private member's bill in provincial parliament that, if passed, would be the first "right to repair" law for electronic devices in North America. More than a dozen US states are currently considering similar bills, but nothing is on the books yet in the US or in Canada.
The legislation proposes that tech companies make diagnostic tools, repair manuals, and official parts available to consumers at their request. The legislation would also require that any new products ship with a repair manual. Documents provided to consumers must be free unless they request paper copies, and parts, tools, and software must be provided at a fair price.
Earlier on SN:
Apple's T2 Security Chip Can Prevent Unauthorized Third-Party Repair of Devices
Yes, Americans, You Can Break Anti-Piracy DRM If You Want to Repair Some of Your Kit – US Govt
45 Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After Independent Repair, Sting Reveals
The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California
Wired has published a long article about how the farming equipment manufacturer John Deere has just swindled farmers out of their right to repair their own equipment. Basically the manufacturer was allowed to write the agreement governing access to the firmware embedded in the farming equipment.
Farmers have been some of the strongest allies in the ongoing battle to make it easier for everyone to fix their electronics. This week, though, a powerful organization that's supposed to lobby on behalf of farmers in California has sold them out by reaching a watered-down agreement that will allow companies like John Deere to further cement their repair monopolies.
Farmers around the country have been hacking their way past the software locks that John Deere and other manufacturers put on tractors and other farm equipment, and the Farm Bureau lobbying organization has thus far been one of the most powerful to put its weight behind right to repair legislation, which would require manufacturers to sell repair parts, make diagnostic tools and repair information available to the public, and would require manufacturers to provide a way to get around proprietary software locks that are designed to prevent repair.
Motherboard also covered the topic about how farmer lobbyists sold out their farmers and helped enshrine John Deere's maintenance monopoly.
Earlier on SN:
The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California (2018)
Apple, Verizon Join Forces to Lobby Against New York's 'Right to Repair' Law (2017)
US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software (2015)
Jailbreak your Tractor or Make it Run OSS? (2015)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday March 09 2018, @11:32AM (13 children)
Will this extend to having the right to fix Windows?
Yes!: Open that source code!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:09PM
Fixing Windows keeps people employed. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @01:45PM (8 children)
26 years ago Linus Torvalds fixed Windows.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday March 09 2018, @01:52PM (7 children)
And 19 years ago, I found it and never looked back: but it would be nice to see them have to offer the code, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @02:21PM (6 children)
The code? What, you want to see the dirty laundry of Redmond? Okay, but viewing it needs to be "R" rated - think of the children!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 09 2018, @03:26PM (5 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @04:54PM
Yeah, I remember it. I was too afraid to look. To be fair, as much as I'll bash Microsoft, to some extent their development tools, and to a larger extent the example code and "how to use this function" explanations have been really good for a long time. My irritation with development tools, and the many mfc, .net, etc., over the years, is the big changes. I remember trying to use Office 2007 (I think it was that one) with the new "ribbon" UI. Ugh! I'm okay with things like ribbon, but how about give me a choice? Sorry, I'm back to ranting against MS! It's too easy I guess...
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday March 09 2018, @05:18PM (2 children)
I never saw it myself, but I heard it went something like :-
10 GOSUB 50
20 GOTO 10
50 REM Subroutine to display BSOD
60 [Turn screen blue etc .. etc]
70 [etc .. etc]
80 RETURN
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @10:27PM (1 child)
This is great, made me laugh, mostly because now I wonder if anyone ever wrote an OS in BASIC...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday March 10 2018, @08:09AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @10:51PM
Some people a while back got the code into buildable form and found the necessary toolchain bits to actually roll new ISO images off it. While definitely not kosher from a BSA/copyright lobby standpoint, it offers lots of REALLY FUN possibilities, like paravirtualized NT4 for non-kvm xen/qemu, GPT support and ntldr booting for >2TB disks on BIOS. Support for 64GB of RAM on any legacy PAE systems.
One of the biggest possibilities if some was willing to do the machine learning work and open source it: Automated Reverse engineering of every NT kernel based version of windows using the NT4 sourcecode as a training platform for decompilation.
Given decompiled versions of Windows 2000, XP, and XP x64/2003 it should be possible to support a LOT of newer drivers on the NT4 codebase, as well as have the code necessary to provide key source code snapshots for different later NT build versions, eventually allowing full emulation even for DRM for running applications that can't or won't be ported to other operating systems or windows versions.
From there driver reverse engineering can be carried out to help document and then develop drivers for hardware that has long been abandoned by its developers, allowing both code and hardware reuse wherever it is needed.
Machine learning, combined with source code and signing key leaks is the future of technology. If right to repair in a sensible form comes to exist, that will just make it all the better.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 09 2018, @06:16PM
Fuck your silly toys, the real test will be reverse-engineering automobile firmware. Something that has a mode to play nice for the smog nazis, but will roll coal out on the highways when trying to cut off douchebag Prius drivers and BMW cocksuckers.
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Friday March 09 2018, @06:31PM (1 child)
oh god, if windows became open source it would be about as secure as swiss cheese.
You know the reason so many companies refuse to open source their code? Because it's really, really bad code. Open source means that people have to actually bother making things well.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:59AM
So we're talking about a significant improvement...
if only because the phoning home would stop.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:29PM (5 children)
... to buy from a company that makes easily reparable equipment.
"THERE SHOULD BE A LAW!!!!1111"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 09 2018, @02:46PM
Yeah, there should be a law. In fact, when a "rights holder" wants a new law, he generally runs to the state capital, or maybe the national capital, fornicates with a few lawmakers, gets them drunk, high, and gives them reelection money - and he gets his law. Disney, Hollywierd, the record labels, John Deere, and so very many more.
Maybe if you were up in arms against all the paid-for laws, your position would make more sense.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Friday March 09 2018, @06:33PM (3 children)
Are you against the idea of having full control over the things you own? Isn't that a core component of lolbertarian ideology?
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @03:43PM (1 child)
In the libertarian ideal world, if you didn't like one company treated their customers, you would buy from someone else. If enough people did this, then companies that treated their customers poorly would go out of business. No laws needed.
Of course, what happens is you end up with a cartel or a straight-up monopoly, and there is no competition because the incumbents use their weight and position in the market to squash any newcomers they don't like.
Though to be fair the libertarians, we don't live in a libertarian society, and often the laws are designed to the incumbents benefit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @10:04PM
I believe in a lot of libertarian ideals, but the full libertarian ideal just doesn't work. If you dismantle an agency in the government, in order for it to stay dismantled you need the populace to keep voting against its return. That doesn't happen. The 19th century US tried to be libertarian, but in practice the robber barons just went on a shopping spree and bought the local politicians and law enforcement officers. Then the robber barons did whatever the hell they wanted.
The parent post writer thinks the free market should be enough to solve the DRM problem, if it's important enough to be solved. Nonsense. My kids' public school is loaded with Windows, Apple, and Google products - how many of those children are going to grow up with any appreciation for EFF causes? The big players have already bought their way into the education system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @04:34PM
he just wants the right to disagree with people so that he gains the satisfaction of seeing their displeasure in any replies they make. or anyone else replying for that matter.
not quite a troll. its like he got picked on before so hes going to do it to everyone equally if he can, due to the unfairness of it all. he is at least consistent
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:36PM
Vermont Fair Repair Act
https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2018/S.180 [vermont.gov]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Friday March 09 2018, @12:45PM (5 children)
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]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 09 2018, @02:01PM
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
With those high prices for lithium batteries, what else can a man do?
(grin)
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/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @05:26PM
AKA greed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:56PM (1 child)
a fellow disciple of +Fravia
that guy was a great pedagogue, mighty reverser,awesome linguist and...
RIP +fravia
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday March 10 2018, @07:38AM
Yes.. he will be remembered that way by many of us, inspired by that gem of a man who once walked among us.
One of the best teachers I ever learned from... [crazyboy.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 09 2018, @08:24PM (1 child)
How can you repair the product when it's ... a single [slashdot.org] piece [slashdot.org]?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 09 2018, @10:29PM
Hey, no referencing p0rn sites here, we don't want to incur that $20 charge.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday March 10 2018, @10:05AM
Make EULAs unenforceable. Or, make them enforceable contracts but require the seller to pay the buyer a monthly fee for the privilege of controlling the hardware after the sale.