
The Shady World of Repair Manuals: Copyrighting for Planned Obsolescence (2012) - segfaultbuserr
https://www.wired.com/2012/11/cease-and-desist-manuals-planned-obsolescence/
======
userbinator
Don't forget leaked schematics and other engineering documents --- which once
upon a time were supplied with any moderately complex piece of equipment. It's
not surprising then, that the majority of sites where you can find this
information are hosted in Asia, former Soviet, or eastern European countries.

I wonder if Google's noticeably worsening search quality in this area has
anything to do with where this info can be found, or the legality of it. I
remember it used to be far easier to find a PDF someone shared, but now it's
very insistent that you're looking for the user manual even if you search for
"service manual", and commercial spam has taken over much of the results.

"If you outlaw repairs, only outlaws will have repairs."

~~~
AmVess
I tried to Google a service manual for a 6 year old washer, and all I found
was the same page hosted on different websites of questionable reliability
trying to sell me the full manual.

I used to be able to find even the most arcane manual out there, but it's
getting difficult to impossible. Sometimes it seems Google purges and blocks
searches for things older than a year. I know this isn't the case, but it
seems like it, sometimes.

I have a Dell laptop, and they provide a service manual for it on their
website. Parts are inexpensive, ubiquitous, and easily replaceable. No small
wonder why I've been a customer since their PC's Unlimited days.

~~~
Tade0
My washer is from the mid 00's, and just last year I was able to find a manual
for it - this year no such luck.

~~~
eitland
Did you try DuckDuckGo?

~~~
Tade0
Tried, to no avail.

------
philpem
Toshiba... why doesn't that surprise me.

I've had a couple of them, they've been some of the least reliable machines
I've ever had. Even getting a set of nubs for the Trackpoint was an exercise
in futility - three hours on the phone, followed by finding a local Toshiba
dealer (local being a good hundred miles away), only to pay £45 for three
clearly used Trackpoint nubs. That was my last new Toshiba, but I do have a
Libretto 110CT for programming old radio gear (old enough that the programming
software only runs on DOS or Win9x).

My last two laptops were both Thinkpads and I've never looked back. My battle-
scarred and heavily-stickered (to cover the scratches) X220 has had a mountain
of parts. Heck, I once replaced the DC jack on the table in a convention hotel
restaurant, using a friend's iPad to read the service manual...!

The only thing locking down repair manuals and parts will achieve (at least
for me) is to make me look at what the company's competition is selling.

------
tomxor
Because you have likely heard a version of this story before, i'm picking out
the unusually actionable part buried at the end here:

> We’re raising funds and hardware on Indiegogo [1] to collaboratively write
> open source manuals to replace the ones Toshiba forced Tim to take down.

[1] [http://www.indiegogo.com/toshiba](http://www.indiegogo.com/toshiba)

~~~
kwiens
Author here. We raised the money, bought the laptops, and published the
manuals.

Fix away!
[https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Toshiba_Laptop](https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Toshiba_Laptop)

~~~
tomxor
Awesome! I failed to notice the year of the article. Well done for following
through.

------
davidhyde
I can understand Toshiba’s move if had the monopoly on selling laptops but
they don’t. If I had to replace my laptop because it was unrepairable because
Toshiba forcefully removed all the service manuals from the internet I would
be unlikely to buy another laptop from that manufacturer. However, if I could
fix it and but I eventually desired an upgrade then I would be more inclined
to chose a model that I was familiar with. Seems like they have not thought
this through properly.

~~~
bootlooped
I think people who look for or read laptop repair manuals is an insignificant
percentage of their customer base.

Case study: Apple starts using pentalobe screws on the iPhone 4. This did not
correlate with a decrease in sales, in fact sales have gone up a lot. Ask
random iPhone users what the word "pentalobe" means to them, they probably
don't know, nor care.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Apple is never a central example.

If your iPhone breaks and can't be repaired and you want another one, you have
to buy a new one from Apple, because Samsung doesn't make iOS devices.
Meanwhile the fact that old iPhones get minor damage and then cost more to
repair than they're worth increases the "I can afford an iPhone" signaling
value of having one because they become less common and cost more to maintain
in a state of good repair. In other words, it's a Veblen good.

That doesn't work for commodity markets like Android devices and PC laptops
because it's all fungible commodity hardware and it all runs the same
software. And then even if the user has no idea what "pentalobe screws" are,
they do know that their laptop broke after the first year and all the repair
shops told them it was unrepairable junk and recommended a different brand.

Meanwhile even Apple is playing a dangerous game here, because eroding
repairability increases their new sales in the short term, but it also damages
their reputation with technical people over time. So you get more sales, but
more of the sales are to douchy investment bankers who then stand around
holding your logo in their hand while telling girls they're fat and firing
people's dads and bloviating about how much better they are than you because
they drive a BMW.

And on top of that, there is a trade off between more sales and more users.
When your platform's devices don't last as long you may get more sales, but it
lowers your installed base because the devices fall out of it faster. The fact
that a used iPhone is more than a new Android phone pushes more people away
from your platform. But the number and quality of the apps people make for
your platform is proportional to your installed base. This is how Windows got
so sticky on the desktop -- it's Office, but it's also the long tail. That
line of business app which is only used by 2% of people except that there are
sixty of them and they're each mostly a different 2% of people, so 90% of
people need Windows. Apple has a long-term problem if that's what accumulates
over time with Android, but it's a direct trade off against short-term
exclusivity.

~~~
brokenmachine
Agree 100% but unfortunately it seems that lots of other manufacturers are
emulating the same bullshit.

They took my removeable battery but they will never take my headphone jack!
Oops, I mean freedom!

~~~
away_throw
Even Samsung took away the headphone jack recently :(. I might as well buy a
classic iPod for music listening now-a-days.

~~~
brokenmachine
I have a separate mp3 player already, but I use the headphone jack to watch
youtube videos on the phone.

I'm waiting a bit to upgrade my phone. I've always had a Samsung up until now,
but I won't be buying one without a headphone jack. Hopefully they'll come to
their senses. Bluetooth is a painful joke.

------
kantium
For me, it would be better to focus on drastically reducing the duration of
copyrights. At the speed things are going, 2 to 4 years would be good. It
would be beneficial for everyone. Drugs, Manuals, Seeds, Arts...

~~~
jtreminio
It takes over a decade for most major pharmaceuticals to go through all
required research and clinical trials before they ever reach the general
population.

Costs can easily go past tens of millions of dollars. A 2-4 year copyright
period would require new medications to either be prohibitively expensive, or
not be researched at all and only the most profitable diseases would ever get
looked into.

~~~
okcando
It's alright, copyright doesn't govern pharmaceuticals anyway. That's what
patents are for and they expire much more quickly than copyrights do though
it's longer than four years.

Functional ideas or features are explicitly excluded from copyright or
trademark protection.

------
repairisntcheap
Laptop repair companies are disappearing for another reason, too... Brand new
laptops are cheap. If your product is cheap to buy, it's harder to make money
repairing the product.

~~~
yoz-y
This is the case not only for laptops. I was renting a place a few years back
and the on/off button on my electric heater broke. A technician came in,
brought a new heater and replaced it. I asked him why not repair something
that seemed like a completely trivial fix. The answer was that the unit costs
about 100€ whereas any technician would bill way more for the short time it
would take to open it up, fish out the connector and replace the part. So to
the landfill it goes.

~~~
gambiting
Well, that's what happens when labour is expensive. My friend's Amplifier
broke in the UK, we got a few quotes for repairs but most places were asking
for like £80-100 just to diagnose the issue. I happened to be driving back to
my home country(Poland) at the time so I took the amplifier with me and had it
fixed by a qualified repairman for £30 in parts + £20 in labour(the rate was
an absolutely insane for Poland 50PLN(£10)/hour). Brought it back with me on
the drive back.

------
cyberjunkie
Stuff You Should Know did a podcast episode on Planned Obsolescence -
[https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/planned-
obsolesc...](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/planned-obsolescence-
engine-of-the-consumer-economy.htm)

~~~
jokoon
Can't play the episode, no idea if ublock is a problem, but it doesn't work.

Is that a paid podcast?

~~~
segfaultbuserr
Not the original poster, but I'm not sure what is going on either, and it
seems to be an interesting podcast I'd like to listen. Here's an alternative
link I found, it works for me. There are some ads and greetings at the
beginning, actual content starts at the 3 minute mark:
[https://player.fm/series/stuff-you-should-
know-2151878/plann...](https://player.fm/series/stuff-you-should-
know-2151878/planned-obsolescence-engine-of-the-consumer-economy)

Raw MP3:
[https://dcs.megaphone.fm/HSW5294478445.mp3?key=ff7d10535b175...](https://dcs.megaphone.fm/HSW5294478445.mp3?key=ff7d10535b17537fc9e8407368eb1fe4)

------
Chris2048
If their stuff is copyrighted, maybe we can write our _own_ manuals? with
blackjack! and hookers!

------
asdf333
what can we do? don’t buy toshiba.

~~~
dredmorbius
Boycotts are one form of pressure.

Right to repair and right to information though are another.

This also means guaranteed minimum supported lifetimes, access to
documentation, system upgrades, and the like.

As for laptops: I've been actively putting off upgrading for numerous reasons
including the fact that no current offerings really seem to suit my needs,
wants, or reasonable expectations, but bullshit games (factory-installed
spyware, Lenovo, craptacular ergonomics (Apple keyboards, strips), and BDSM
bootloaders (Android) leave me feeling physically ill.

I was reminiscing earlier that in his 1976 book _Imperial Earth_ , Arthur C.
Clarke more-or-less pressages the smartphone, with his minisec, though with
some glaring distinctions.

There's a physical keyboard (the 'E' key is mentioned as being worn), devices
are durable enough to be intergenerational hand-me-downs (the protagonist
inherits his father's old device), and apparently the economics and business
models of manufacturing, servicing, upgrading, and developing for the
platforms have been solved, as they're never mentioned.

It's the business models of hardware, software, and services which are killing
us. To the point of creating actively shitty products and business practices.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _BDSM bootloaders_

Upvoted for this, lol. I think using a lot of products are essentially
becoming a BDSM game nowadays... i.e. It has some broken useless features
because of some bullshit due to the marketing department. To improve
something, you would need to hack it to bypass some arbitrary restrictions
first, and many enjoy this process of hacking...

Those hackers are heros, but it would be the best if some arbitrary problems
are not deliberately introduced by the manufacturers in the first place.

~~~
antisemiotic
The main difference is that BDSM is supposed to be consensual and have a safe
word.

~~~
leiroigh
We even have a universally agreed upon safe-word for this kind of thing
("sudo").

~~~
cptnapalm
Not in OpenBSD by default! doas or die!

------
chendragon
I personally feel that repair manuals and documentation are not the worst
problems facing repair at this point.

What I've noticed in consumer electronics over the past few years is increased
part integration - pretty much every device is just a logic board with a case
and display, along with some support components. Pretty much every logic board
is just a collection of switching power supplies, soldered ASICs, mem/disk,
and connectors.

Even things like power supply ICs are becoming proprietary,with customer-
specific part numbers that are hard or impossible to source. Furthermore
anything with a microcontroller and firmware on it is perma-bricked should
something go wrong on that. This is something Louis Rossmann (the famous
MacBook repair guy) talks about a lot.

Now don't get me wrong, I totally support repair documentation, but being able
to get replacement parts and materials is probably more of an issue to those
"reasonably skilled in the art" than manuals teaching how to mechanically open
something (usually possible to figure out) or even what's connected to what
(worst comes to worst, you "beep it out" with diode mode and compare with a
working exemplar [REWA technology on YouTube does this]).

The issue with parts and materials is that since we're moving towards
proprietary ICs, the motive of manufacturers to not provide
documentation/parts is even greater as they don't necessarily want to talk
about the technology they are using, whether or not it was really novel. It
provides a decent excuse for the manufacturers to fight Right to Repair.
Furthermore, security issues and proprietary interests come into play, since
you don't want hacked fingerprint sensors and Apple probably doesn't want to
sell A-series processors.

Futhermore complicating matters is that component and board level repair
remains more of a science project than a process. It is logistically difficult
for many companies to bother dealing with selling parts (should they sell just
subassemblies at 70% of the replacement cost of the product? Resistors for ten
cents?) especially to people outside their network of people. And it's hard to
deliver consistent experiences when you actually need to try to fix stuff; a
lot of people I know are happy with Apple store service because they DON'T try
to fix stuff and instead give you a NEW one, without all the warts and
scratches, and it's hard to compete with this if you have to swap parts over
and over again with subpar or defectively-designed "refurb" parts like I
sometimes see happen with the PC manufacturers.

So I'm sort of half and half on Right to Repair every time it gets brought up.
People seem to be warming up to first party repair. I think the biggest
realistic benefit to RtR at this point is going to be pressure on first party
repair to lower prices and improve service. And that's a good thing.

I think the other issue facing RtR discussions is, not that it's anyone's
fault or anything but often it is very difficult to have the perspective of
actual design and business challenges faced by the engineers and people
delivering products. This makes it easier for companies to refute the claims
being made. The people actually working on this stuff from the companies' side
usually and understandably never talk about it - so we're only representing
largely the end user side, or the reverse-engineering side.

