
A bill to allow consumers to control their own devices is pending in Congress - msq
http://www.cio.com/article/3167861/consumer-electronics/surprise-you-don-t-own-the-digital-devices-you-paid-for.html
======
j_m_b
Just a reminder: [https://mic.com/articles/167878/barney-frank-heres-how-to-
no...](https://mic.com/articles/167878/barney-frank-heres-how-to-not-waste-
your-time-pressuring-lawmakers#.wRrguI2xn)

another user's summary:

tl;dr

1\. Make sure you’re registered to vote — lawmakers check.

2\. Lawmakers don’t care about people outside of their district.

3\. Your signature — physical or electronic — on a mass petition will mean
little.

4\. The communication must be individual. Email, Letter, Phone call.

5\. Know where your representative stands.

6\. Communicate — even if you and your representative disagree.

7\. Say “thank you" \- to reinforce the behavior you want

8\. Enlist the help of friends in other districts. - they write their own reps

~~~
1_2__3
Also as a reminder if you work for a company of a few thousand people: notice
how the CEO doesn't care what you think? Now multiply your company population
by 5x. Does it really sound like writing heartfelt letters will make a
difference?

~~~
ssharp
1\. Employees don't vote for their CEO. 2\. There is strength in numbers. Your
message might not get through but if it's the same message as 1,000 others it
will.

If you want change, cynicism like yours is crippling.

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ethbro
EFF's page on the bill: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/yoda-bill-
would-let-yo...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/yoda-bill-would-let-
you-own-and-sell-your-devices-re-introduced-congress)

From the US House press release linked in the above, money quote: _' “The YODA
bill, today, I did file,” said Congressman Farenthold. “YODA simply states
that your device belongs to you. If you wish to sell that device, the software
that enables it to work is transferred along with it, and that any right you
have to security and bug fixing of that software is transferred as well.”'_

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exodust
Wish I could sell my iPad WITH the hundreds of apps I've purchased. It sucks
that I can't. Maybe I can.. just sell the email address with the iPad and give
buyer passwords. Buyer changes both email and iTunes password and it's a done
deal. I used a generic web email to sign up to iTunes, I don't mind losing it.
Apple would never find out. I wonder if anyone else has tried this? Edit.. (or
maybe just change the iTunes account email address to the buyer's email is
enough).

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exabrial
Us HNers need to make some noise on Social Media about this. Anyone want to
pick a day? Anyone have a connection to an editor over at Engadget or
something we could have them highlight this?

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Neliquat
Please do all you can to support this. Send to your local makers, hackers, and
geeks. Also kurig, john deere, and tesla owners may also be very excited.

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NeonVice
Direct quote from the press release, "Last session, waylaid in committee YODA
was."

[http://farenthold.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Documen...](http://farenthold.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399906)

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coldcode
While it seems a good idea, how does this even work in practice?

~~~
dqv
>how does this even work in practice?

It will be legal to fix your own tractor. It will also be legal to change the
software on devices you own.

~~~
bluGill
It is legal to fix your tractor. I work for John Deere (though of course do
not speak for them), and we are proud that you can by the repair manuals for
every tractor we ever made, and most parts are still available. We are made at
the computer industry because some of our newer (We consider a 15 year old
tractor fairly new though realistically it is probably worn out) tractors have
chips that cannot be bought anymore.

When I challenge people on this I eventually get down to what people really
want: they want to disable the emissions controls. A qualified engineer (which
most mechanics are not - but I suspect those reading this are) given the
source code we don't give out can get our engines a little more fuel efficient
at the expense of not meeting emissions, or a little more powerful at the
expensive of being less reliable. When you read the above you will begin to
understand why we made the engineering compromises we did, and see why we
don't really want to give out the requested information. It isn't necessary to
do repairs, but it is necessary to do things that you shouldn't do.

That is not to say I'm against the idea of this bill, just that the
justification you are being sold is built on a lie. I think this bill needs to
be carefully written to address this.

~~~
snerbles
If the vehicle owner disables the emissions controls, the onus is on them -
ethically this is no different than removing a catalytic converter or other
physical hardware.

Don't use this as an excuse to wage war on general purpose computing.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
There are also other ways to deal with this. If it's reasonable to require
that I get my $10,000 car emissions tested every two years to be able to drive
it, it should be reasonable to require that vastly more expensive tractors get
emissions tested periodically too.

~~~
frogpelt
Random testing, I guess?

Because owners could just re-enable emissions control until after the test.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Hey, it worked for Volkswagen...

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sndean
Is this far enough along to have comments from congressmen/senators/Trump for
us to know how this will end?

It seems like something most would agree with

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wheelerwj
i feel like we do this every other year?

yet somehow surveillance/privacy laws don't have to be renewed for years on
end?

~~~
savanaly
Think of it rather like this: if a goal is hard to achieve then there won't
exist a surefire solution (otherwise how is it hard to achieve?). Instead, you
must work your way towards it consistently and diligently, in order to improve
the odds of accomplishing it. Depending on the goal there are probably a lot
of factors outside of our control, in this case high level political
maneuvering and the fortune that is the unpredictable swings in uninformed
public opinion. That doesn't make the effort that could possibly tip the
scales wasted though.

Whether all the effort is worth it depends on how you rate your odds and how
effective you think your efforts are at increasing those odds. If you want to
argue the particulars then that's legitimate, but simply pointing out that
attempting something every year in the past didn't yield results doesn't prove
it is irrational to continue doing it.

