
Support for right-to-repair laws slowly grows - headalgorithm
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/hackers-farmers-and-doctors-unite-support-for-right-to-repair-laws-slowly-grows/
======
ericabiz
Here's another way Apple may be killing "right to repair":

I own a chain of independent cell phone and computer repair shops. Last year,
Google unilaterally took away AdWords in our industry. The day after
Thanksgiving, we woke up to find none of our ads were running.

Google claimed this was because "third-party tech support providers" were
scamming customers--i.e. people were buying AdWords for virus removal and tech
support queries and then trying to scam people for money.

Google also claimed an independent verification service was coming for those
of us who had actual physical repair shops and weren't scamming people.

Despite Google's promises, none of this has been delivered. Our business has
dropped significantly since AdWords disappeared 8 months ago. This Google
action has really hurt legitimate small businesses.

I write all of this because the prevailing theory in our industry is that this
is Apple's way of fighting against right to repair.

If only Apple authorized service providers are allowed to advertise on Google
for repair-related keywords, Apple will have taken more teeth out of "right to
repair."

It reminds me of the quote from The Matrix: "Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good
is a phone call when you are unable to speak?" If independent repair shops
can't be found on Google, is that Google and Apple's way of muting third-party
repair?

Right when Google ads disappeared, Amazon and Apple made a deal that meant
third parties could no longer sell Apple products on Amazon:
[https://9to5toys.com/2018/11/09/apple-and-amazon-deal-
iphone...](https://9to5toys.com/2018/11/09/apple-and-amazon-deal-iphone-ipad/)

This is just a reminder that Apple is fighting in every way possible against
right to repair.

~~~
komali2
Welp, there it is. As clear cut a case of the dangers of Google basically
holding the keys to the internet for the masses as I've ever seen.

How's the ads on Facebook and Instagram doing?

~~~
ericabiz
Awful, honestly. The last set we ran on Facebook cost us $40 per booked
appointment...not even break-even for us.

We are working on video ads for pre-roll YouTube, etc., but it takes $ for
tools (like cameras) and production. On Google, we learned how to optimize our
ads and we were doing really well.

~~~
isolli
Have you tried advertising on DuckDuckGo? There's not as much traffic, but it
could be worth it.

~~~
tsss
How many people do you know who use DuckDuckGo? How many of them would
consider a repair shop instead of doing it themselves?

~~~
javagram
FWIW, I use DDG, I’d still go to a repair shop rather than try to repair an
iPhone personally.

I’m perfectly happy building a PC or messing with something that’s meant to be
user-serviceable, or even replacing the stereo in my car, but when it comes to
small things that are glued together I’d look at a professional. I can’t even
manage to get screen protectors to go on perfectly straight in past
experience...

------
s1512783
"Providing open access to the technical specifications of consumer electronics
would enable criminals to “more easily circumvent security protections,
harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their
network,” and "On the other end, John Deere argues that access to the
company’s proprietary software could be used to bypass emissions controls or
safety measures"

Of course they're doing it all for our own safety. It makes me mad when people
bring up security through obscurity as a reason for locking down devices. It's
such a blatant lie.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _" On the other end, John Deere argues that access to the company’s
> proprietary software could be used to bypass emissions controls or safety
> measures"_

They do have a point on emission controls, though. Pretty much every person I
know that owns a diesel car has either ripped out or plans to rip out the
particulate filter. Doesn't matter that it's illegal, doesn't matter that it
hurts everyone around. People just don't care.

I'm all for the right to inspect and mod electronics, hardware and software
alike, but we also need alternative ways to stop socially irresponsible
people.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Do you only know car enthusiasts? Most regular people probably don't even know
diesels have an extra particulate filter, yet care enough to actively modify
their car to circumvent it; it's hard enough convincing them that their oil
needs to be changed more than once a decade. There's no point beyond regular
vehicle inspections to go after the 0.01% of the population that are car
enthusiasts willing to modify their vehicle and bribe their way past
inspections

~~~
TeMPOraL
No, I know regular people - some of which don't know the first thing about car
internals, except the concept that if you have a diesel, there are people who
will remove some component from it that will lower your total cost of
ownership. Two weeks ago, I had a rideshare driver brag to me about how he
knows a guy who knows a guy who could do this for him.

I have no first clue how these people get around yearly inspections; I've
assumed that particulate filters must not be covered by inspections, though it
wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out people bribe their way through.
While the overall levels of corruption in Poland aren't high, the levels of
respect for car safety regulations and traffic rules seem pretty low in this
country.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Ah Poland, I thought you were talking about the US where a lot of the
population is absolutely useless in terms of car mechanics; but yeah on the
car forums I frequent tossing the mechanic a Benjamin is the usual tactic to
have a tuned car in places that have inspections like California.

I guess it's a symptom of the only people willing to be learn to be a car
mechanic and do inspections being part of the same group which generally see
emission/safety regulations as being overburdening

------
Zak
> _John Deere argues that access to the company’s proprietary software could
> be used to bypass emissions controls or safety measures._

On an analog car, I can physically remove emissions control devices. I can
short circuit the seat belt warning. I can pull a fuse and disable the (not
quite analog) antilock brakes. I can fail to change the tires when they have
an unsafe amount of tread. I'm less familiar with farm equipment, but I'm sure
there are many parallel modifications possible for analog farm equipment.

The courts and the public would not consider the manufacturer responsible in
any of the above scenarios. It doesn't follow that it would be any different
for users modifying digital systems.

~~~
swozey
So John Deere sells upgrade packages for its equipment. If you need more
torque, towing capacity, etc, you pay for the upgrade. It likely pushes you a
new tune and raises the boost. They definitely don't want some local tuner
shop being able to handle this for you which explains their reasoning ($$).

I've seen the price list once recently but I can't recall how I found it and
it's evading me right now. The upgrades were basically several thousand to
tens of thousands. Wish I could find where I saw this, searching gets me
nothing.

~~~
cwkoss
The government should not be enforcing John Deere's attempt to increase sales
by crippling half of the products that roll off the line artificially. This is
bad for society.

------
jrockway
This all shows what an absolute disaster the DMCA was; how poorly thought out
it was, how unconsidered the consequences were, and how badly our legislators
failed us... to give Hollywood a little extra cash. We should be outraged.

It all started as "hey, these damn kids are stealing our musics". So they made
a law with "broad bipartisan support" to punish those evil evil people that
were sharing their CDs with other people. But then other people realized,
"hey, we can use this to make money." Now it's copyright infringement to
repair your tractor. They keep the DMCA alive by carving out tiny exemptions
every few years... but never addressing the core of the law. We should not
accept random tweaks and amendments to this toxic law.

I think it's time to move to a post-DMCA world. It was illegal to pirate stuff
before the DMCA. Just go prosecute that if you think it's a policing priority.
We don't need a special law, as it clearly makes possible too much abuse.
Don't like someone? DMCA their website. Want extra money for your tractor?
Make repairing it "circumventing a content protection system." This is
actively harmful to society, and the special interest group that is Hollywood
just doesn't matter enough for it to be a good compromise. Get the DMCA out of
here.

~~~
snowwrestler
The DMCA is what exempts ISPs and content platforms from direct liability for
the copyright violations of their users. Without the DMCA, it's doubtful the
Internet could have grown the way it did, and almost certain we would not have
user-generated content platforms like Youtube, Instagram, heck, even HN. They
all would have been sued out of existence as soon as copyrighted stuff was
posted by their users.

The anti-circumvention provisions, to which you're referring, have caused all
sorts of problems. But the bill was passed as a whole, and those provisions
were part of what was traded off for the copyright safe harbor provisions. You
have to look at the whole bill to see the balance that was struck.

All that said, I fully support the right to repair movement.

------
artursapek
I recently discovered Louis Rossman's Youtube channel and it planted a virus
in my head to make me want to try much harder to repair things.

Recently my water bottle leaked on my $2000 Thinkpad and fried the LAN card.
Ubuntu started complaining that it couldn't find the Wireless adapter to find
wifi networks. I think a couple years ago, I'd have just thrown in the towel
right away and bought a new computer. Instead I did some research and found a
$20 replacement card on Amazon. It took me 15 minutes to fix my laptop. I felt
a great sense of pride afterwards for avoiding a great amount of environmental
and financial waste.

Same thing with my $200 coffee grinder. It stopped grinding beans properly. I
did some research and found the usual cause was a thin plastic piece inside
the grinder would crack and become loose. After 5 years of ownership I had
previously considered just buying a new one because "well it's pretty old".
But instead I found the small plastic part on Baratza's website and
successfully repaired my grinder. It cost me $8 and 20 minutes of my time.

I think I'm becoming a repair extremist and will probably start to annoy
people by insisting on taking this route whenever possible. It seems like
American culture cares very little about repairing/mending things. It seems
like people expect everything to break and use it as a cue to buy a new one.
It's really sad, especially because I think we were intentionally trained to
think that way.

~~~
henryfjordan
Usually things like coffee grinders or electric stand mixers that have a motor
and a gearbox include a plastic piece that is intended to fail first precisely
so they are easily and cheaply repaired. They honestly should advertise it on
the box, but that'd cut into their repair business.

~~~
cr0sh
In some cases, this is attributed to bad design or bad materials choice; and
maybe in some cases, it's done to make you purchase a new model.

But in many cases, such breakable parts are put in place for a reason. They
are called "mechanical fuses" \- also known by a few other names:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_part](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_part)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_pin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_pin)

They are designed to break if the machine comes under too much stress that
could break more expensive parts of the machine if the "fuse" wasn't included.
Instead, that part breaks, making it cheap and easy to replace.

Indeed, if you ever find a Kitchen Aid stand mixer in the trash, it likely got
there because a gear in the gearbox is designed for this reason; they are
cheap and easy to replace for anyone with a modest amount of mechanical
ability, and those mixers aren't inexpensive new.

~~~
wrycoder
Yea, if you can get Kitchenaid to sell it to you. They absolutely refuse to
sell me, as a consumer, the grease they use to lubricate the gear head. Even
after arguing for half an hour with customer service.

~~~
magduf
Grease isn't something that Kitchenaid makes. You should be able to easily buy
appropriate grease anywhere for dirt-cheap. For small appliances with plastic
gears, it's most likely some kind of white lithium grease. A little research
online should tell you what kind of grease is appropriate for that
application, and then it should be easy to get some inexpensively, perhaps
even at your local auto parts store in a tiny single-use packet for $1.

~~~
wrycoder
They do sell a food-grade grease, but not to me. Looking at the existing
grease in the gearhead, it looks similar to axle grease. Researching food-
grade grease on Amazon shows many reviews raising this problem, but no
definitive solutions. It's not lithium grease.

~~~
magduf
Why would you need a "food grade" grease? You're not eating the grease; it's
supposed to be contained inside the mechanism. If it's leaking out into the
food, that sounds like a pretty horrible design and a product you shouldn't
use under any circumstances. Maybe I'm just not understanding this product at
all.

Is it golden brown, or an off-white?

~~~
wrycoder
It is golden brown.

My mixer is 50 years old. Over the years, I've pulled the head apart a couple
of times when it starts to squeak, and it's obvious there is a very gradual
loss of grease - I've re-spread it into the gears.

There is no seal on the shaft that holds the beater.

Kitchenaid is made by Hobart, and they are the lead manufacturer in this
market. The design is fine and very rugged.

I don't want use any grease that has traces of heavy metals or, e.g., moly
disulfide. There is such a thing as food grade grease for use in mixers, candy
machines, etc., but I just haven't yet laid my hands on any.

------
woliveirajr
Having my HP printer just failed because of something was wrong on the printer
head (and replacing the printer head alone costs more than the printer, and is
a easy job as it was made to be easily replaced), I'm always mad that a part
costs equal or more than the whole thing.

Any kind of "locked-in" to repair anything should always be against the law:
no one should be allowed to charge more for a part than it charges for the
whole. And I think that only "right-to-repair" can make things correct and
reduce those disposable electronics.

~~~
s1512783
> no one should be allowed to charge more for a part than it charges for the
> whole

I think that's a dangerous route to follow. I completely agree with right to
repair legislation, but I can also imagine a situation where a company makes
ten thousand of something and sells it in a year through a retailer, and then
keeps replacement parts available for a long time. Warehousing, inventory,
service and delivery costs could easily make parts cost more than the original
item.

I once went to a lecture given by someone from Boeing. He said that when they
use an obscure electronic part in their aircraft, and it reaches End of Life,
they buy all the stock they can get hold of, store it in a very secure
location, and charge a lot for it. The real value of this part is way larger
than the original manufacturing costs would imply. It doesn't cost as much as
a plane, but if your plane cannot fly without it, then it's pretty darn close.

~~~
woliveirajr
> (...) when they use an obscure electronic part (...) it reaches End of Life,
> they buy all the stock (...) and charge a lot for it.

But in this case there were other suppliers and they buy all those parts to be
exclusive sellers, and for a thing (a plane) that is expected to have a long
life.

And still it's much more easy on the client than having a propertary chip with
planned obsolescence (print 2,000 pages, or be cycled on-off 200 times, or
wait 497 days, or be moved to another table 7 times, whatever happens first)
and then fail without any trace on where was the wrongdoing of the costumer.

And then have no third-party suppliers. And then charge 80% of the equipament
for just one part that was made to be replaceable.

I'm not talking for how long should HP, in my case, should store replacement
parts, and I know that it implies some costs.

What I consider the giant problem is that we complain that the environment is
getting polluted but companies are allowed to sell things that will last just
some choosen time. That we buy something but we don't own it since nobody
knows when or why it will fail. I'm ok with a plastic breaking, with a chip
releasing the magic smoke.

I'm mad with a chip stop working for unknown reasons because it was designed
to. I'm mad that I (or anybody else) can't fix it because programing it to
fail after x pages is even copyrighted and the pokerfaced company says it is
to protect me from hackers, from printing bad-looking pages, from spitting
some ink in my desk...

When I pay for something I'm giving my money so that the company uses it as
they wish. But in return I'm just getting that I don't own, that I can't use
as I want, and even is against the law if I try, because I'll be breaking some
IP if I make my own chip.

Anyone following the future of Java and how using the same
method/signature/name for functions/API calling (whatever the name it takes)
knows how it affects us, and can imagine how this can extends to the same
reasoning when one company began claiming that "I have rights on the specific
sequence of voltages that are applied to each pins of this print head, so
anyone else can't make the same thing".

~~~
s1512783
> I'm mad with a chip stop working for unknown reasons because it was designed
> to.

I understand that you're angry about your HP printer not working, I also agree
that the 'protection' measures in printers are ridiculous, especially on ink
cartridges. I also agree that planned obsolescence is terrible for the
environment, as are business models like those for inkjet printers, where the
device is given away for nothing just so they can sell you overpriced ink
refills.

I was just pointing out that sometimes it makes sense for replacement parts to
be really expensive, even more than the original product, and that enforcing a
law that would prohibit such practices would be counterproductive, not to
mention that it would be very hard to implement in practice.

For one, how do you even calculate the real value? If you'd have a device that
is intended to last a long time (as we would all like), say 20 years you can't
just take the amount of dollars you paid originally. You'd have to take into
account inflation, changing plant and labour costs etc. This would quickly get
messy, and, IMO, would not produce much final benefit.

Having said that, I think we're on the same page, I would also love to
criminalise making products that are designed to fail after a certain amount
of time.

But this is also super hard to legislate. For example, how do you tell
malicious intent from bad design? If my car becomes uneconomical to repair
after 100,000 miles because the chassis starts to rust, how do you know
whether the manufacturer designed it that way to sell me a new one quicker, or
because they made a mistake?

It's easy to tell when they specifically program a microcontroller to stop
working after a certain date, and I think that such obviously bad practices
should be outlawed. But as a design engineer, I can tell you that it's super
easy to design things to fail in much subtler ways, so that it looks like it's
a simple mistake. Especially since making your design last longer usually
involves adding features like strain relievers on cords etc. This costs money,
and you can easily pretend that you're "saving costs for the end consumer".

I think that, after the most basic right to repair legislation is in place,
"soft" practices, like encouraging people to buy stuff from companies that
have real warranty programs, and which advertise their "built to last"
business models would be much more effective than trying to legislate away
every aspect of repair.

I love how some outdoor equipment companies (Osprey, MSR, Cumulus) handle
this. They sell really expensive stuff, but with excellent after-sales
support, and openly encourage people to send products in for repair. Of course
this would be very hard to implement in a "tech" environment, where the USP is
usually "newer, faster, better". Although, as Bunnie Huang said, with the
slow-down of Moore's law, we may slowly be reaching the point of a "heirloom"
laptop. I'd love to see that one day.

~~~
brokenmachine
>we may slowly be reaching the point of a "heirloom" laptop. I'd love to see
that one day

Not if the screen's glued in and the battery's not removable.

------
nimbius
For those who are having trouble finding reasons why farmers care about right
to repair, its not just the tractors themselves but the PTO accessories in
most cases.

For example, many PTO links on newer John Deer or Ferguson tractors contain a
set of over torque sensors designed to shut off ot disconnect to prevent
stallout and engine damage. if you repaired a spreader or a mower assembly
from a John Deere, it needs to have all the original sensors on it to operate
from the cab, and those sensors need to all return normal "john deere"
values/codes for the implement. if not, you need to pay John Deere for another
farm implement.

Farmers want the right to upgrade the firmware in-cab or make exceptions to
allow repaired equipment.

------
aurizon
You should have this basic right to repair. If you are unable to repair it and
even break it further, it will cost you more for the company to repair it.
This right should have the right to have the repair company to connect it and
scan it, for a nominal fee, and tell you what is broken and what they would
charge. You can then decide. With the complexity of modern devices, you may
have to go to another company with similar data assessent equipment to cary
out the repair. Modern circuit boards are a sea of small surface mounted parts
on both sides...

~~~
feocco
Forcing a company to have a diagnostic tool or team to identify a problem you
might not have them fix is silly IMO. So is forcing their hand on creating a
repairable product.

I don't expect Microsoft to be able to easily identify obscure hardware issues
with a design like my Surface Book 2. I do expect them to create a hardware
product that doesn't break easily. Supplying the specs is a big benefit in my
purchase decision. But not something I think should be required since it will
undoubtedly give competitors more of an edge in their own development.

The onus is on me to purchase a product that matches my needs.

~~~
blotter_paper
This. I totally want to buy repairable products, and do when I can, but I
don't wish to force other consumers to pay extra to cover the expenses of a
feature I want.

~~~
quanticle
By that logic cars shouldn't have to abide by crash safety regulations. If you
want a safe car, buy a Volvo. Everyone else can drive deathtraps that burst
into flames if they're so much as dented.

~~~
blotter_paper
Your selected example has a negative externality of being deadly to bystanders
if driven on a public roadway, and a more measured man might make some
stipulation about such a vehicle only being driven on private land, but this
is fundamentally how I feel. If I want to die in a flaming wreck, or if I want
to accept a chance of dying in a flaming wreck in exchange for a discount on
material goods, I don't want well-meaning bureaucrats to gavel about telling
me I can't do it because they know what's best for me. We all make tradeoffs
and take chances in life, and you wouldn't like me telling you which tradeoffs
and chances to take, so why should you get to tell me which tradeoffs and
chances to take? An appeal to numbers (democracy -- that thing that got Hitler
elected) won't get very far at changing my mind, nor will an appeal to the
ideal social contract conceived of by an entity whose intelligence approaches
the hypothetical limit (for more than one reason, but most simply because I
generally accept the orthogonality thesis).

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Your selected example has a negative externality_

So does planned obsolescence.

> _If I want to die in a flaming wreck, or if I want to accept a chance of
> dying in a flaming wreck in exchange for a discount on material goods, I don
> 't want well-meaning bureaucrats to gavel about telling me I can't do it
> because they know what's best for me._

The well-meaning bureaucrats aren't out there to take away your freedom.
They're there for all the other people - people who aren't anywhere close to
being perfectly rational market players engaging in fully voluntary exchange
of goods. History teaches us that if the market can get away with unsafe
goods, not only it _will_ , but those goods will become the only thing
available to people without lots of discretionary income (i.e. most of the
population). The only way to prevent this is by not allowing the market to
even go there.

> _We all make tradeoffs and take chances in life, and you wouldn 't like me
> telling you which tradeoffs and chances to take, so why should you get to
> tell me which tradeoffs and chances to take?_

Again, you're technically in control of which side of a tradeoff you pick, but
you aren't in control of how the sides balance out. It's easy for the market
to price the tradeoff in such a way that most people are forced to take the
option that's harmful to them, or society at large. I might not like you
telling me which tradeoffs to take, but I would appreciate if you were able to
take some of the things forced on me and turn them around, or at least back
into real tradeoffs.

~~~
blotter_paper
>The well-meaning bureaucrats aren't out there to take away your freedom.
They're there for all the other people - people who aren't anywhere close to
being perfectly rational market players engaging in fully voluntary exchange
of goods.

I never claimed to be a perfectly rational market player engaging in a fully
voluntary exchange of goods. Any human claiming to be fully rational lacks a
healthy amount of introspection, and we're almost all faced with the prospect
of starving if we don't partake in the exchange of goods. I want choice
despite these shortcomings, and I don't have any desire to deprive others of
choice if they're less rational or more desperate during their decision making
processes.

>History teaches us that if the market can get away with unsafe goods, not
only it will, but those goods will become the only thing available to people
without lots of discretionary income (i.e. most of the population).

If those goods are banned, the alternatives will cost more. Who am I to tell
somebody who can't afford a car with airbags that they shouldn't have the
option to buy a car without airbags? You rightly point out the wretched state
of the world with dispossessed masses of people, but then you deny those
dispossessed masses the ability to make their own decisions about what to do
with those few possessions they do have.

Edit:

> I might not like you telling me which tradeoffs to take, but I would
> appreciate if you were able to take some of the things forced on me and turn
> them around, or at least back into real tradeoffs.

Cost saving quality cuts are a real tradeoff -- they make goods and services
available to those who would otherwise not be able to afford them.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If those goods are banned, the alternatives will cost more._

That does not necessarily follow. They may very well cost the same or slightly
more. Even in competitive markets, the assumption that price of a product is
very close to the minimum possible costs of manufacturing does not hold. Real
markets are nowhere near that efficient. There's lots of wiggle room in
prices.

My overall point here is that removing some options isn't about taking away
people's freedom to choose; it's about preventing the market from offering a
rigged choice in the first place.

------
JoshTko
I think the main thing that Apple here is trying to avoid is an iPhone
catching on fire due to a 3rd party battery installed by a Mall Kisok repair
shop guy who was hired a week ago. They know that the nuance will get lost and
the story will become - iPhones catch on fire.

~~~
someguydave
Why is that scenario Apple’s problem?

~~~
Shivetya
Some customers would assume that since a place did repair the phone that Apple
approves of them doing so, therefor putting liability on Apple.

Any such harm coming from that phone would be first applied to Apple and Apple
would have to expend money to prove otherwise.

I have no problem with allow customers to select the shop they want for out of
warranty work but I am fully in the camp of manufacturers being able to
provide an obvious means for shops to have certification to repair a device in
warranty.

As to the idea of "Right to Repair". I work in the automotive industry and the
company I work for lives by this, however by no means is it realistic that
having the information, tools, and parts, would guarantee a good result for
all those who undertake the work. Plus people do have an unrealistic idea of
which parts would ever be replaceable. Batteries sure, but individual chips
would be not be.

~~~
brokenmachine
>Some customers would assume that since a place did repair the phone that
Apple approves of them doing so, therefor putting liability on Apple.

This whole argument is that Apple should not be able to "approve" anyone from
doing anything they want with the phone that they supposedly paid for and own.

>Plus people do have an unrealistic idea of which parts would ever be
replaceable. Batteries sure, but individual chips would be not be.

There was a video I saw about a guy putting together his own iphone from parts
in China. They can replace individual chips. But not with the DMCA.

------
olliej
I’m generally pro-right to repair bills but I’m not clear how far they can
reasonably go - should companies that make phones or whatever with custom cpus
(Apple, Samsung, etc with completely custom chips or custom configurations -
arm licensees etc) be required to sell those chips freely?

I’m not trying to be unreasonable: being able to replace a broken screen
without replacing the entire device is reasonable, but there must Shirley* be
a line across which repair is unreasonable.

* :D

~~~
ben509
You don't need to require OEMs sell their parts. They just need to be
unencumbered by IP and other restrictions, i.e. customs. Then the parts will
become available on the secondary market as companies disassemble dead devices
and resell them.

~~~
olliej
So Apple should be required to license their cpu design to other companies?

~~~
th3l3mons
Apple has used US Customs to seize parts intended for repairs, including parts
from donor boards. Apple sued (and last I knew was trying to appeal) a Norway
repair shop for repairing iPhones using "counterfeit" components. iirc, some
parts, including the display, must match appropriately or the OS won't boot as
a form of parts validation, effectively preventing display swaps when
repairing.

I don't think the previous comment was licensing the design. Apple has been
very aggressive with donor parts and data recovery.

~~~
olliej
I’d be interested in knowing where those parts came from - do they come from
Apple facilities (because apple does refurbish devices) or do they come
entirely from third party recyclers?

I’ve seen plenty of articles about parts coming directly from factories,
rather than from torn down devices.

What is the actual ratio of stolen vs recovered by non-Apple facilities ?

I’m sure Apple would claim 100% stolen and rtr orgs would say 100% recovered.
Note that Apple pays (in the form of a discount) for returned devices so if a
refurbisher is selling parts they’ve claimed aren’t recoverable they are
selling stolen goods (reason for destroying irrecoverable devices is to
reduce/remove incentive for this type of theft)

------
kevmo
Bernie Sanders has been swinging hard on this issue the last 4 years.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzqmp/bernie-sanders-
cal...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzqmp/bernie-sanders-calls-for-a-
national-right-to-repair-law-for-farmers)

------
patricius
I would like, just for once, that a company comes out and straight up says:
“We choose how to make our products, you choose whether you want to buy it.”
That’s everything there is to it. Don’t use any other arguments like “We do it
to protect you.”

~~~
SamuelAdams
That works fine on a consumer level. Most products have competitors. But B2B
customers have far less leeway. John Deere is a great example: they have
(virtually) a monopoly on the farming business. As a result, farmers cannot
purchase a competitors tractors / equipment. They either don't exist or
require too many compromises, which ultimately impact profits.

In the case of modern farming, "not buying John Deere" is the equivalent of
going out of business.

~~~
laughinghan
I think the comment you're replying to is expressing frustration with
disingenuous PR, not endorsing a market structure.

------
toomuchtodo
PSA: Please support candidates and legislators who support right to repair
laws at both state and federal levels! Call your representatives!

[https://repair.org/stand-up](https://repair.org/stand-up)

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larkost
I am generally in favor of being able to repair things, but this is
complicated and I have yet to see a good discussion (let alone legislative
proposal) that takes into account all of the nuance I see as necessary:

1\. There has definitely been abuse of cryptographic locking by parties such
as John Deer. I feel that places where such locking is used only to prevent
third-party repairs it should be illegal.

2\. I feel that manufacturers should have ways of showing that third-party
repairs have been done, and so enable them to make reasonable denials of
warranty claims when those repairs are the cause of damage (no idea how to
codify that into law).

3\. There are cases, such as the touch-id sensor on Apple's iPhone that are
legitimate cases of cryptographic locking. Absent that there is no way for
Apple to defend against hardware-based attacks without this locking, and they
need to have some way of trusting technicians (and the hardware involved) who
make replacements. There is a complicated conversation to be had here (an no-
one seems to be having it).

4\. Devices that are built to be repaired are in the general best-interests of
everyone at large (e.g.: environmental issues), but the forces of capitalism
are generally against reuse. So we clearly need some system to rebalance the
scales a bit, but how to do this without killing progress seems difficult
(e.g.: the system-on-a-chip makes most of the guts of a cell phone one piece,
and that is the direction of better devices).

(edited for better spacing)

~~~
laughinghan
I love everything about your discussion.

1\. 100% agree

2\. I've thought a little bit about this. I think it would be fine if the
warranty can't be voided if the consumer can show in court that there's a
preponderance of evidence that the issue they're having is unrelated to the
third-party repair. This might mean in practice warranties hard to enforce if
you've gone in for third-party repair, but I feel like usually it's old
devices that you're fixing with third-parties anyway. It's also possible
there's a perverse incentive to make components very sensitive to the case
being opened or something, but it seems unlikely that that's possible without
making the device fragile overall in situations where it would still be
covered by warranty, which would cost the manufacturer money and also make the
device less popular in the first place.

Another thing I was thinking, either instead of or supplemental to such a
policy, is to require manufacturers of a certain size to have an open
certification program that third-party repair shops can participate in, and to
honor warrantees if repair has only been done by certified shops. This could
be abused if the manufacturer makes the certification program really really
shitty so no one does it, and if repairs by the manufacturer themselves is a
huge revenue stream then that would almost certainly what would happen; but
someone like Apple makes most their money selling new devices (I assume), so
why risk the fines from regulators and the bad PR? And so while Apple won't
have much incentive to make it easy to get certified, the fact that they have
to honor warrantees of devices repaired by certified shops means they'll at
least be incentivized to teach the certified shops not to break the devices.

3\. I'm skeptical of the importance of this. The security should be in the
entropy of my fingerprint, not the right fingerprint scanner being used, no?
Like how locking down which keyboard are allowed to be connected to your
laptop is not important to securing the password lock?

Spyware on the touch ID sensor is worrisome, but no more than spyware on any
of the other input sensors, and is there really anything the manufacturer can
do, technically rather than legally, about someone who physical accesses to
your device and then hands it back to you to put your fingerprint and password
back into?

4\. This seems to me like a lack of information problem and an incentives
structure problem. In theory, if everyone had total information and knew which
of the alternatives lasted the longest and therefore had the lowest total-
cost-of-owernship, and some kind of financial engineering let them buy the
product on lease or something so the upfront cost could be competitive with
the cheaper, shorter-lived alternatives, then everyone would do that, right?

The main theoretical problem here is designing the "lease" to incentivize the
consumer to take good care of the product, without being predatory; if we had
that, we wouldn't even need total information because it could be viable for
the vendor to provide the product on lease or something with a low upfront
cost.

Obviously there's a lot of other practical problems like, people who buy new
smartphones usually don't want it to last 10 years, they want the latest and
greatest cutting edge device; but that seems like it could maybe be solved by
saying, you pay $200 now and give us the phone back in 2 years; if you don't
give it back then, in 2 years we charge you another $400 (or something?); and
then reselling the refurbished phone?

There's also the fact that lots of people who buy iPhones specifically like it
in part for the status symbol, so they're not looking for the lowest upfront
cost. But the idea that the right pricing structure should theoretically let a
company that makes a long-lasting, repairable device with a low total-cost-of-
ownership be competitive seems like it should be possible, no?

~~~
CDSlice
I think that for 3 the problem isn't having a spyware fingerprint sensor that
steals your fingerprint but rather having a fake fingerprint reader that
always reports a match which would let you break into any iPhone.

~~~
magduf
I know someone else said this, but why would the sensor be verifying anything
at all? It should just be reading the pattern of the fingerprint, and feeding
that to the CPU where it's verified in software.

Does your keyboard store all your passwords and let your OS know your login
was valid? Of course not. The keyboard just tells the OS which keys you
pressed.

------
867567838694
It blows my mind that we have to grow support for this!

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naikrovek
I hate that Deere is singularly picked on, here. Other vehicle manufacturers
have followed in John Deere's footsteps with this, and no one cites those
manufacturers' actions; only John Deere.

I guess it's because they were first?

~~~
magduf
Do you have any actual examples showing how Deere's competitors are as bad?
No, "other vehicle manufacturers" don't count; this whole thing started
because farmers couldn't get their machinery working and harvest crops on
time, so Mercedes or BMW doing something similar is irrelevant since they
don't make farm equipment.

------
cyrksoft
Does it violate the terms of use of the phone? iPhone, for example. If the
terms make it clear you can't fix it outside their approved shops then there
is no "right to repair". It's part of the contract you get into when buying
the phone.

I can't seem to find the terms of the iPhone anywhere.

~~~
sokoloff
If you tried and couldn’t find the terms that preclude that, isn’t it
reasonable to conclude that those terms are not being effectively communicated
as part of the sale (regardless of whether those terms do or do not exist)?

