You do realise that we had right to repair in the 80's? Domestic appliances, cars and tractors did not contain computers. There was no firmware. The whole issue comes from abuse of IT laws to destroy our individual right to personal property.
There is no 'copyright' on mechanical parts, anyone is free to make a copy, and you are free to buy them from anyone.
Even if a part is patented (which is a small percentage), the patent law spesifically allows anyone to build anything for personal use.
If I have to repair my toaster, and it contains a microcontroller, then I can buy that microcontroller but not the firmware. The firmware belongs to the manufacturer, even if all it does is have a time to eject bread. So my toaster is unrepairable if that chip dies. That toaster could never be patented, beucase there is nothing innovative.
> You do realise that we had right to repair in the 80's?
There was no such right in the 80s, any more than there is now.
In both times you could repair what you or repair people obtained the skill to do. There was no inherent, moral right, and no legal right, then or now.
Also in the 80's plenty of domestic appliances, cars, and tractors contained computers.
Not in a legal sense, but in a practical one, companies had no effective way of locking you out of repairing your own machines, unlike today. No need for a round of pedantry.
Ah, well if we can divorce ourselves from facts, then yes, we can believe anything.
What legal way am I locked out? There are exemptions in US (and other law) for copyright, patents have not changed, trademarks don't stop me.
There are zero items in my house (and I have all sorts of tech) that I cannot take apart (and routinely do) and fiddle with and hack on and change and repair if I feel so inclined.
Sure, the average person with low tech skills and low tech tools has a harder time, but the things being worked on are simply much more specialized and complex. I bet the average person has been unable to repair a fine watch for a century - that's needed a specialist, since it was high tech a century ago.
Or do you mean repair has gotten more complex as technology has gotten more complex? That has been and always will be the case. Repairing an axe is always going to be easier than repairing an iPhone.
> What legal way am I locked out? There are exemptions in US (and other law) for copyright, patents have not changed
Please point out to me which copyright exemption will enable me to get hold of firmware for a microcontroller in my washing machine if the current one gives up the ghost. I can buy an identical microcontroller, and solder it in place of the current one, but without firmware the device is dead. The same applies to all appliances, from toasters to cars, it has nothing to do with skill.
This was not the case a few decades ago.
Additionally, you clearly haven't been paying attention to recent events. John Deer literally shuts down your tractor, and even if you repair it, it won't start untill you pay their mechanic to come over and reset it. It is not a matter of skill - the machine is locked and only their mechanics have authorisation to rest it. The same is happening with phones, computers and domestic apliances.
>Please point out to me which copyright exemption will enable me to get hold of firmware for a microcontroller in my washing machine if the current one gives up the ghost.
Oh, now you're confusing right to repair with ease of repair. No country has ever forced manufacturers to give you every single item to suit your heart's desire.
Rip the firmware out of the MCU. Decap it and read the bits out, literally with a microscope, as some have done. "Oh, but that's too hard!" Exactly - and there is no legal thing stopping you. You simply don't want to develop the expertise and tools to repair. You want it handed to you in a simple manner, which has never been the case.
As I said above, as things become more complex, so does repair.
>This was not the case a few decades ago.
Yes, a few decades ago people complained about different parts they could not simply buy, since at no point in US history could you simply get any part you ever desired from a manufacturer. There has always been a few things you could buy, a repair man market for some things, and the effort to repair other things difficult enough that almost nobody tried to do it.
Because again, we have more complex items now.
>Additionally, you clearly haven't been paying attention to recent events
Yes, I've read all that stuff. Both sides in many of these cases, including the JD, have decently valid points. If someone causes a large machine to hurt others, you bet JD will get dragged into courts. For that balance, it is reasonable for courts to decide how to balance.
Should individual commercial pilots be allowed to flash the software on their flights because they're interested in hacking their planes?
>Getting around some of these restrictions can land you in jail|
No one, zero, count them, have gone to jail for that. Zero. Why do you spout this type of nonsense? "Think of the children!" right?
>John Deer literally shuts down your tractor
No, they don't. "As things stand, Deere has the technical ability to remotely shut down a farmer’s machine anytime—if, say, the farmer missed a lease payment or tuned a tractor’s software to goose its horsepower, a common hack widely available through gray-market providers. A Deere spokesman says many manufacturers can remotely control vehicles they sell, but Deere has never activated this capability, except in construction equipment in China, where financing terms require it to." [1]
Also, there is literally zero they did that someone could not reverse engineer and fix.
All of this is you want things to be as easy to fix as a kid can do. That will never happen as devices become more complex.
But all of this, even John Deere tractors, can be fixed.
Based on your resorting to making claims that are simply lies, I'm done. Feel free to continue.
"Rip the firmware out of the MCU. Decap it and read the bits out, literally with a microscope, as some have done. "Oh, but that's too hard!" Exactly - and there is no legal thing stopping you."
"Based on your resorting to making claims that are simply lies, I'm done."
You are the one presenting a total lie!
If I read firmware out of my BOSH washing machine and sell it to repair stores so that they can fix more washing machines, I will get shut down withing days. If start making and selling motors identical to the one in this machine, no-one can stop me.
Failing to recognise this distinction indicates you are not interested in an real coversation, but just want to push your ideology.
You mean against DRM? The subject has no relation to copyright, except on how those companies keep abusing copyright laws. Anyway, you don't need protection against DRM if you don't criminalize breaking DRM.
And yeah, it carves out an exception for repair. It's funny how a narrow exception in an overbroad law ends up having no effect on practice.
>You mean against DRM? The subject has no relation to copyright
What do you think the C in DMCA stands for?
>It's funny how a narrow exception in an overbroad law ends up having no effect on practice.
Simply untrue. There are massive collections of things gathered under and repaired under this "no effect" exemption.
Sometime take a look at the dozens of exemptions allowing all sorts of repair, reverse engineering for interoperability, removing of copy protection where needed to continue to use items, etc. [1] Or just Google DMCA 1201 exemptions and read blog posts. You'll be surprised.
> You do realise that we had right to repair in the 80's?
No we didn’t. In the 80s a lot of stuff was simply easier to repair, in part because you had less stuff to begin with.
You’re still free to repair whatever you want, but of course nowadays things are so complex that I’d require you an insurmountable amount of work. There hasn’t been any legal change, it’s just that the cost of repairs has gone up.
> If I have to repair my toaster, and it contains a microcontroller, then I can buy that microcontroller but not the firmware.
More to my point. Why firmware vendor X can’t enforce copyright but Google can? We either have right to repair and no copyright (at least for code), or we have copyright for code and no right to repair.
"We either have right to repair and no copyright (at least for code), or we have copyright for code and no right to repair."
Or you know, we could have an exemption on binary firmware for repair, like we have have for fair use. We could mandate manufacturers to provide it like we mandate them to provide user manuals.
Why does a right to repair require open-source to be the only legal option?
It seems that I could have a highly proprietary device and still be able to repair it. It would just require availability of 1) documentation
2) diagnostics, 3) parts at market prices, 4) parts not locked by DRM code.
E.g., the iPhone could still have all their proprietary code, as long as I can read about the components and their relationships, diagnose a problem, replace a component and/or flash new data/code onto the device.
Same for a car or tractor. Meaningful repair doesn't require that we be able to dismantle and re-solder sub-board-level components, only identify the particular component, obtain it at a reasonable availability and cost, and replace it, or be able to substitute an upgraded part.
> the iPhone could still have all their proprietary code, as long as I can read about the components and their relationships, diagnose a problem, replace a component and/or flash new data/code onto the device.
As a group heavily populated by programmers and coders, I think it’s fairly hypocritical to say that everyone should make their IP like schematics freely available while we keep software under copyright.
> Am I missing something here?
- How is a defect like an aged battery different than a non-updated software?
- Why is it inmoral for a company to limit your ability to swap a battery but totally okay to not give you the code so that you can patch their software to work on your machine?
At least in the case of the battery they can argue that inappropriate handling of faulty batteries is dangerous.
> Meaningful repair doesn't require that we be able to dismantle and re-solder sub-board-level components, only identify the particular component, obtain it at a reasonable availability and cost, and replace it, or be able to substitute an upgraded part.
That “only” is doing a lot of work there. That “only” is the work of a lot of people who deserve to get good salaries too. Why should their work become a commodity while programmers keep their “machines” protected with the laws for art?
>>- How is a defect like an aged battery different than a non-updated software?
>>- Why is it inmoral for a company to limit your ability to swap a battery but totally okay to not give you the code so that you can patch their software to work on your machine?
I agree it is NOT okay to prevent access to the code, although that does NOT mean that I'd require release of source code.
So, while I don't have your source code secrets, I should not be prevented by crypto or law from analyzing, editing, or replacing the object code. I should be prevented from selling at scale trivially modified copies.
This is not unlike trade secret protection of parts. I have a carbon fiber composites shop, and I make some rather uniquely interesting high-performance parts with interesting chemistries and nanotechnology. If you want to take one and examine it with an electron microscope and try to figure out what I did, fine, but good luck to ya; hope you're having fun. There's also nothing preventing someone from selling a competing part of the same shape.
The problem with no RTR is that the companies become extractive without adding commensurate value - it allows them to charge on both ends.
If a company wants to maintain complete control over the equipment, then fine, lease it only. GM actually did this with their first electric cars in the 90s. But these companies want to sell it full price up front and then also extract a guaranteed high-cost lease-like ongoing revenue stream for the life of the machine. Many software companies have switched from a sell-the-package model to SAAS subscriptions, but this is like you have to buy the package AND the subscription.
>>That “only” is doing a lot of work there. That “only” is the work of a lot of people who deserve to get good salaries too. Why should their work become a commodity while programmers keep their “machines” protected with the laws for art?
I've got no problem with good salaries, I do have a problem with monopolistic extraction because you have the customer tied over a barrel and a gun to their head.
When there is a legitimate market of repairs, it at least provides options for the customer, and is likely to keep the Factory Authorized channel somewhat reasonable. Just doing all warranty repairs through the factory channel and voiding the warranty for independent repairs can keep all those factory channel people in fine salaries. Meanwhile everything from high-end tuners to el-cheapo-fix-it shops can thrive and customers can have options, all without threatening the core business, and even enhancing it.
What you are making me think about is that there should be MORE of this capability in software also. Allowing trivial copying and reselling is obviously obscene and unsustainable (see open-source developers getting shat-upon by the $$multimillion companies they support for free). However, perhaps requiring rights to an API and plug-in capability or the ability to create derivative works should be available. Certainly we should have rights to reuse and modify abandoned software, especially if it requires a server to run.
I think it’s hard to keep a consistent world view where right to repair is a thing, and at the same time anything but open source is outright illegal.