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Oregon passes right-to-repair law Apple lobbied to kill

Kon-Peki
44 replies
5h34m

The text of this law is here [1]. The formatting is ridiculously bad, which makes it extremely hard to read: Subsections within subsections within subsections with approximately zero indentation.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, this law defines an independent repair provider as someone with a valid and unexpired certification demonstrating that they have the “technical capabilities and competence necessary to safely, securely and reliably repair consumer electronic equipment” and that the manufacturer is allowed to decide which certifications they trust.

Without these certifications, you are not an independent repair provider and manufacturers can refuse to allow you to do anything. You can be just an average person repairing your own device, in which case the manufacturer must work with you. But you can expect to be forced to prove that you own the device before that happens.

[1] https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2024R1/Downloads/Meas...

throw10920
38 replies
5h15m

Without these certifications, you are not an independent repair provider and manufacturers can refuse to allow you to do anything.

If this is true, it doesn't seem like it's actually "right to repair" at all.

AaronM
19 replies
4h45m

I read things differently. Several sections clearly reference the owner of a device. For example under section C part i

(C) Makes parts available directly or through an authorized service provider to: (i) An independent repair provider or an owner at costs and on terms that are equivalent to the most favorable costs and terms at which the original equipment manufacturer offers the parts to an authorized service provider and that:

the word owner shows up 17 times in the bill, and seems to give the same rights to an owner, that an authorized repair shop has.

userbinator
14 replies
4h38m

The subtle point in that sentence might be "provider OR an owner", as opposed to "provider AND an owner".

basil-rash
7 replies
3h58m

There’s tons of prior art in Law saying that And and Or are the same thing and can be interpreted interchangeably based on context.

Much to the chagrin of the computer scientists who think it’s some sort of robust formal specification for civil society.

littlestymaar
2 replies
2h49m

Much to the chagrin of the computer scientists who think it’s some sort of robust formal specification for civil society.

Law is actually code, just written in a language that is full of UB and you need to have if run on the system to know exactly what it does, the system being the hierarchy of jurisdictions.

Sohcahtoa82
1 replies
1h50m

Law is actually code, just written in a language that is full of UB

Which is why legalese exists. To try to limit undefined behavior by being extremely verbose to cut out any loopholes.

Like...imagine a kid jumping on their bed. Mom says "Stop jumping on the bed!" and the kids stops. Comes back to the kid's room later, kid is jumping on the bed again, tells the kid to stop. Kid says "I'm not jumping, I'm hopping!" and goes into a diatribe about the difference between jumping and hopping, mom says to stop hopping and leaves. Goes back again later, kid is STILL jumping on the bed, and mom is angry! "You said no jumping or hopping, I'm not doing either, I'm bouncing!"

Eventually the mom has to say something like "Do not jump, hop, bounce, spring, leap, or otherwise propel yourself upwards or laterally from the bed, mattress, or any other part of furniture intended for sleeping".

zelphirkalt
0 replies
26m

Great example.

And then it goes on even further, because she did not say, that the kid must never "propel themselves upwards or laterally from the bed", and only stopped that action in that moment ...

throw10920
1 replies
3h38m

based on context

Does this specific context allow for interchanging?

AaronM
0 replies
3h14m

The bill clearly defines an independent service provider and an owner as different entities.

AdmiralAsshat
1 replies
3h8m

WANTED: DEAD AND ALIVE

cutemonster
0 replies
2h7m

If you look at "wanted" to be prefixed to everything in the list, it'd expand to: "wanted: dead, and wanted: alive".

While this: "Wanted: dead or alive"

could be interpreted as: "We haven't decided yet what we actually want, if it's dead, or alive, but it's one of those".

Then it can be good to give them (the police) a call and ask if they have decided yet, before you go looking for the wanted person

rtkwe
4 replies
4h0m

The law there is defining two categories manufacturers need to provide the parts to, changing it to AND would mean owners would have to be certified repair people to be covered.

filoleg
3 replies
3h31m

Not trying to take a dig at your comment, but for others struggling to parse (as much as I was) what it was trying to say, here is the trick that helped me - place a comma right before “changing” or treat that word as the start of a new sentence.

rtkwe
1 replies
34m

Very fair I don't do the best job going and clarifying my comments some times. They come out a bit stream of consciousness. I did see your comment in time to make the change at least.

filoleg
0 replies
28m

All good, no worries. I have the same tendency for writing singular sentences that should’ve honestly been paragraphs instead.

I’ve got some feedback about it at work, so now I genuinely try to be a bit better about it. It is a bit easier for me to be mindful of it on HN, but, as evident by my comment history, I am still far from being consistently good about it.

It is still often a “stream of consciousness written down as I would speak it outloud”, but now I at least started doublechecking the punctuation (or lack of it) for any potential confusion it could create before hitting send.

Kon-Peki
3 replies
4h5m

That's what I'm saying. It looks like you can repair your device. But you can't repair devices for anyone else without a mountain of certifications.

They're going to kill the independent repair industry.

hiatus
1 replies
48m

It's one thing to fix things for yourself, and a whole other kind of thing to hold yourself out to the public as an expert in something. Kind of like how you can defend yourself in court but not someone else unless you are a lawyer. Though I would be surprised if the law were written such that you couldn't repair someone else's device, so long as you did not receive compensation for it.

zelphirkalt
0 replies
31m

So as a non-certified repairer, you have to offer a city tour around the block, at a ridiculously high price, and then repair the device at no additional cost. All a matter of perspective.

ssl-3
0 replies
3h57m

They're going to kill the independent repair industry.

This bill does not kill anything that is not already dead.

delfinom
7 replies
5h7m

Yep this law is just a giant handout to the industry.

I wouldn't be surprised if they use this law to now sue "uncertified" repair shops.

ZanyProgrammer
5 replies
4h34m

Yes, it's such a giant handout that Apple came out against it.

throw10920
3 replies
4h32m

The implicit claim being made in this sarcastic comment is that it's not possible for a law to be detrimental to one company while unfairly favoring another.

Which, of course, is obviously false when you think about it.

digging
2 replies
4h0m

Which major tech companies would it be good for while being bad for Apple? Keeping in mind that the owner of a device is also allowed to repair without certification.

throw10920
1 replies
3h39m

Where did I say "major"?

afavour
0 replies
3h33m

The OP said "a giant handout to the industry". If you're trying to make a point that excludes all the major players in the tech industry then by all means go ahead but it isn't the conversation you joined.

CamperBob2
0 replies
3h48m

I imagine the parable of Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch is largely lost on today's audiences. More's the pity.

idiotsecant
0 replies
4h11m

What mechanism in this law do you propose allows them to sue repair shops?

pierat
6 replies
3h59m

Well, it's the same state that won't "permit" a non-certified engineer from recording and noting the time on a stoplight is outside of law. (Note: he won a first amendment lawsuit, and the state body used his formula in the end)

https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-makes-history-w...

So yeah, when I see verbiage about certifications like this as a barrier to repair electronics, it's pure protectionism and the state impeding actual ownership rights over whatever this crap is.

(Put bluntly, my hardware is mine. If I want to take it to someone else for repair, that's 100% on me and my property rights to decide that. 'CerTiFicAtIoN', especially with the shit company or govt in question should have no say on who can or cant fix MY hardware.)

AaronM
5 replies
3h13m

If you read the bill, they clearly differentiate between a service provider and an owner. The bill does not require an owner to be certified to purchase parts, manuals, tools or make repairs. It does require the manufacture to make those things available to both.

zarzavat
1 replies
2h36m

The contention is whether or not you can fix someone else’s device without a certification. If you can only fix your own device then that’s useless to 90% of people who are not technically adept enough to do it.

When I want to get a battery replaced I take my device to the repair shop and they replace the battery. I don’t ask them if they are “certified”. If they break something the liability is on them. Every single repair shop I’ve ever been to offers a warranty on their repair.

TylerE
0 replies
28m

You mean those actual businesses with business licenses? Yeah, they’re fine.

The guy ipersting out of The back of his car at a flea market?

pierat
1 replies
1h48m

Who exactly certifies a repair shop???

The state, the company, or some 3rd party independent org?

AaronM
0 replies
1h35m

If you read the bill it states that a shop must "Possesses a valid and unexpired certification that demonstrates that the person has the technical capabilities and competence necessary to safely, securely and reliably repair consumer electronic equipment in accordance with widely accepted standards, such as a Wireless Industry Service Excellence Certification, an A+ certification from the Computing Technology Industry Association, a National Appliance Service Technician Certification or another certification that an original equipment manufacturer accepts as evidence that the person can perform safe, secure and reliable repairs to consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells".

The bill also requires that a manufacturer does not "impose a substantial condition, obligation or restriction that is not reasonably necessary to enable an independent repair provider or an owner to diagnose, maintain, repair or update consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells"

QuercusMax
0 replies
2h48m

So in theory I could buy the manuals, tools, and spare parts, and bring them to Chuck over there who runs an unaccredited repair shop? That doesn't seem awful.

godelski
0 replies
1h54m

They're just saying you need like a CompTIA certificate and you can't just be some rando. But mind you, it also includes anything YOU own, so if someone is able to act on your behalf that's good enough too. Getting one of those certs to set up shop isn't that hard. Probably just to prevent people from mass ordering parts and redistributing.

cortesoft
0 replies
19m

The very next sentence says:

You can be just an average person repairing your own device, in which case the manufacturer must work with you.
chalst
0 replies
3h51m

It also could be misused by Apple.

Spivak
2 replies
5h28m

It's the same for doing work on your house. If you're the owner you don't need to be licensed to do most repairs or renovations but to work on other people's houses you need certification.

Not saying it's a good system, just that it's consistent.

idiotsecant
0 replies
3h48m

No, this would be like if the city's electrical supply house got to choose what counted as an electrical qualification.

ClumsyPilot
0 replies
4h22m

The difference being is that electricians are certified by a real and reputable body and manufacturers don’t get to pick and choose.

No doubt they will weaponise this ability

passwordoops
0 replies
2h38m

If that's the case then Apple must have been lobbying for show or misdirection

WesternWind
0 replies
3h6m

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you are parsing that correctly according to legal canons of construction. Generally all language in a law must be considered relevant, and or implies a disjunctive list. Finally permissive language like such as grant discretion.

https://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/adjunct/dstevenson/2018Spring...

So the language says "...in accordance with widely accepted standards, such as..." and lists stuff like A+ and WISE certs. The per the OEM standards is probably best undrstood as modifying the or another certification, so I think the language you are referring to is allowing an additional certification that the OEM considers valid.

It's unclear whether that means it counts as a widely accepted standard, or is allowed even if it's not a widely accepted standard, but pretty sure it's understood as modifying the last antecedent, rather than the clause as a whole in a way that eliminates the widely accepted standard portion..

It would require ignoring the widely accepted standard language and several other departures from the canons of construction to reasonably have the interpretation you use.

The language could be cleaner like they could use either and two sub clauses, but it doesn't need to be.

"Possesses a valid and unexpired certification that demonstrates that the person has the technical capabilities and competence necessary to safely, securely and reliably repair consumer electronic equipment in accordance with widely accepted standards, such as a Wireless Industry Service Excellence Certification, an A+ certification from the Computing Technology Industry Association, a National Appliance Service Technician Certification or another certification that an original equipment manufacturer accepts as evidence that the person can perform safe, secure and reliable repairs to consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells."

resource_waste
27 replies
6h17m

Maybe I read too much philosophy, but why doesnt anyone see that when Apple lobbies the government they are doing something measurably immoral(If you subscribe to ethical institution).

Neurotransmitters signaling pain happen throughout our human population with these anti-consumer acts.

What I can't understand is: If a single human lobbied the government for a selfish cause, they would be an a-hole. Why is this different?

I'm all for an equal playing field, lets all go Realpolitik, everyone goes amoral. I just find it odd and a bit frustrating that corporations can commit immoral acts but humans cannot. I imagine this causes inequality.

Workaccount2
8 replies
5h53m

Knowing both sides of the argument around this topic and apple, it's not hard to understand why apple has a compelling argument and why it still deserves to be heard.

You have to remember that tons of people have near zero tech awareness, and regardless of the laws, will just bring their iPhone to the Apple store if it breaks. The same way people still go to dealers to fix their car, even out of warranty.

This means Apple can say "Hey, give us full control of your phone repairs, and we can kill the theft market for iPhones. You are going to come to us anyway, so might as well let us end iPhone theft too"

So this is why lawmakers still sit down with Apple. And the generous lunches.

(Apple DRM'ing all the internal hardware does effectively make stolen iphones completely worthless, in whole or in parts.)

-For the record, I have personally written my senator before asking him to support right to repair laws.

lotsofpulp
2 replies
5h46m

I wonder what would happen if the law required devices with unpaired parts to be available, but still allowing the sale of devices with paired parts.

Someone
1 replies
5h37m

If there would be enough unpaired devices in the wild, both types of devices would get stolen (or, worse, robbed, with risk of bodily harm). Thieves would not return the ones that are worthless to them to their owners (why would they take that risk?). So, it would make the protection worthless for those willing to opt-in.

And no, making it somewhat easy to check whether a phone is locked down wouldn’t help. Thieves and robbers won’t spend even a second to do that check while still near the crime scene. It would have to be absolutely obvious (say by having orange and black devices) for thieves to not steal the locked-down ones.

charcircuit
0 replies
1h53m

Presumably the unpaired parts would pair after being installed

dns_snek
2 replies
3h0m

(Apple DRM'ing all the internal hardware does effectively make stolen iphones completely worthless, in whole or in parts.)

This claim, or to be more specific, the claim that this reduces theft, is missing evidence. Are iPhones really being stolen at a substantially lower rate than other brands, correlating with implementation of these locks?

tombert
0 replies
1h55m

Sample size of one, and anecdotal at that, but someone snatched my iPhone out of my hands last July and ran away. I of course reported it stolen to the police and locked it down in FindMy, so in theory I think it's a brick, but I don't think that the fact that it was an iPhone really deterred them from stealing it from me.

They actually tried to extort $300 from me to get it back which I of course would not pay, but maybe there's still a market in that for some people?

pchristensen
0 replies
2h10m

Lots of articles starting 2013 that Activation Lock reduced theft by measurable amounts. I couldn't figure out how to search for articles about drm'ed parts.

lnxg33k1
0 replies
5h37m

Apple has had the full control on supply, and it hasn’t killed the theft market, the same way having control on anything you can install on a iGadget has killed the scam industry, so if we need to get a phone stolen, might as well make it repairable, how long since we start classifying apple arguments as pure marketing detached from reality?

jancsika
0 replies
2h41m

So this is why lawmakers still sit down with Apple. And the generous lunches.

I have to say, this sounds trivially false, and I don't think I'm nitpicking.

Lawmakers sit down with Apple because Apple has an enormous amount of money and power.

After some of these lawmakers sit down for lunch with the lobbyist, perhaps they make the assessment that what Apple is asking for is still doable/ethical/practical/etc.

Edit: clarification

ribit
3 replies
5h32m

Why would you think that replacement part authentication is immoral? Quite in contrary, I’d say it’s an important safety feature for devices that have access to extremely sensitive data. It’s just important that the user has the authorization rights, and not the company.

goku12
2 replies
3h54m

Did anyone mention parts authentication? Regardless, you seem to have answered the question you raised. Concepts like parts authentication and secure boot are great in theory. The immoral part is their implementation. They're designed to wrestle the post-sale control of devices away from the customer and consolidate it in the hands of the manufacturer. Besides the subversion of the concept of ownership itself, this leads to increased cost of device ownership in many different ways.

jajko
1 replies
3h41m

Its a bit like PR stunt for the techies here, while giving master keys to whole cloud to NSA behind the doors. And to claim this will never-ever-pinky-promise-happen we shall show it on some highly publicized FBI case.

Maybe there were good intentions in the beginning and path was truly a good one, but not for a nanosecond do I believe they really made it 100%. Phone is simply not a secure device, doesn't matter who manufactures it, period. Neither are all the networks used to connect anywhere.

If all this lowers theft its a good strategy overall, but with terrible misguided marketing.

dns_snek
0 replies
2h50m

Actual techies are interested in the inner workings and can see past marketing. The group you're referring to is either the wider public that doesn't have the technical expertise to analyze the claims made, or Apple loyalists who uncritically accept and defend Apple's reasoning.

If this had anything to do with theft, Apple would only blacklist parts which were inside the device at the time of theft, and otherwise provide "pairing" tools for free.

Drakim
3 replies
6h9m

Modern capitalism has created a sort of new type of nobility out of corporations, a layer of entities above that of citizens. Just as you say, their actions are not judged by the same standard we'd use for normal people, and they can actually just get away with fines for breaking laws that would land normal people in jail. And actions we'd deep deeply immoral for normal people to engage in are morally acceptable for them.

sQL_inject
1 replies
6h5m

I would refine your statement slightly, it's modern corporatism, not capitalism.

We hold corporations in too high of regard and have intermingled what should be free and open exchange of money and goods with governmental power, lobbying.

Drakim
0 replies
5h31m

Sure, but names aren't what's important here. It's the logical conclusion to capitalism, even if it's more fitting to call it corporatism.

Either the government is big and the corporations lobbies and gets undue influence over how society and it's laws operates though the government, or the government is small and the corporations get undue influence over how society and it's law operates though sheer unregulated societal power. The group who controls your means of getting food, shelter, medicine, and information will have power over your life, and will bend the rules to their advantage using that power.

willcipriano
0 replies
5h47m

Boss: "If you don't like the pay they can find another job"

You: "I found another job"

Boss: "What about loyalty? Are you a job hopper?"

You feel bad for some reason.

The morality we were taught in preschool largely serves the interests of the elite. Things like "if someone does you wrong, don't seek revenge, forgive them" are really helpful messages to have ingrained in society when you are a corporate looter with a name and a address.

alistairSH
1 replies
6h6m

Personally, I'm just jaded. Corporations have acted this way as long as I can remember. I just accept that corporations act like sociopaths and the people running the large corporations are more interested in buying a new yacht than doing the right thing.

sumtechguy
0 replies
5h26m

Apple changed in about 1996. When Steve Jobs came back he ended all of that 3rd party business. It was costing his company money. They went from a starting to thrive secondary clone market. To a closed off eco system pretty much overnight. It used to be fairly easy to get info on parts and what to do from Apple. That singular act saved Apple from becoming the next IBM. However, it doomed the rest of us to this weird dynamic of Apple choosing when to help the little guy out or not. Usually it seems to fall on the 'not' side. If Apple had always been this way it would not be as frustrating.

yungporko
0 replies
5h43m

does anybody not see it? isn't the issue just that we're powerless to stop it?

throwaway48476
0 replies
1h42m

Companies are just a trick to make you think they're not made of of people when in fact it's just a mask for decisions made by real fleshy humans. When a company does something immoral it is because a human at the company did something immoral.

makeitdouble
0 replies
5h59m

To play the devil's advocate, the US economic system doesn't have a clear notion of what is selfish or not.

One reason why lobbying is allowed in the first place is to let corporations express what is good and bad for them and have their interests in the balance. The assumption is what's good for corporations increases the overall market and benefits society.

Doubting that assumption is probably out of the current overtone window[edited]

latexr
0 replies
6h9m

You’re starting from the assumption that no one thinks what Apple is doing is wrong or immoral, but that isn’t true. They have been and continue to be criticised to no end, for this very matter and others, including on Hacker News.

Search for Apple and Right to Repair as keywords and see for yourself. Add Louis Rossmann to the mix and you can’t miss it.

finnjohnsen2
0 replies
5h32m

Neurotransmitters signaling pain happen throughout our human population

I love this formulation

cqqxo4zV46cp
0 replies
5h46m

This comes across as teenage thoughts masquerading as philosophy. “Neurotransmitters signalling pain…”. What? Massive citation needed. Words mean things. “People get sad about things, yet things happen” is thought-terminating nonsense.

Nobody, not even Tim Cook, considers themselves the Bad Guy. The real world doesn’t work like that. This situation is certainly more nuanced than you’re making it out to be. If you’ve been part of basically any discussion about this topic, you’d see that there are multiple sides. Starting from a position of “my preconceived view is correct and no other view exists” is intellectually dishonest and wilful ignorance.

Goronmon
0 replies
5h35m

...when Apple lobbies the government they are doing something measurably immoral

Would you consider this to be true if the government was on the wrong side of an issue?

Say politicians wanted to pass a law that every internet search query needed to reviewed and approved by a human before search results could be displayed. Would it be "measurably immoral" for Google to lobby against this law?

CharlesW
0 replies
3h45m

Maybe I read too much philosophy…

Or maybe not enough? Several philosophical frameworks are perfectly compatible with Apple doing legal things to benefit themselves and their customers.

chalst
5 replies
3h42m

-> But it also takes aim at “parts pairing,” or the practice of preventing you from replacing device parts without the approval of a company or its restrictive software. Apple, which routinely uses this practice to try and monopolize repair, lobbied extensively against the Oregon bill. As usual, under the (false) claim that eliminating parts pairing would put public safety and security at risk:

-> “We remain very concerned about the risk to consumers imposed by the broad parts-pairing restrictions in this bill,” John Perry, principal secure repair architect for Apple, said at a legislative hearing last month.”

There was a time when interpreting the “risk to consumers” as a risk of being prevented from gouging consumers would be cynical. Now I guess something like that occurred to the lawyers.

hedora
3 replies
3h28m

It does sound like this means it's now easier to get a touch screen, embed a tap logger in it, and then swap someone else's screen with it. (Similarly, for the camera module, etc, etc.)

A better approach would be to force Apple to allow the device owner to pair parts (third party or not), and for Apple to provide a list of authorized non-OEM parts to anyone that was considering buying a used phone.

Also, I wonder what this does to the anti-theft mechanisms. Before touch id, basically nobody set screen passwords, and phones were stolen at extremely high rates. After that, and because a stolen iPhone is marked as such and won't work with Apple services, phone theft dropped to almost zero.

If Apple's not allowed to prevent the pairing of the stolen parts in Oregon, I'm guessing it will lead to a black market industry there, where people launder stolen phone parts into refurbished phones by mixing them with parts from broken phones.

dns_snek
1 replies
2h28m

The point of module-level pairing is to make every module is identifiable, correct? Furthermore, these devices are only usable when connected to the internet.

IF their goal was merely to prevent theft, they could achieve that goal by simply blacklisting individual components when a device is reported stolen. Apple knows precise serial numbers of every paired component installed in that device, they just need to host a database of stolen parts that devices could query on every boot and on a set interval.

Of course, that's not their true goal, so they treat everyone like thieves in the hopes that they buy a new device instead.

threeseed
0 replies
4m

What happens if that service is down. Or if a state actor decides to DDOS it to cause havoc.

Of course since this process needs to access networking stack etc it's going to be trivial to bypass if the device is jailbroken. Which means that users buying stolen phones need to be informed not to upgrade the OS otherwise their device is bricked. E-waste implications would be staggering.

tadfisher
0 replies
50m

You mean like every other device in the world? Should Mazda be forcing me to buy a Mazda OEM or OEM-approved car battery through DRM? It would prevent theft of my car to steal its parts, but it would also have the curiously beneficial side effect of massive profit.

TylerE
0 replies
26m

As someone who was mugged for his phone about a decade ago, I am very very very much in favor of Apple continuing to require this. It is very much pro consumer on the whole.

bobim
5 replies
4h36m

So next phone is going to be a FairPhone. Some companies are playing the game, vote with your wallet.

digging
2 replies
3h59m

vote with your wallet.

In other words, do nothing of any impact.

bobim
1 replies
3h50m

it's just that it's the only lever you have at hand that is actually wired to something.

dangus
1 replies
4h11m

If they supported the US it would be a lovely option. I’m personally just not buying a smartphone that isn’t being tested on US networks.

bobim
0 replies
3h53m

The 4 seems to be available. 5 not yet.

dahdum
4 replies
3h8m

I don’t think bills like this will matter in several years for phones, unless they somehow start forcing manufacturers to design for manual repair. The end game for all these manufacturers is a phone assembled, repaired, and disassembled for recycling entirely by machine. I believe they already do this for the recycling.

I support right to repair in general, and I’m not particularly opposed to this bill, but it seems a bit hopeless in the long run.

blkhawk
2 replies
3h3m

lol no thas not the end goal because its a net negative to repair stuff no matter how cheap and easy you can do it. Every repaired last years model is a this years model not sold.

Manufacturers try to pretend that they are pro repair but very few are really.

dahdum
0 replies
2h3m

The end goal is automation and functionality regardless of how difficult it makes manual repair. Almost nobody values manual repair capability when purchasing, so why would manufacturers?

Consumers just want easy repair/replace when it happens, and the more resilient the product the less they care.

blkhawk
0 replies
3h1m

anybody who has manual manipulators and a manual can repair a manually repairable device. A device that needs special tools to break open or take apart increases the likelyhood that its just tossed and this years new model is bought instead.

dns_snek
0 replies
2h36m

Even if they don't explicitly design for manual repair, forcing them to publicly provide schematics, individual components (directly or through an agreement with their supplier), and any software required to successfully complete the repair would be a big step in the right direction.

shkkmo
2 replies
2h52m

What happens if a company refuses to sell in Oregon, can they skirt the law?

mrinterweb
0 replies
1h50m

I wonder about this too. People would probably buy through 3rd parties (Amazon, etc). I don't know if the law would restrict Amazon and other vendors to not sell non-compliant devices in Oregon.

Thing is, it is not just Oregon. Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, Minnesota, Maine and California all have right to repair laws. It is not possible for companies to remain competitive and not sell in those states.

lotsofpulp
0 replies
2h11m

Oregon’s laws can only apply to products sold in Oregon.

pcdoodle
1 replies
3h12m

Apple behaviour has invoked the "pause button" on my purchasing of new hardware from them.

Nobody wants to build on your platform if you're a tyrant.

RussianCow
0 replies
1h26m

Nobody wants to build on your platform if you're a tyrant.

[citation needed]

In practice, I think people mostly follow the money and idealism barely factors into it.

dependsontheq
1 replies
21m

I think it’s hilarious that a lot of people here talk about the bureaucracy in Europe and then immediately switch to specific state laws regulating technology for one state.

lupusreal
0 replies
19m

The people who oppose EU regulation of tech probably also oppose this. The people who support that probably also support this. The mistake you're making is "everybody except me is one person."

sircastor
0 replies
4h6m

There’s a lot about right to repair that’s important. One thing I’m curious about is how “certified” correlates with “how we want you to fix it”

Apples approach has often been at a module level: replace the logic board, replace the battery, etc. Board repair houses often operate at the component level: replace a damaged chip.

In the case of the latter, access to schematics and board layout makes this possible, and I’m sure Apple (and everyone else) has zero interest in making these available. Likewise with custom parts. Modules, but not chips.

radicaldreamer
0 replies
1h42m

Until recently you couldn’t pump your own gas in Oregon

mattbillenstein
0 replies
1h19m

Recently bought a Framework laptop - their mission is easily repairable diy hardware with good software (Linux!) support.

Still using an iPhone though - it is a bit crazy how expensive these have gotten and how repairs can be so expensive.

jetti
0 replies
2h55m

Most of the talk seems to be around Apple, which makes sense since they were opponents of the bill but I am more interested to see how this affects game console manufacturers. I had a longer post I had typed out about how console manufacturers have prevented non-authorized peripherals in the past with parts pairing and I was curious how that would affect the consoles going forward. I re-read the parts pairing section to make sure I read it correctly and then stumbled upon the section that refers to what the parts pairing restriction does not apply to and it is clearly written out that it does not apply to video game consoles. I find it very interesting that this applies to smart phones but not to video game consoles at all.