• Video Game Industry Lobbists Looking to Kill "Right to Repair" Bill in Nebraska
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[quote] The video game industry is lobbying against legislation that would make it easier for gamers to repair their consoles and for consumers to repair all electronics more generally. The Entertainment Software Association, a trade organization that includes Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, as well as dozens of video game developers and publishers, is opposing a "right to repair" bill in Nebraska, which would give hardware manufacturers fewer rights to control the end-of-life of electronics that they have sold to their customers. In recent years, manufacturers from an array of industries have used End User License Agreements to restrict repair options to "authorized" repair centers, which are either owned by or pay a licensing fee to manufacturers themselves. This setup has allowed companies like Apple to monopolize iPhone repair, John Deere to monopolize tractor repair, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to monopolize console repair. Bills making their way through the Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Wyoming, Tennessee, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Illinois statehouses will require manufacturers to sell replacement parts and repair tools to independent repair companies and consumers at the same price they are sold to authorized repair centers. The bill also requires that manufacturers make diagnostic manuals public and requires them to offer software tools or firmware to revert an electronic device to its original functioning state in the case that software locks that prevent independent repair are built into a device. After referring me to several different press representatives, Microsoft declined to comment. Sony did not respond to a request for comment. Apple has ignored repeated requests for comment. The ESA declined to comment. In two years of covering this issue, no manufacturer has ever spoken to me about it either on or off the record.[/quote] Other groups opposing the bill include [quote]CompTIA - an information technology trade group that represents many independent repair people but also represents Apple, which is vehemently opposed to the legislation (and is doing its own, independent lobbying effort) CTIA - A wireless telecom trade group that represents Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and other cell phone carriers NetChoice - an ecommerce trade group that represents drone manufacturer DJI as well as companies like PayPal and AOL. Information Technology Industry Council - Represents Dell, Blackberry, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Nokia, and others Satellite and Broadcast Communications Association - Represents DirecTV and others TechNet - Includes Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Cisco, HP, Oracle, Uber, SolarCity, Microsoft, and others Consumer Technology Association - Represents 2,000+ consumer tech companies, throws the annual CES show Toy Industry Association - Represents VTech (whose tablet for kids notoriously got hacked) as well as many other toy companies State Privacy and Security Coalition - Represents Google, Facebook, and more than a dozen others[/quote] [url=https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-video-game-industry-is-lobbying-against-your-right-to-repair-consoles]Motherboard[/url] [url=http://www.theesa.com/about-esa/members/]Full list of ESA memebers[/url]
- snip - Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Hasn't ESA done a bunch of good stuff? Why do they have to try and pull this crap? - snip - EDIT: I'm wrong, as pointed out before, it was the EFF that's done good things for the industry really when it comes to censorship, not the ESA.
nobody wants to explain their position but still hate it anyways...
What does the ESA gain by being anti-consumer?
[QUOTE=Mio Akiyama;51878424]What does the ESA gain by being anti-consumer?[/QUOTE] $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
[QUOTE=Mio Akiyama;51878424]What does the ESA gain by being anti-consumer?[/QUOTE] The ability to sell more consoles and not have to provide replacement parts, making single-stream manufacturing possible? These companies have no reason not to oppose this bill. It would hurt them directly. That doesn't mean it's right, but that's the reality of the situation.
[QUOTE=Mio Akiyama;51878424]What does the ESA gain by being anti-consumer?[/QUOTE] more money by controlling the repair business of their products via limiting you to either go to them and pay whatever price they state, buy a new console outright, or fix it yourself and void warranties and be refused support.
Heaven forbid we let a consumer do what they want with their goods after buying them, [I]especially[/I] if it means no money for the company.
My initial thought was "Why Nebraska of all fucking places?"
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;51878443]Heaven forbid we let a consumer do what they want with their goods after buying them, [I]especially[/I] if it means no money for the company.[/QUOTE] Well, I mean... I don't want to sound like a capitalist here, because I'm super-left, but I get why the companies want to oppose this. It would make absolutely no sense for them not to try to stop this bill. They would lose a lot of money, have to restructure their manufacturing systems, have to provide warranty services for consoles people tried to repair themselves... Obviously, if you're a business, and your one goal is to make money, why wouldn't you oppose this bill? I don't think it's necessarily an anti-consumer mindset, I just think the consumer doesn't enter into it. They're only thinking about this in the frame of moving product, and this would mean they move less of it. And, really, we're moving beyond the point where we can repair products anyway. Everything's being designed with all the components soldered to the mainboard, so how would you even start to allow people to repair that?
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;51878443]Heaven forbid we let a consumer do what they want with their goods after buying them, [I]especially[/I] if it means no money for the company.[/QUOTE] This shit wouldn't fly on the Moon. If lobbyists there tried to crush the right to repair, and pushed more planned obsolescence trash-tek on the lunar colonists, you know what'd happen? The lobbyists would get fucking recycled, tossed into a giant blender and turned into protein waffles.
[QUOTE=ironman17;51878463]This shit wouldn't fly on the Moon. If lobbyists there tried to crush the right to repair, and pushed more planned obsolescence trash-tek on the lunar colonists, you know what'd happen? The lobbyists would get fucking recycled, tossed into a giant blender and turned into protein waffles.[/QUOTE] I wasn't expecting you to take that turn of phrase so far. Brutal.
[QUOTE=El Periodista;51878458]Well, I mean... I don't want to sound like a capitalist here, because I'm super-left, but I get why the companies want to oppose this. It would make absolutely no sense for them not to try to stop this bill. They would lose a lot of money, have to restructure their manufacturing systems, have to provide warranty services for consoles people tried to repair themselves... Obviously, if you're a business, and your one goal is to make money, why wouldn't you oppose this bill? I don't think it's necessarily an anti-consumer mindset, I just think the consumer doesn't enter into it. They're only thinking about this in the frame of moving product, and this would mean they move less of it. And, really, we're moving beyond the point where we can repair products anyway. Everything's being designed with all the components soldered to the mainboard, so how would you even start to allow people to repair that?[/QUOTE] Except literally the only thing manufacturers have to do is provide the ability to order OEM parts for basically anyone who gives them a call. There's no "warranty" they have to create, they can still say that repairing it your self voids all manufacturer warranties. This bill only hurts assholes who make their money grubbing at the pockets of people who don't know how to repair electronics. It's predatory and blatantly anti-consumer to completely oppose the end user's right to modify and repair the thing they legally purchased and own. You know how much shit is needlessly trashed in the fucking ground every year because a simple part breaks and the manufacturer doesn't provide replacement parts? A fuck load. The "it broke so just buy a new one, give me money" mentality is killing the only planet we have already, forcing people to only get repairs through predatory "repair services" isn't going to help that at all.
[QUOTE=Sonador;51878473]I wasn't expecting you to take that turn of phrase so far. Brutal.[/QUOTE] Yeah, maybe it's a little unrealistic. They'd probably be turned into fertiliser for all the tomato-vines and runner-beans in the hydroponic gardens. After all, it'd probably grow more food in the long run than a big pile of lobbyist meat could ever provide in the short term. Hey, living on the Moon would be pretty damn extreme. Everything would need to last a long time, be easily fixable with jellybean components, or be made by the colonists. Especially since getting shipments from Earth would be VERY expensive per kilo. Hell it's still expensive today, and that's just for sending cargo to the ISS in low Earth orbit. But all in all, fuck the lobbyists. Mostly because they're lobbying for precisely the WRONG thing, when they should be thinking VERY hard about the future of their species. Sure, repairing games consoles might be small time compared to being able to fix your car or walk outside without a facemask, but it's still something we should be able to hold onto.
[QUOTE=El Periodista;51878458]Well, I mean... I don't want to sound like a capitalist here, because I'm super-left, but I get why the companies want to oppose this. It would make absolutely no sense for them not to try to stop this bill. They would lose a lot of money, have to restructure their manufacturing systems, have to provide warranty services for consoles people tried to repair themselves... Obviously, if you're a business, and your one goal is to make money, why wouldn't you oppose this bill? I don't think it's necessarily an anti-consumer mindset, I just think the consumer doesn't enter into it. They're only thinking about this in the frame of moving product, and this would mean they move less of it. And, really, we're moving beyond the point where we can repair products anyway. Everything's being designed with all the components soldered to the mainboard, so how would you even start to allow people to repair that?[/QUOTE] the "capitalist view" would be to oppose this. In a free market a government wouldnt enforce copyright to prevent people from repairing their purchases and a repair industry from emerging. Yeah this shit is bad for the economy and the consumer, right to repair is extremely important for keeping our economy efficient, reducing waste and keeping society forward not regressing.
[QUOTE=ironman17;51878463]This shit wouldn't fly on the Moon. If lobbyists there tried to crush the right to repair, and pushed more planned obsolescence trash-tek on the lunar colonists, you know what'd happen? The lobbyists would get fucking recycled, tossed into a giant blender and turned into protein waffles.[/QUOTE] Are you posting from 2117? :v: I think what gets them is selling replacement parts and tools required by law. I can get behind just buying spares off eBay for consoles (tractors are another story) as long as they're not built to be frustratingly tamper proof. I dream of a day when broken digitzer glass is easy to fix
It's just a little something to think about. Granted the whole "recycle lobbyists into foodstuffs because fuck lobbyists" thing IS pretty out there, BUT the notion of planned obsolescence and removing the right to repair WOULD be a massive bitch for anyone who would work and live on an off-world colony. Stuck out there waiting for months on end (at best) 'til the next supply ship sails into port, you'd NEED to make sure the stuff you already have can last as long as possible before you have to replace it. So when some big-money EarthGov suit rolls up and tells you that you can't repair a component and have to wait for your sponsor to send new ones, because "fok u gime moni bitche", you'd probably have half a mind to stuff that out-of-touch SMARMY LITTLE CUNT into the nearest recycling unit. Like seriously, who the fuck is he to tell you how to keep a colony running? What the fuck does he know about the plumbing, the electrics, the fucking LIFE SUPPORT systems? If you can't get a damaged component back in working order, and there aren't any working ones, people could DIE. All because some bastard suit thinks that squeezing out extra profit is in any way more important than PRESERVING HUMAN LIFE. I reckon that's probably how some offworld engineers would feel if they were told that they can't legally repair components. And come to think of it, they'd probably ignore the lobbyists and just do what's right, because Earth-law just wouldn't work in space.
[QUOTE=ironman17;51878463]This shit wouldn't fly on the Moon. If lobbyists there tried to crush the right to repair, and pushed more planned obsolescence trash-tek on the lunar colonists, you know what'd happen? The lobbyists would get fucking recycled, tossed into a giant blender and turned into protein waffles.[/QUOTE] Every time I read another ironman17 post it just gets more and more surreal. I don't even know what to think anymore :v:
Pfft, piss off guys. right to repair is damned important to have.
[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;51879262]ESA isn't the [URL="https://www.eff.org/"]EFF[/URL][/QUOTE] Ops, my mistake. The EFF are great. Shame that the ESA isn't.
[QUOTE=Mio Akiyama;51878424]What does the ESA gain by being anti-consumer?[/QUOTE] I think lots of these types of companies are used as a front by the actual game/film/software companies to do their dirty work. Microsoft/IBM wanted to crack down on piracy through bullying and intimidation but don't want to get a bad rep, so they get a different company (BSA) to do it for them - to threaten people with prison sentences, produce scary ass posters encouraging people to rat on their co-workers and[URL="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/11/08/bsa_deploys_imaginary_pirate_software/"]drive vans around "to detect pirated software[/URL]" (read scare people into ratting out) I suspect that ESA fulfills a similar role. A mercenary company who does the other companies dirty work. So someone like EA sees older games are competition for their newer games, so they pay these ballsacks to shut it down. Beautiful transparency.
[QUOTE=El Periodista;51878458]Well, I mean... I don't want to sound like a capitalist here, because I'm super-left, but I get why the companies want to oppose this. It would make absolutely no sense for them not to try to stop this bill. They would lose a lot of money, have to restructure their manufacturing systems, have to provide warranty services for consoles people tried to repair themselves... Obviously, if you're a business, and your one goal is to make money, why wouldn't you oppose this bill? I don't think it's necessarily an anti-consumer mindset, I just think the consumer doesn't enter into it. They're only thinking about this in the frame of moving product, and this would mean they move less of it. And, really, we're moving beyond the point where we can repair products anyway. Everything's being designed with all the components soldered to the mainboard, so how would you even start to allow people to repair that?[/QUOTE] Personally, I'm perfectly fine with not giving away repairs for people who attempted to (and fucked up) repairs of their own device. Warranty applies to the workmanship of the company, not whatever it is someone did to ruin their system during repair. If you're going to try and fix something yourself, you should be prepared to learn what all is involved in the process. Example: I used to work at a taco franchise, and the manager there is... None too smart. One of my former co-workers informed me yesterday that their ice machine was freezing up (as in the copper lines were freezing back to the compressor, which is not good) and the compressor was making an awful grinding noise (again, not good, as it means liquid refrigerant has made it back to the compressor, and compressors can't compress liquid, meaning it could damage it) to the point that he just turns the breaker off. She then explained that he added refrigerant from "a green jug". Now, with ice machines, you'll typically see a few refrigerants being used. R-134a in smaller systems, R-404a in larger commercial systems, and R-502 in older systems (it's being phased out due to chlorine content). In that order, the canisters they're shipped in are usually light-blue, orange, and purple. A green canister? That's R-22, meant for air conditioning systems (and also being phased out due to chlorine content). It is NOT meant for the low-temperature application of making ice. I can't talk to the guy about it because if he found out this co-worker said anything to anybody he'd likely try to get her fired, if not fire her out-right (plus he's a bit of a tremendously thick-skulled asshole so he can break the ice machine that's not even paid off yet for all I care), but the only way to get it working right is to first remove ALL of the refrigerant from the thing (which I doubt he has the equipment to properly do, nor the will to purchase it), evacuate the system (using a vacuum pump), and then weigh in the exact amount of the [I]correct[/I] refrigerant listed on the machine. THEN, he would need to have someone trained and qualified in the operation of ice machines try and diagnose the problem that likely lead him to believe that it was low on refrigerant in the first place (that's an incredibly common mis-diagnosis sadly enough, and in this case it's probably something stupidly simple like a dirty air filter or condensing coil). tl;dr, if you try to fix something yourself and you have no idea what-so-ever on how to do it properly and, as a result, end up fucking it up even more without taking it through proper warranty/service venues first, then sucks to be you, I guess.
What about passing the work off to a skilled repairman? Clearly your former manager is a penny pincher. Decided to sidestep all the troubleshooting and just charge the system with whatever refrigerant he had. They had no place to be messing with the system to begin with and should've called a technician to do this work properly. In this case, many of these manufacturers have certifications available for techs to do warranty or PM work. In this case, Microsoft doesn't hand out repair certifications for their equipment, and Apple certainly doesn't either. Which is fine in the end, but any legal ramifications (fines or to jail someone for 'unauthorized tampering' of a product that is clearly your property) are clearly out of touch. These companies have no interest in the product they sold to you getting repaired, they would rather just you buy a new one. This should be your call to make, buy a new device to get a technician to repair it. Removing the ability for the OWNER of a device to make decisions in terms of repairing, slapping fines and other penalities for technicians for doing a solid job is a dangerous precedent. Especially when these manufacturers do not offer any education, or certification for repairing. This abolishes OEM parts suppliers, and technicians working as a 3rd party. My thinking is this, if you bought it (not leased, rented, barrowed, or loaned) you have FULL right to do whatever you want to do with your device.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;51878540]In a free market a government wouldnt enforce copyright to prevent people from repairing their purchases and a repair industry from emerging.[/QUOTE] In a free market the government wouldn't [i]force[/i] a company to sell parts to third-parties that they have no desire to do business with. I didn't see anything about copyright in the article, it's talking about parts and documentation. I'm in favor of mandating that companies can't brick their products if you tamper with them, but forcing companies to provide software, documentation, and parts to third-parties is kind of overboard. Just the logistical differences between selling parts to a single authorized retailer versus maintaining a worldwide shopping network to sell at the same price to anyone could be enough to bankrupt smaller companies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge no other industry does this.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;51878540]the "capitalist view" would be to oppose this. In a free market a government wouldnt enforce copyright to prevent people from repairing their purchases and a repair industry from emerging. Yeah this shit is bad for the economy and the consumer, right to repair is extremely important for keeping our economy efficient, reducing waste and keeping society forward not regressing.[/QUOTE] ... No, the capitalist view is the current status quo. There are currently no rules requiring products to be repairable, so products are not repairable. That's the outcome of the free market. The "invisible hand" only makes things better for the companies producing goods, not society as a whole. This is like the most misunderstood concept in modern economic philosophy.
[QUOTE=Zero-Point;51881407]Warranty applies to the workmanship of the company, not whatever it is someone did to ruin their system during repair. If you're going to try and fix something yourself, you should be prepared to learn what all is involved in the process.[/QUOTE] Well said - not to mention that in the course of fixing that one faulty component, you [I]could[/I] have damaged a number of other key components along the way to get to it. You might tell the service technician, based on your limited knowledge, that you think part X is fucked up and needs to be replaced, but it doesn't matter - service tech now has to look through the path of destruction you carved through his machine to find out if your discovery didn't come at the cost of Y,Z, P,Q,R and S as well. Because if it did and let's say you only replaced X, this fucking machine will keep coming back to your desk with other parts failing as a cascade of events all because Captain Sausagefingers saw a YouTube video and thought it'd be an easy bodge. Stuff that'll cost service tech time to fix and the company money.
[QUOTE=snookypookums;51882022]Well said - not to mention that in the course of fixing that one faulty component, you [I]could[/I] have damaged a number of other key components along the way to get to it. You might tell the service technician, based on your limited knowledge, that you think part X is fucked up and needs to be replaced, but it doesn't matter - service tech now has to look through the path of destruction you carved through his machine to find out if your discovery didn't come at the cost of Y,Z, P,Q,R and S as well. Because if it did and let's say you only replaced X, this fucking machine will keep coming back to your desk with other parts failing as a cascade of events all because Captain Sausagefingers saw a YouTube video and thought it'd be an easy bodge. Stuff that'll cost service tech time to fix and the company money.[/QUOTE] Oddly, more often it's a case of parts failing due to another cause. There have been countless machines that I've seen HVAC techs repair time and again because they only replaced what was broken, never asking why it broke in the first place. Like this little old lady whose AC coil kept freezing over, and despite replacing a part several times (an expansion valve*) it just kept doing it. So they sent me and another guy (not techs, just installers) out there to try and figure out what was going on, and it turns out it was freezing up because the lady had her thermostat set to [I]fifty five degrees Fahrenheit[/I]. AC systems aren't designed to run that low, lowest the manufacturers recommend is usually around the 65F range, and even 65F is pushing it. *expansion valves are a common source of mis-diagnosis, as people assume that if a machine is acting weird, it has to be because of this bizarre black box that is the thermostatic expansion valve and not, say, a dirty air filter, insufficient return/supply duct, or a dirty coil
[QUOTE=Zero-Point;51884157]Oddly, more often it's a case of parts failing due to another cause. There have been countless machines that I've seen HVAC techs repair time and again because they only replaced what was broken, never asking why it broke in the first place. Like this little old lady whose AC coil kept freezing over, and despite replacing a part several times (an expansion valve*) it just kept doing it. So they sent me and another guy (not techs, just installers) out there to try and figure out what was going on, and it turns out it was freezing up because the lady had her thermostat set to [I]fifty five degrees Fahrenheit[/I]. AC systems aren't designed to run that low, lowest the manufacturers recommend is usually around the 65F range, and even 65F is pushing it. *expansion valves are a common source of mis-diagnosis, as people assume that if a machine is acting weird, it has to be because of this bizarre black box that is the thermostatic expansion valve and not, say, a dirty air filter, insufficient return/supply duct, or a dirty coil[/QUOTE] I know its not exactly on topic, but how the hell do you get a thermostat to go that low. The lowest ours will even go is 60F, not that we would run it that low, it would cost a small fortune.
[QUOTE=Demache;51885217]I know its not exactly on topic, but how the hell do you get a thermostat to go that low. The lowest ours will even go is 60F, not that we would run it that low, it would cost a small fortune.[/QUOTE] Don't ask me, for some reason despite Carrier themselves stating that it's not recommended to go that low, their thermostats are able to go down to the 50's out of the box. You have to program a limit into them upon installation if you want to restrict it (which we did, and she didn't seem pleased). The weirdest part about it is she said she did it because "it's hot", while wearing shorts and what seemed to be at least 2 sweaters. 1) Yeah it's hot, you're not getting any cold air because your coil is frozen solid. 2) If it's hot, take off the sweater(s).
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