The Most Important Right-To-Repair Hearing Yet Is On Monday (vice.com) 32
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Monday, the right-to-repair movement will have its best chance at advancing legislation that would make it easier to repair your gadgets. The Massachusetts state legislature is holding a three-hour hearing on the Digital Right to Repair act, a bill that would require electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts and tools, make repair guides available, and would prevent them from using software to artificially prevent repair.
So far this year, 19 other states have considered similar legislation. It hasn't passed in any of them. But Massachusetts is one of the most likely states to pass the legislation, for a few different reasons. Most notably, the legislation is modeled on a law passed unanimously in Massachusetts in 2012 that won independent auto shops the right to repair, meaning lawmakers there are familiar with the legislation and the benefits that it has had for auto repair shops not just in Massachusetts but around the country. Crucially, important legislative hurdles have already been cleared in the state: Both the House and Senate bills are identical and has broad support from both Democrats and Republicans in the legislature. The hearing is going to be held in the Gardner Auditorium, which holds 600 people, making this the largest and highest-profile hearing on the topic in any state thus far.
So far this year, 19 other states have considered similar legislation. It hasn't passed in any of them. But Massachusetts is one of the most likely states to pass the legislation, for a few different reasons. Most notably, the legislation is modeled on a law passed unanimously in Massachusetts in 2012 that won independent auto shops the right to repair, meaning lawmakers there are familiar with the legislation and the benefits that it has had for auto repair shops not just in Massachusetts but around the country. Crucially, important legislative hurdles have already been cleared in the state: Both the House and Senate bills are identical and has broad support from both Democrats and Republicans in the legislature. The hearing is going to be held in the Gardner Auditorium, which holds 600 people, making this the largest and highest-profile hearing on the topic in any state thus far.
A Hearing in Congress Great? (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
You'll feel silly after reading TFS (Score:2)
Don't read the summary now. It'll make you feel silly.
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yeah no (Score:1)
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Has there *ever* been a successful lawsuit like that from people who injured themselves repairing stuff?
Lots of dumb lawsuits, so include that in the bill (Score:3)
The stupidity of plaintiffs, and occasionally juries, is boundless, even worse than the stupidity of Congress.
Simple solution -
Explicitly specify that as a matter of law manufacturers are not liable for repair-related damages as long as they are not reckless* in the design and they _________ .
* I'm using reckless in the legal sense, meaning even more than gross negligence.
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Why a particularly high standard for repairs, though? Shouldn't *professional* repair people be protected against simple negligence? What kinds of scenarios are you imagining people getting payouts over?
Amateur car mechanics already deal with stuff that's way more hazardous than consumer electronics: poisonous, volatile, flammable fluids, lead acid batteries, belts and pulleys. There was a time when repairing consumer electronics meant things like high voltage CRTs or cold cathode flourescent lamps, but
Re: Devils advocate -- people will injure themselv (Score:1)
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most people that don't know.... (Score:3, Insightful)
... what they are doing don't open things up in the first place. For the rest... it's their risk, all it takes is a sticker, and of course, if there is a warranty it will require you don't tamper with the device yourself. But if I own it, it should not self destruct or refuse to act like my property.
Question: should cars just have their hoods welded shut and stop working if someone tries to repair them?
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Devil's devil advocate (Score:2)
The problem with the right to repair is that someone damages something in the process, then sues the maker because it is "their" fault. The jury hands a nuclear verdict of many millions of dollars.
On the other hand, repairing is part of the normal procedures that one would want to subject devices to.
(I mean really. There has bin a short tiny window in the overconsumerism of people just throwing away and buying new shit. But on the scale of human civilisation fixing stuff once it's broken is the normal behaviour, no matter what has happened in the short tiny time span of the last couple of decades).
Building device in such was that there's a risk to either destroy the device or harm the person attempti
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No need to announce yourself as devil's advocate, we can tell.
>> sues the maker
no
>> jury hands a nuclear verdict of many millions of dollars
no
>> most people opening stuff up have no clue what they are doing
debatable
>> poor quality screens will just be blamed on Apple
no
>> no right to repair is a good thing
no
>> just because people will injure themselves
people hurting themselves is on the bottom of your shitty money-based reason list, not the top, consult your masters
>
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Why keep spamming us with this shit? The rest of us manage all this just fine, you are clearly the common factor here. If you smell shit wherever you go, check under your own shoes first.
How can you deny ANY of it?
Government doing its best (Score:1)
Forcing people to do, what they'd rather not — the one thing, at which governments are best, and the bigger the government — the better.
You can always move to an anarchy like Yemen (Score:2)
And do whatever you like. In civilization we do get to make rules, tell you if you can have lead in the paint, have open pools of mercury... hell whatever we want. Learn to deal with it. Or you can just whine, that's actually ok too. Gonna keep that legal for now.
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The one rule of the American civilization is that the government exists to protect the following inalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. Forcing other people to please you does not qualify — that's tyranny. If you don't like a manufacturer's attitude, do not buy their wares, that's your right and the sole recourse.
Is it? How long before my whining is deemed a "microagression" and outlawed [dailycaller.com], uhm?
US Constitution (Score:1)
The US Constitution has a lot more than "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness", and doesn't actually include "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness".
But I agree, those are american ideals... and we get to decide what liberty, and pursuit of happiness entail. I happen to believe not getting ripped off in various says is part of it.
I don't know when your microaggression gets deemed as harrassment... a long time I predict. At any rate it'll be a while before it rates high on my worries.
Why is right to repair so bad? (Score:2)
What I don't get is why the industry fights right to repair. The razor and blade sales technique has made Gillette billions. Similar with car makers, because they definitely don't lose money selling automotive parts. Yes, chucking something and buying a new thing has been the in thing for a while, but those days are coming to an end, both due to environmental issues (e-waste cannot be recycled, so it is foisted off somewhere), as well as the fact that people just are not interested in buying the latest a
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What I don't get is why the industry fights right to repair.
Designed obselescense. They see what software and tech companies have gotten away with with videogames where the customer never owns anything. They want a world where the public merely 'pays rent' to them. The history of capitalism is the history of war and disposession, if the corporations who own the US gov would invade other nations for profit, why wouldn't they do something as small time as get rid of the rights of their own citizens? It's like no one ever opened a fucking history book or is able to
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What kibd of device (Score:1)
People shouldn't be poking around inside stuff that plugs into 120 or 240 V mains.
why not? (Score:1)
what?
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People shouldn't be poking around inside stuff that plugs into 120 or 240 V mains.
Because YOU are too incompetent to do so is no reason to forbid people who are competent from doing what they want with THEIR OWN PROPERTY. Hell it is no reason to forbid incompetent people from doing what they want with THEIR OWN PROPERTY and life.
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True. All those years in college learning electronics, and all those years I spent working on high powered lasers where 120 volts was the least of my concerns makes me too incompetent to open up a laptop.
California's "Lemon Law" was about right to repair (Score:3)
Does no one know about California's so-called "Lemon Law" that has preceded this recent right-to-repair craze by decades? Most people ignorantly presume that it only pertains to automobiles; that isn't true. It pertains to ANY product sold to citizens that had a sale price of over $100(?). It required that manufacturers continue to provide parts and documentation necessary to maintain any such product for no less than seven years.
When my favorite 21-inch Nokia CRT monitor died in the late Nineties, I discovered that Nokia had pulled some typical corporate shenanigans: they had sold their display subsidiary to Viewsonic while I owned the monitor. However, Nokia effectively gave Viewsonic little more than the brand name, because some or all of the parts were being supplied by third parties who were not under contract to Viewsonic and so had stopped making the crucial parts. I wanted to get it repaired, and several shops were willing but unable because of the missing parts.
At some point in the many conversations I had, someone had mentioned how the Lemon Law applied. I contacted a lawyer about using it as the basis for a lawsuit, but they declined to take the case.
California, at least, has been trying to do right by hobbyist engineers and the environment for DECADES, and no one else was paying attention until now. I certainly wish people had been paying attention when I needed my favorite monitor repaired.