CivBase

The law has already been written. We just want to extend it to cover consumer electronics and eventually other classed of products. The existing law would not force manufacturers to use user-replacable batteries. Instead of arguing against hypothetical regulations in hypothetical laws, I suggest you give Massachusetts's General Laws, Part I, Title XV, Chapter 93K a read. It's not terribly long, although legalize is always a bit dense. Right to repair is a broad concept, but Linus is endorcing Louis's campaign in particular which focuses on that particular law in MA.

Then what is stopping companies from intentionally adding unrepairable defects to their devices so that users have to buy a new one after a while? That should not be an acceptable future. And nobody ever said the manufacturer had any obligation to support anything. I don't want to force companies to provide repair services or even parts. I just want them to not go out of their way to screw over people who are just trying to repair their property.

Then why is it okay for a manufacturer to make otherwise-solvable issues unsolvable? Or only solvable by them for whatever they think it's worth?

If John Deere should be legally allowed to break my stuff, then should I legally be allowed to break theirs? They have a plant just a few blocks down the road from my house and I'm sure I could do a lot of damage. That sounds like a pretty strong incentive to me.

You know what's sad? LTT's main channel has 13M subs. If just 10% of them donated $5, that GoFundMe campaign would blow past it's $6M goal. Just 1-in-10 LTT subs donating less than the price of a mediocre Subway sandwich. That video alone is already over 1M views in under a day, but the campaign has a total of fewer than 14k donations. Meanwhile anti-right-to-repair lobbyists can summon $6M in the blink of an eye. But they don't even have to. All they have to do is keep confusing people about what right to repair is. We're not asking manufacturers to hand over confidential design details. We're not asking for manufacturers to re-design their products to prioritize repairability. We're not asking for manufacturers to support third-party parts. We're not asking for manufacturers to provide repair services at all, much less for free. We're not asking manufacturers to even provide parts. We just want the freedom to repair our own devices without having to seek the manufacturer's permission (eg serialization and repair partnership programs) and without having to deal with illegitimate legal threats (eg copyright and counterfeit claims) when sharing and sourcing the necessary parts and schematics. Looks a lot like Intersil's APIs, tooling, and design to me. I don't see Apple's fingerprints anywhere on this thing. It even has a detailed, publicly-accessible datasheet and everything. https://www.renesas.com/us/en/products/power-power-management/dc-dc-converters/step-upstep-down-buck-boost/buck-boost-regulators-integrated-fets/isl9120-compact-high-efficiency-low-power-buck-boost-regulator https://www.renesas.com/us/en/document/dst/isl9120-datasheet FYI: Intersil is a subsidy of Renesas. Once again, right to repair is not about asking manufacturers to provide parts. Many supporters of right to repair are advocating for that, but it's not an inherent ask of right to repair. Personally, I disagree with the idea of implementing regulation which would force manufacturers to make parts available. It's often an unnecessary economic burden for the manufacturer (worst case scenario, parts can still be sourced from used machines). It's hard to nail down what parts should be supplied in the first place (main board assembly? CPU? CPU dye? transistor?). It's hard to determine what the price limitations for those parts should be. And it's just hard to enforce that kind of regulation. Luckily, the direct ballot initiative in question would not require manufacturers to supply parts so far as I can tell. I can't find anything in Massachusetts's General Laws, Part I, Title XV, Chapter 93K which would indicate such a requirement. I've been following right to repair for a while and I've never heard of anyone asking for design documents which would enable them to reproduce parts on their own once the supplier stops. Even if someone is doing that, it doesn't mean the whole right to repair initiative should be abandoned. Besides, that's definitely not part of the direct ballot initiative Louis Rossmann is attempting. The following comes straight from the MA law which Rossmann's campaign is trying to add consumer electronics to. General Laws, Part I, Title XV, Chapter 93K, Section 3: "Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require a manufacturer to divulge a trade secret." General Laws, Part I, Title XV, Chapter 93K, Section 5: "Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require manufacturers or dealers to provide an owner or independent repair facility access to non-diagnostic and repair information provided by a manufacturer to a dealer or by a dealer to a manufacturer pursuant to the terms of a franchise agreement." Rossmann had a very good video discussing this very issue with a System76 engineer. System76 seems to be getting along with this problem just fine, even though they're much smaller than Apple. System76 laptop engineer SUPPORTS Right to Repair; interview with Louis Rossmann

Nobody's asking businesses to expose their IP. The most detailed information being asked for to facilitate repairs, board schematics, is not near enough information to threaten a manufacturer. That information used to be given out for free as part of owners manuals. You cannot duplicate a devices with that information. That information can also be reverse-engineered by someone with a working board, a multimeter, very little technical knowledge, and a lot of time. In many cases, repair technicians have taken the time to create those schematics for themselves with no help from the manufacturer. As for parts, I really don't know why everyone focuses so hard on this. Right to repair should not (and does not, in my mind) require manufacturers to supply parts. You'll almost never hear Louis talk about manufacturers supplying parts in his videos. A repair technician can source genuine OEM parts from used machines with unrelated defects. My dad loves working on old cars as a hobby and that's exactly how he gets parts. The actual problem which we need right to repair to fix is how manufacturers go out of their way to make sure replacement parts cannot be *independently* sourced or installed (by serializing parts, claiming used goods as "counterfeits" in customs, making exclusivity deals with third-party suppliers, threatening legal action against techs who share information needed for repairs, etc).

According to Rossmann, Intersil explicitly told him they had an agreement with Apple to not produce the part for anyone else. Even if Rossmann forked over the money to bulk order the part, they could not manufacture it for him per their agreement with Apple. More info: What is Right to Repair? An introduction for curious people. (4:00 to 5:00, screenshot of their email at 4:05) Tell that to the lawfirm of Kilpatrick Townsend. More info: Responding to criticism regarding right to repair's violation of the non-aggression principle. (4:25 to 9:45) tl;dw: Kilpatrick Townsend (a lawfirm representing Apple) demanded Rossmann remove a video showing people how to fix a problem with an Apple device because the video included a diagram of the electrical traces on the board he was fixing. His lawyer advised him to comply, but Rossmann fired his lawyer and demanded the lawfirm submit a DMCA takedown for the video. They didn't follow through, possibly fearing a PR backlash. Who knows what would have happened if they had?

Yeah, I think I lot of people are thrown off by the same things you are. After all, many things still can be repaired with little in the way of barriers. We sort of do currently have a right to repair... at least sort of. The problem is that it's being whittled away. Think of it kind of like the right free speech. Let's say the government of Nationstan has no laws protecting free speech, but they don't outlaw any particular type of speech either. The citizens have a right to free speech... sort of. Now let's say the police decide they're fans of current pro-police group in charge of the government, so they start detaining citizens who openly criticize the government on suspicion of terrorism. The citizens still have the freedom to talk about other subjects freely and can speak positively or neutrally about the group in charge. In a sense, they still have a right to free speech... so long as it's not criticism about the group in charge. That's kind of what's happening with our right to repair. Organizations with enough power to challenge that right (large manufacturers) are making moves to stop people from being able to repair their products independently or through third parties. Some are simply trying to monopolize the repair market for their products while others are trying to eliminate repair as an option altogether, forcing people to buy new products as replacements. Here are some examples of things which Louis has pointed out Apple doing which right to repair legislation would seek to prevent: Apple contracts out manufacturing of some of their parts to third parties. In some cases, Apple requires the third-party manufacturer to only sell the part to Apple in exchange for Apple's business. That means consumers and third-party repair shops cannot purchase those parts. Apple only offers repair parts to members of the "Apple Authorized Service Provider" (AASP) program. As part of that program, members are subject to random inspections from Apple. Apple restricts what kind of repair services members can offer (for example, instead of replacing a $5 chip, they have to replace the whole board for hundreds of dollars). Members cannot stock parts, which means their customer has to wait for the part to arrive in the mail before their device can be fixed. Yeah, the parts are overpriced, but that's not what makes the AASP program so awful. More info: What does authorized repair do? Let's find out! Apple threatens to sue people who share schematics and other information used to repair their devices. These schematics are not proprietary; they weren't stolen from Apple; they were developed by independent repair technicians who just want to repair Apple devices and help others repair theirs. Customs confiscate parts and products as "counterfeit" which so much as have an Apple logo on them. This includes used Apple devices. It doesn't matter if these are genuine Apple products which Apple manufactured and put the logo on themselves. Even products that resemble Apple products are sometimes confiscated. More info: Customs messes with oneplus - IT'S ABOUT TIME! Apple serializes some of their parts (more and more with each generation), which basically means they give each part a unique ID and configure the machine so that it only works if that exact part with that exact ID is installed. If you replace the part with an otherwise identical part made by Apple themselves, the device will refuse to work because the ID is different. This means Apple is the only one who can replace the part because they are the only ones with the technology required to reconfigure the machine to accept the new part. Of course, Apple is not alone and right to repair would not focus on them. My best examples just come from Louis because of how openly he talks about issues he faces as an Apple repair technician. And of course he talks mostly about issues with Apple because... well... he's an Apple repair technician. It's what he does. "Right to repair" is a concept, not a concrete law. There are various ways to implement it. One solution could be to regulate companies and require them to supply parts and design products to be easy to repair. However, that's not the approach I support and it's not what Louis talks about in his videos either. For me, "right to repair" is not about requiring companies to do anything - it's about preventing them from going out of their way to screw over repair. That means stopping them from making deals with third-parties to not sell parts. That means not withholding the ability to purchase parts behind ridiculous membership programs. That means not threatening legal action against independent technicians who are just repairing devices. That means not implementing tech specifically designed to prevent genuine replacement parts from functioning. Tangent: When talking about "right to repair", a lot of people jump to parts cost and availability. In reality, that's a somewhat minor issue. Repair technicians don't necessarily need to be able to buy parts since they can often cannibalize OEM parts from used devices. The big problems show themselves when manufacturers go out of their way to stop them from even doing that.

It would be pretty cool if LTT could colab with Rossmann to create some Right to Repair merch on lttstore.com where a portion of the revenue goes to the MA direct ballot initiative. No. There is no intention to force manufactures to offer any additional services. Right to repair legislation seeks to ensure third parties have the ability to purchase parts needed for repairs with no-strings-attached (namely by preventing manufacturers from blocking their sale and doing away with bogus programs like the AASP), enable third parties to share documentation (eg schematics and diagrams) which support repairs, prevent manufacturers from needlessly serializing parts to make them incompatible with replacements, and ensure the DMCA provides exemptions for modifications to devices intended for repair. Believe it or not, none of those things are protected and many manufactures (not just Apple) abuse them regularly. I might have missed a thing or two, but the point is that Right to Repair is not about requiring more from manufacturers - it's about preventing them from harming consumers and third party repair services. Here's some potentially helpful videos Louis Rossmann has created: What is Right to Repair? An introduction for curious people. I'm crowdfunding a direct ballot initiative to bypass lobbyists/politicians & pass Right to Repair Right to Repair misconception #1; existence of repair shops means we already have it Right to Repair misconception #2; we want manufacturers to fix devices we destroyed For those who think this is a "liberal" issue: American Conservative covers Right To Repair and NAILS it! ESA arguments against Right to Repair and how to counter them Right to repair isn't just an Apple issue

Guess I'm waiting for the next gen to finally upgrade from my 980 Ti. I'm sure once the direct storage API lands, 12 GB is going to evaporate pretty quickly. Oh well. The way things are shaping up, next gen should be great.

Notice how they specifically said "to track individuals". Classic misdirection. They never intended to give up on trackers; they make a lot of money from them.

And, given you are part of enough groups, a third party can use an intersection of all those groups to create a profile for you as an individual anyway[0]. It has almost the same negative privacy implications as third-party cookies, just took a more roundabout way to get there. [0] https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/100

Summary Google has been working on a new, open-source technology to replace third-party cookies for tracking users called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC)[0]. They have launched a trial on Chrome (versions 89 and up) which automatically opts in users who sync Chrome using their Google account and have not disabled third-party cookies[1]. The trial currently only extends to users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, and the US. EFF has been openly critical of the technology[3] and just launch a site called "Am I FLoCed" to help users determine whether FLoC has been enabled on their browser[4]. DuckDuckGo has also shared criticism and updated their "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials" Chrome extension to block the new technology[5]. Quotes My thoughts I stopped using Google Chrome (and most Google products) a few years ago because of growing privacy concerns with the company, so you can probably guess that I'm not a fan of this. This tech only benefits advertising companies like Google. They want to optimize their ads by collecting user data and using it for ad targeting. I don't feel any better having the trackers identify me as an intersection of groups instead of as an individual. The silver lining here is that other browser vendors haven't expressed any intent to implement the tech. Hopefully it doesn't propagate to other Chromium-based browsers. Sources [0] https://github.com/WICG/floc [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/google-testing-its-controversial-new-ad-targeting-tech-millions-browsers-heres [2] https://blog.google/products/chrome/privacy-sustainability-and-the-importance-of-and/ [3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea [4] https://amifloced.org/ [5] https://spreadprivacy.com/block-floc-with-duckduckgo/

You don't have to imagine. They clearly imply right to repair will enable stalking and assualt. Luckily, that wasn't enough to convince the voters.

He's an Apple repair tech. He runs a shop that exclusively repairs Apple devices - and only a subset of them at that. He talks about Apple products and practices because it's what he deals with all day every day. He has a history of giving Apple credit when they do good and he regularly points out that most other major tech companies are similarly terrible. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, LG, etc also have terrible track records when it comes to repair, but Louis can't share as much information about them because he doesn't repair those devices. If Apple were the only problem, Right to Repair would not be necessary; anyone who cared about repair would just buy non-Apple products. But that's not the case and that's why his effort to advance the Right to Repair movement is important. Regardless what anyone may think of Louis, I really like his approach to Right to Repair. He cares about more than Apple and more than just consumer electronics. He doesn't want to force manufacturers to re-design products for repairability or make their designs open source. He doesn't even want to force manufacturers to offer repair services or to supply parts. He just wants to stop manufacturers from going out of their way to screw over independent repair. For instance, a manufacturer shouldn't be obligated to sell a part exclusively to another manufacturer in order to do business with them. Third parties should be allowed to ship used goods and parts through customs without having the seized as "counterfeits". Third parties shouldn't have to "partner" with manufacturers just to be able to buy parts. Third parties should be permitted to share technical details about a product (eg independently-developed board views or circuit diagrams). That's what I want to see. I'd much rather see independent repair start with better legal protection than have a bunch of half-baked, hard-to-enforce regulations piled onto manufacturers who will inevitably find loopholes anyways. Regulations like that may be worth pursuing eventually, but I think starting with them sets the movement up for failure.