right to repair India launches Right to Repair portal, all companies must upload Spare parts, service manuals

[EshanKumar]

Summary

Indian minister of Consumer Affairs (Govt. Of India), Mr. Piyush Goyal, launched the Right to Repair Consumer portal. All companies selling goods in India will have to upload details like service manuals, links to space parts, etc. On this portal. 

The link is: https://www.righttorepairindia.in/

 

Quotes

Quote

 On the 'right to repair' portal, manufacturers would share the manual of product details with customers so that they could either repair by self, by third parties, rather than depend on original manufacturers. Initially, mobile phones, electronics, consumer durables, automobile and farming equipments would be covered.

Quote

According to the new rules and regulations, the consumers will receive the manual of product details so that they can independently repair the product by themselves or get them repaired by third parties following the product manual instructions.

My thoughts

This portal will also serve as a mechanism to register complaints against device manufacturers. It will also be a great tool for those living outside India, helping them access service manuals, guides, etc. It has just launched, so compliance might take a while. But I am glad to see more countries taking the direction of right to repair.

 

Sources

 https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/goyal-launches-right-to-repair-portal-new-premise-of-national-consumer-helpline/amp_articleshow/96477745.cms

https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/consumer-affairs-minister-piyush-goyal-launches-right-to-repair-portal-39456

 

[Thomas4]

Unfortunately, here in the United States, politicians receive too much money from large corporations in "campaign donations" for such a requirement to be voted into law and corporations are too afraid of the potential loss of profit to do this without there being a law requiring them ti di so.

[Ydfhlx]

I like the Indian approach. Very chaotic, so for every good thing there is another bad; but at least they try to go in the right direction instead of just doing whatever is best for corporations.

[EshanKumar]

15 minutes ago, Thomas4 said:

Unfortunately, here in the United States, politicians receive too much money from large corporations in "campaign donations" for such a requirement to be voted into law and corporations are too afraid of the potential loss of profit to do this without there being a law requiring them ti di so.

Well, currently this is being formulated a s a government policy, based on a Supreme Court Case (Shri Shamsher Kataria versus Honda Siel Cars Limited & Ors.) Which said:

Quote

In this case, the court held 14 automobile companies liable for indulging in anti-competitive practices by allowing purchase/ sale of goods and services only from their authorised dealers, as well as by denying access of independent repairers of automobiles to spare parts. It was specifically mentioned that IP rights cannot work as a shield for violating Indian competition law. This can be treated as a landmark judgment that prevents companies from exploiting consumer welfare for their individual interests.

Src: https://theleaflet.in/ip-vs-the-right-to-repair-deciphering-the-legal-conundrum/

 

One should also remember that as India is a developing country, there are millions of roadside repair technicians & mechanics whose livelihoods depend on small repairs. I'm quite sure the government is trying to appease this voter base, but in the process, consumers will win.

 

8 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

I like the Indian approach. Very chaotic, so for every good thing there is another bad; but at least they try to go in the right direction instead of just doing whatever is best for corporations.

"Perfect is the enemy of good." I'm not saying it is the perfect method of achieving right to repair, but it's a good beginning. And this centralised portal with manuals from major corporations will also help those out of India.

[suicidalfranco]

meanwhile in new york...

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

meanwhile in new york...

"Why yes, we passed a new bill, please look over our "right to go fuck yourself" bill and go fuck yourself"

[EshanKumar]

1 minute ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

Those should be displayed alongside product pages in stores.

Well, I highly doubt that. It is a legal mechanism, equivalent to a small claims court.

[mr moose]

Cue in the "it's their product so their rules" defense brigade.

 

 

Dear really big companies,  stop trying to extort us for you profits, make a product I want to buy and you'll get your profits.

 

 

 

 

[Dracarris]

So this is legally binding or what? So any smartphone manufacturer that wants to sell handsets in India now has to upload schematics to this portal - Samsung Galaxy and iPhone schematics tomorrow or Apple and Samsung have to stop all sales in India immediately? And everyone can access the documents from whereever they are?

 

Something seems really odd here.

[mr moose]

17 hours ago, Dracarris said:

 

 

Something seems really odd here.

you have a strange sense of odd.  Supplying schematics to repairers is nothing new for manufactures.  I've been buying schematics of domestic appliances (amplifiers etc) since the early 90's.

 

If you are worried about copyright or IP theft, then this law is going to have less than zero effect on that. 

 

 

[EshanKumar]

On 1/5/2023 at 6:16 PM, Dracarris said:

So this is legally binding or what? So any smartphone manufacturer that wants to sell handsets in India now has to upload schematics to this portal - Samsung Galaxy and iPhone schematics tomorrow or Apple and Samsung have to stop all sales in India immediately? And everyone can access the documents from whereever they are?

 

Something seems really odd here.

Yes it will be legally binding. I too am waiting for more details regulations to be released by government of India. It its a process, and I'm sure it will take a couple years for all regulations to take complete effect. 

[Thomas4]

Everyone on both sides is missing one extremely small point, the right to perform an act is not the same as the ability to perform.

For example, the average individual has the right to perform open heart surgery, as long as they don't refer to themselves as a doctor, but they don't have the ability necessary to perform such a procedure.

[Dracarris]

17 hours ago, mr moose said:

Supplying schematics to repairers is nothing new for manufactures.  I've been buying schematics of domestic appliances (amplifiers etc) since the early 90's.

Being legally required to provide schematics to everyone, including private individuals, is very very very new.

 

Odd because this bill, in full effect, would solve the lion share of all R2R issues which are a major major fight in every other country. And a schematic pdf can very easily then leave the borders of India.

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Being legally required to provide schematics to everyone, including private individuals, is very very very new.

 

Odd because this bill, in full effect, would solve the lion share of all R2R issues which are a major major fight in every other country. And a schematic pdf can very easily then leave the borders of India.

"Legally required" is the only the new bit, companies have been providing them to individuals for as along as I can remember, it's really only been in the last few years that manufacturers have stopped doing that.   there is nothing to be lost by turning into a law other than a little bit of cream greed  for certain larger companies that don't want you to repair your device.

[Dracarris]

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

"Legally required" is the only the new bit, companies have been providing them to individuals for as along as I can remember, it's really only been in the last few years that manufacturers have stopped doing that.   there is nothing to be lost by turning into a law other than a little bit of cream greed  for certain larger companies that don't want you to repair your device.

Providing schematics for consumer electronics to anyone died quite some time ago, much more than "in the last few years" unless you define that as 15-20 years (if not more), and the companies that now do are the exception and not the rule. Schematic for a laptop, phone or mainboard did either fall of a truck in China or simply does not exist.

 

So to reiterate, this law, if actually enforced, would infer a really large change.

[mr moose]

21 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Providing schematics for consumer electronics to anyone died quite some time ago, much more than "in the last few years" unless you define that as 15-20 years (if not more), and the companies that now do are the exception and not the rule. Schematic for a laptop, phone or mainboard did either fall of a truck in China or simply does not exist.

 

So to reiterate, this law, if actually enforced, would infer a really large change.

So just ignoring the time frame dispute,  we can agree it did happen,  so your argument for it being bad now is what again?  forcing companies to do something that they all used to do without issue is now a "really big change".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Vishera]

On 1/4/2023 at 9:55 PM, Thomas4 said:

Unfortunately, here in the United States, politicians receive too much money from large corporations in "campaign donations" for such a requirement to be voted into law and corporations are too afraid of the potential loss of profit to do this without there being a law requiring them ti di so.

There is a legal loop hole in the US that legalize bribery, big corpo buy the politicians with money.

A right to repair bill was passed in New York and in the last minute the governor made changes to the bill that render it useless and then signed it...

It's safe to assume that "someone" paid her a visit and then the bill was changed...

 

On 1/6/2023 at 6:51 PM, Thomas4 said:

Everyone on both sides is missing one extremely small point, the right to perform an act is not the same as the ability to perform.

No one is missing it, It's just irrelevant.

 

On 1/6/2023 at 6:51 PM, Thomas4 said:

For example, the average individual has the right to perform open heart surgery, as long as they don't refer to themselves as a doctor, but they don't have the ability necessary to perform such a procedure.

I am pretty sure that no country in the world has such a right written in their law books...

And not to mention that to perform such medical procedure you are required to have a license whether you call yourself a doctor or not.

[Dracarris]

22 hours ago, mr moose said:

So just ignoring the time frame dispute,  we can agree it did happen,  so your argument for it being bad now is what again?  forcing companies to do something that they all used to do without issue is now a "really big change".

I never ever said that this is bad in any way shape or form, for Christs sake. I simply pointed out that this would solve the lion share of all R2R issues that interest groups in other countries like the US have a really, really hard time fighting for, c.f. the recent shitshow in NY state, and - therefore - sound too good to be true, the literal effing opposite!

 

And yes, from the current state this is a huge step/change, whether you like the current state or not has zero relevance for this point.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Dracarris said:

I never ever said that this is bad in any way shape or form, for Christs sake. I simply pointed out that this would solve the lion share of all R2R issues that interest groups in other countries like the US have a really, really hard time fighting for, c.f. the recent shitshow in NY state, and - therefore - sound too good to be true, the literal effing opposite!

 

And yes, from the current state this is a huge step/change, whether you like the current state or not has zero relevance for this point.

You are the one claiming it is "ODD" and that:

 

Quote

So any smartphone manufacturer that wants to sell handsets in India now has to upload schematics to this portal - Samsung Galaxy and iPhone schematics tomorrow or Apple and Samsung have to stop all sales in India immediately?

If you don't think that comes of as anything but negative then you have no idea how you sound to the rest of the world.

 

Also you are simply ignoring the fact that schematics for all these devices are already out there (mostly illegally but still out there) and that it was common practice to make those details available,  I don't know why you think a government forcing a company to do what it used to do makes it new.

 

And just so you know,  there is nothing stopping any company from complying and uploading schematics and repair manuals to India, and still legally ass raping small repair shops in the rest of the world.    Apple has been fighting R2R and making products harder to repair for at least 6-7 years now, do you think they are just going to give up because of this?

 

reported in 2016:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-right-to-repair_n_5755a6b4e4b0ed593f14fdea

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

If you don't think that comes of as anything but negative then you have no idea how you sound to the rest of the world.

It does not. Neither is odd = bad. It's a mere observation of the consequences of this bill.

Everything else is up to your very own, personal interpretation. The fact that you think you can extrapolate this to "the rest of the world" speaks a very clear language about what you think of yourself.

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Also you are simply ignoring the fact that schematics for all these devices are already out there (mostly illegally but still out there) and that it was common practice to make those details available

For a ton of devices, especially lesser known ones, there is zero info available or very, very hard to find. Having schematics available for anything that was released during the last 20 years is the exception, not the rule, even if illegal sources are included. So to reiterate, this will indeed incur a big change if actually followed for every device sold in India.

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I don't know why you think a government forcing a company to do what it used to do makes it new.

Because what I just described is very different from the current state, just as I said before. Different than now = new. Again, no relevance whatsoever whether this was different at some point in the past.

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

And just so you know,  there is nothing stopping any company from complying and uploading schematics and repair manuals to India, and still legally ass raping small repair shops in the rest of the world. 

Parts availability will remain an issue for those parts of the world, but having easy and universal access to documentation will significantly change and ease a lot of jobs for repair shops in these countries as well. It will be a game changer that you would recognize if you'd watch repair channels that do repairs on anything else than the most popular smartphones and tablets. Basically every time the host will say "since there are no schematics or service manual available for this device, we'll have to do some reverse engineering".

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Apple has been fighting R2R and making products harder to repair for at least 6-7 years now, do you think they are just going to give up because of this?

 

reported in 2016:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-right-to-repair_n_5755a6b4e4b0ed593f14fdea

As usually with you, it's Apple and only Apple when it comes to bad practices. All the others have of coursed fully supported R2R.

[mr moose]

23 hours ago, Dracarris said:

It does not. Neither is odd = bad. It's a mere observation of the consequences of this bill.

Everything else is up to your very own, personal interpretation. The fact that you think you can extrapolate this to "the rest of the world" speaks a very clear language about what you think of yourself.

For a ton of devices, especially lesser known ones, there is zero info available or very, very hard to find. Having schematics available for anything that was released during the last 20 years is the exception, not the rule, even if illegal sources are included. So to reiterate, this will indeed incur a big change if actually followed for every device sold in India.

Because what I just described is very different from the current state, just as I said before. Different than now = new. Again, no relevance whatsoever whether this was different at some point in the past.

Parts availability will remain an issue for those parts of the world, but having easy and universal access to documentation will significantly change and ease a lot of jobs for repair shops in these countries as well. It will be a game changer that you would recognize if you'd watch repair channels that do repairs on anything else than the most popular smartphones and tablets. Basically every time the host will say "since there are no schematics or service manual available for this device, we'll have to do some reverse engineering".

As usually with you, it's Apple and only Apple when it comes to bad practices. All the others have of coursed fully supported R2R.

AS usual you are making claims that just aren't true.  I have found schematics for everything from ovens and amplifiers to inverter welders all in the last 10 years for stuff made in the last ten years.  It's not that hard. Repair channels will not make a video talking about schematics that they have obtained through illegal channels. 

 

And again, seeing as you are still trying to argue I only ever pick on apple, My challenge to you is to prove it,  I hold every manufacturer to account for their shitty behavior.  The fact is these claims are either nothing but petty trollish behavior or grasping at straws to defend a dying notion.  

 

Some facts for you:

 

1. Companies used to supply schematics inside of their products.

2. Companies moved to supplying them to repair centers instead

3. Companies stopped supplying to them and chose only "authorized" repair centres.

4. Companies moved to make it hard for anyone but specific people to make the repairs

5. Now a law sets to reverse this anti consumer trajectory and take it back to fact 1 and you think it is forcing something new onto companies like facts 1 and 2 never happened.

 

If you think your complaint is anything but wrong then there is nothing rational anyone can say that will help you to understand reality.

 

 

 

 

[Dracarris]

28 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Repair channels will not make a video talking about schematics that they have obtained through illegal channels. 

Yes they do. Stop claiming such utter bullshit!! Louis Rossmann himself uses those illegal schematics extensively, simply without naming the source! Schematics are not available for a shitload of devices, period. And your counter-examples do not change this fact. Even if they would be available on some shady ftp, easy availability for all folks would still be a big step forward.

28 minutes ago, mr moose said:

And again, seeing as you are still trying to argue I only ever pick on apple, My challenge to you is to prove it,  I hold every manufacturer to account for their shitty behavior.

No you are not. Right in your last reply, you only mentioned Apple, and did not hold any other company fighting R2R accountable. This statement of yours is nothing but a lie.

28 minutes ago, mr moose said:

5. Now a law sets to reverse this anti consumer trajectory and take it back to fact 1 and you think it is forcing something new onto companies like facts 1 and 2 never happened.

So you seem to have problems reading. This law will change the current reality. Whether we go back to a state that has there before is utterly irrelevant, for the third time. The current state will be changed. Change is change. I can't believe you have such a hard time understanding such basic semantics.

28 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If you think your complaint is anything but wrong then there is nothing rational anyone can say that will help you to understand reality.

There is no complaint whatsoever. Again, you are making things up in your head.

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Yes they do. Stop claiming such utter bullshit!! Louis Rossmann himself uses those illegal schematics extensively, simply without naming the source! Schematics are not available for a shitload of devices, period. And your counter-examples do not change this fact.

No you are not. Right in your last reply, you only mentioned Apple, and did not hold any other company fighting R2R accountable. This statement of yours is nothing but a lie.

So you seem to have problems reading. This law will change the current reality. Whether we go back to a state that has there before is utterly irrelevant, for the third time. The current state will be changed. Change is change. I can't believe you have such a hard time understanding such basic semantics.

There is no complaint whatsoever. Again, you are making things up in your head.

I see, if i only mention apple in one post then I only hate apple, got it.

 

Have a nice day, the world knows all it needs to on this topic and fortunately no one else needs me to repeat anything for clarification.

 

 

[Dracarris]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I see, if i only mention apple in one post then I only hate apple, got it.

You do this all the time. Apple, Apple, Apple.

 

And how comfortable for you to ignore all the other points where you are plain wrong.

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Have a nice day, the world knows all it needs to on this topic and fortunately no one else needs me to repeat anything for clarification.

Not really. Either there is some caveat about this law, manufacturers won't follow it, or it will indeed be a big step forward for R2R and service documentation availability compared to what we currently have. But it seems like apart from ranting about the good ol past and twisting semantics you cannot contribute at all to this discussion.