This is one of the handful of things me (a leftist) and my rural Trump supporting family both heavily agree upon. It’s nice to find some common ground in such a divided America.
I think we got lucky on it that John Deere and Car companies have been trying to ruin repairability long before it was cool.
And “right to repair” is a nice simple slogan, even the most rural person in America can hear that and will probably go “Fuck yeah I should have the right to repair my car!”
Trump/Musk (especially Musk) could totally come out against this if it gains traction.
I guarantee, your family’s tune would change
I think it’s insane the rules for anything computer-related or computer-adjacent
“Oh if you make anything using our software, legally it’s ours.”
Could you imagine if the same logic applied if you removed the “Magic Technology is Magic” aspect?
“Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it’s ours actually.”
The laws around ownership and IP are also ridiculous.
I can lend this DVD to my aunt but if I do the same with the the movie file then I’m a criminal
I’m becoming more and more convinced that their ultimate goal is for everything to be rented, nothing owned.
They are the feudal lords and we the peasants merely get the privilege of leasing shit from them. This phone? Not mine, it can be locked remotely at the whim of my lord Google. What I see on this phone? Also determined by my lord’s mercy.
But it wasn’t until 2022 that the right-to-repair battle reached wide public consciousness when consumers questioned why McFlurry machines were always broken at their local McDonald’s. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it illegal to bypass certain proprietary systems like the one that Taylor Company, the McFlurry manufacturer, used to fix the equipment.
After a repair startup filed a lawsuit challenging Taylor’s restrictive repair policies, which only allowed its repair people to fix machines, the U.S. Copyright Office announced new exceptions to the copyright law to allow third-party McFlurry repairs. Kit Walsh, a director at the nonprofit rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, welcomed the change.
Of course it had to be about maccas. America is so weird 😂
It’s kind of stranger than you might think. People were galvanized in support for the “little guy” franchise owners being exploited by the big corporation. Still no movement on the minimum wage that some of those little guy franchise owners pay though.
To me it’s weird to even think of repairing stuff you buy as a “right” - that’s a given. The issue is the nonexistent “right” of a seller to restrict what a customer does with a product after buying it. That’s as ridiculous as a shoe company trying to dictate where you can or can’t walk. It’s a no-brainer, and should never have to be argued in court or anywhere else.
When written out like this, it seems simple as - but the most simple version really isn’t what’s at stake. Companies make and trademark specialized tools for their goods, to prevent third parties from providing repairs. Warrantys are written to keep a company from being liable for repair/replacement if a customer attempts to repair a product themselves.
Pretty much every case in the right to repair movement is a challenge to a legally acceptable means of market capture, that just happens to create a stupendously shitty consumer environment.
Market capture is unethical in almost all cases. Unlike humans, if a ‘for profit’ business model can’t adapt and survive in a market, then it doesn’t need to be put on life support indefinately.
It’s like people learned all the wrong lessons from the big beginners of this crud show…(Thanks a lot MS and A**le) This is a major reason of why we can’t have nice stuff.Absolutely agreed that market capture is unethical, but that doesn’t have much to do with the legal basis of right to repair cases.
+1 Insightful
Just got a framework laptop and I’m really happy
Me too. It’s worth it.
Local & state level is where a lot of the progress will live on in the near future. Call your local legislators & vote in every local election - they are way more frequent across the country than you may realize
Just had my brother in law show me a concept phone where you just put in block modules for the things you want and need in a phone. Want more battery? Take off your camera block module and plug in more battery block modules.
Obviously the concept as presented is near impossible to achieve. I told him that and said we can get close. I showed him framework laptops that are trying to achieve the very thing he wanted (to a certain extent). He said that if they could make that a phone he would switch from his apple ecosystem in a heart beat. The ability to swap for a bigger speaker on the fly for get togethers and parties was tantalizing (big music guy).
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
I’m feverishly imagining smart phones with old school slider keyboards
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No it was this concept that never came to be. It’s not possible/practical.
Just to chip in, whilst I agree that Fairphone is not a truely interchangable modular phone, it does have the ability for some modules to be replaced.
The Fairphone 3 even had the ability to upgrade with better ones to create the 3+
I don’t think the newer models are doing that though, which is a shame
I remember when Motorola was working on that concept like 10ish years ago, and then they got bought and sold and the project was nerfed into uselessness.
For Canadian Right to Repair advocates: CanRepair is a brand new advocacy group started by R2R advocates from all over the country. The first Annual General Meeting is on March 25. Sign up to be a member and go to the AGM!
I know this is a little OT, but I repaired a dead Karcher pressure washer this weekend… a little effort and I’m much more likely to purchase / recommend them in the future.
If the manufacturer’s grip is too tight, I’m going elsewhere - and I’ll be more loyal to them
Kärcher is awsome, all of their products I have are solid and dealing with the company is ridiculously easy. They always have parts on-hand and repairs are usually a handful of steps. Easy recommendation
the fact that this is and has ever even been an issue is wild.
Am I the only one that finds it weird that Louis Rossman is not even mentioned in those articles about right to repair?
I mean, he said that he didn’t care at all if his name was mentioned or not and that he would be happy if the movement got traction “by itself”, without him being involved.
But I still think it’s weird that he is not even mentioned when they are giving examples of pro-repair groups/shops etc. Idk…
I tend to assume malice with regards to the news. They likely dont want to drive people to his give him traffic because then they might agree with him.
The news are owned by the same billionaire class as the companies that make many products.
Right to repair used to be intrinsically understood by almost everyone. Electronics used standard components and came with the schematics. Car had government managed standardized interchangeable parts. Now led headlight are 2000$ and unrepairable…
