"Right to Repair" - Potentially great news for DIY!

[M-Cameron]

ah yes, more govt over reach...the solution to all of our problems....

so heres the deal....you, as a consumer, have every right to repair whatever you want....i, as a manufacturer, have 0 obligation to assist you with that repair.

i have 0 obligation to give you any schematics or other technical info.....you are buying the product, not the IP for that product.
and i have 0 obligation to sell you anything.

if you buy a videogame, do you feel you have a right to the source code too? thats what were talking about


if sell a product, then sell you repair kits and provide schematics....i am....by default, giving you authorization to go ahead and repair it....regardless of your level of technical training.

the problem is, I as the manufacturer, am legally still on the hook if it malfunctions and you die.

so if you talk it apart, put it together wrong, take it diving, get hurt.....and sue me.......chances are, you are going to win that case against me (because courts in the US have a strong tendency to side with the consumer).....and now i am out a few million for your mistake

in engineering, we work really hard to protect consumers, from themselves...thats partly the reason we have warning labels on everything.....people are stupid, and when they are victims of their stupidity, they blame everyone but themselves.

by restricting service kits, by restricting technical data....were not trying to scam you out of a few more bucks....we are trying to keep your dumb ass alive....and keep ourselves out of court.

 

[lexvil]

 

[Addison Snyder]

if sell a product, then sell you repair kits and provide schematics....i am....by default, giving you authorization to go ahead and repair it....regardless of your level of technical training.

the problem is, I as the manufacturer, am legally still on the hook if it malfunctions and you die.

I'm curious how you feel about repairing and maintaining your own vehicle. I don't see too many lawsuits regarding oil changes, wheel alignments, etc. done by the average joe, much less any high-speed accidents brought on by faulty repairs. If we as a nation have the can-do attitude to fix our own cars before hurling them down a highway at high velocities, I don't see how fixing a phone, tractor, or 1st stage is a big deal.

in engineering, we work really hard to protect consumers, from themselves...thats partly the reason we have warning labels on everything.....people are stupid, and when they are victims of their stupidity, they blame everyone but themselves.

by restricting service kits, by restricting technical data....were not trying to scam you out of a few more bucks....we are trying to keep your dumb ass alive....and keep ourselves out of court.

I think part of the problem is that manufacturers are killing 3rd party repair by controlling who gets what parts. I could be a friggin' patent holder for some regulator technology, and Scubapro wouldn't give me service kits because I'm not "authorized" to repair/maintain. Which kills the free market, and screws a ton of small businesses. And worse yet, many manufacturers (brand names, that is) tell the actual manufacturers (some factory in China) that they can't sell those parts to other people, which is screwed up.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

ah yes, more govt over reach...the solution to all of our problems....

so heres the deal....you, as a consumer, have every right to repair whatever you want....i, as a manufacturer, have 0 obligation to assist you with that repair.

Great! Glad to hear it.

if you buy a videogame, do you feel you have a right to the source code too? thats what were talking about

No it isn't, as assembly code can be reverse engineered. It is a PITA, as when I worked in Windows Sustained Engineering, I owned all USB issues for Windows 7. Sometimes the bug was in a third party driver that I did not have the source code to. I had to dissassemble the code to prove that the third party driver was the culprit. I did so twice. Root cause analysis is so much harder without source, but it can be done.

When I worked on ProShare at Intel in the late 90s, there was a bug in some Microsoft component that was blocking us. So one of my co-workers edited the assembly file to fix it. Obviously we could not distribute, but if you were so inclined, you could fix software bugs on your own system.

One of my co workers at Intel would reverse engineer Microsoft APIs to see if they implemented what was documented.

Mark Russinovich developed a series of tools on sysinternals.com that required reverse engineering.

if sell a product, then sell you repair kits and provide schematics....i am....by default, giving you authorization to go ahead and repair it....regardless of your level of technical training.

the problem is, I as the manufacturer, am legally still on the hook if it malfunctions and you die.

so if you talk it apart, put it together wrong, take it diving, get hurt.....and sue me.......chances are, you are going to win that case against me (because courts in the US have a strong tendency to side with the consumer).....and now i am out a few million for your mistake

Is this theoretical or do you have case law to support this? If I replace my brakes and mess up, unless those brakes could be proven to be defective, I don't see how I can hold anyone else responsible.

in engineering, we work really hard to protect consumers, from themselves...thats partly the reason we have warning labels on everything.....people are stupid, and when they are victims of their stupidity, they blame everyone but themselves.

by restricting service kits, by restricting technical data....were not trying to scam you out of a few more bucks....we are trying to keep your dumb ass alive....and keep ourselves out of court.

So Deep 6 (and HOG) is trying to kill us? @cerich and @LandonL, I thought we were friends! Are my posts on SB that bad?!?!?!?!?!

 

[Bigbella]

In the past few years, there has been far more access to service kits, at least by retailers, than I can previously recall. It was originally like pulling teeth, to gain access, to many manufacturer's catalogues.

Dive Gear Express, for example, simply posts a warm, fuzzy, to go along with retail parts sales:

 

[M-Cameron]

Is this theoretical or do you have case law to support this? If I replace my brakes and mess up, unless those brakes could be proven to be defective, I don't see how I can hold anyone else responsible.

are you buying repair parts and getting how-to manuals right from Ford/Toyota/Honda corporate? ...or are you buying them from a 3rd party source?

i am pretty sure in the manual of every car sold in the last 30 years, its states somewhere in there to "have your car serviced by a licensed technician"....

they do that because if you hash it up and crash, Ford can say "well we told you not to service it yourself".....its about the onus of responsibility.

also, you wouldnt hold someone else responsible for your screw up....likely because you are a decent person....and not an ambulance chaser.

people will sue for any and all reasons.....lest we forget the woman who was awarded $2.7Mil because she spilled hot coffee on herself.
Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants - Wikipedia


regarding the business practices of HOG and Deep6.....thats a business decision they came to, and youd have to ask them for their motives...but im guessing they did a risk-reward analysis, and determined that they usually sell to more "tech" minded divers, who are generally more competent than your average diver, and their chances of being sued were relatively low, while their chances of losing sales if they didnt offer service kits was relatively high.

but does it make sense for Aqualung to sell service kits to some holiday diver whos never turned a wrench in their lives?.....i sure as hell wouldnt....

im not saying you shouldnt service your own gear, or do your own repair work on your cars......im saying, from a manufacturer perspective, there is generally little incentive to help you with that, and higher risk than if they just tell you to "have it serviced by a licensed technician"

 

[Manatee Diver]

people will sue for any and all reasons.....lest we forget the woman who was awarded $2.7Mil because she spilled hot coffee on herself.
Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants - Wikipedia

Anyone that cites that case of legal nonsense should be ignored outright, because they have zero understanding of the case.

 

[M-Cameron]

Anyone that cites that case of legal nonsense should be ignored outright, because they have zero understanding of the case.

way to just stick your fingers in your ear and yell "lalalalalala im not listening lalalalalala"

if you had a meaningful response to anything i just wrote, you would have done so....you can go back to being irrelevant now.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

are you buying repair parts and getting how-to manuals right from Ford/Toyota/Honda corporate? ...or are you buying them from a 3rd party source?

i am pretty sure in the manual of every car sold in the last 30 years, its states somewhere in there to "have your car serviced by a licensed technician"....

they do that because if you hash it up and crash, Ford can say "well we told you not to service it yourself".....its about the onus of responsibility.

also, you wouldnt hold someone else responsible for your screw up....likely because you are a decent person....and not an ambulance chaser.

people will sue for any and all reasons.....lest we forget the woman who was awarded $2.7Mil because she spilled hot coffee on herself.
Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants - Wikipedia


regarding the business practices of HOG and Deep6.....thats a business decision they came to, and youd have to ask them for their motives...but im guessing they did a risk-reward analysis, and determined that they usually sell to more "tech" minded divers, who are generally more competent than your average diver, and their chances of being sued were relatively low, while their chances of losing sales if they didnt offer service kits was relatively high.

but does it make sense for Aqualung to sell service kits to some holiday diver whos never turned a wrench in their lives?.....i sure as hell wouldnt....

im not saying you shouldnt service your own gear, or do your own repair work on your cars......im saying, from a manufacturer perspective, there is generally little incentive to help you with that, and higher risk than if they just tell you to "have it serviced by a licensed technician"

I'm going to be quick here.

So when a McDonald's has repeatedly been cited by the health department for providing coffee at a temperature that is not instantly consummable, and a woman spills coffee on her lap, that is her fault?

Your example fails address that.

And I was being facetious that Landon and Chris are trying to kill me, as you made that claim that companies that provide information/service kits are doing just that.

The company was founded to address a certain niche, and they are successful at it, and continue to grow.

 

[M-Cameron]

I'm going to be quick here.

So when a McDonald's has repeatedly been cited by the health department for providing coffee at a temperature that is not instantly consummable, and a woman spills coffee on her lap, that is her fault?

Your example fails address that.

if you go into a restaurant, and grab one of the steak knives by the blade, is the restaurant at fault for not telling you knives are sharp? do they have to tell you every warning of ever possible thing that can happen to you in their restaurant?.....or should they assume you have some level of common sense?

this is reinforcing my point.....people are stupid....and when stupid people do stupid things (like pouring hot coffee on their laps)...they hold everyone else responsible except for themselves.

the coffee they served was at "industry standards" for temperature.....and many restaurants were serving coffee at the same temp, or hotter...but somehow, its their fault some lady tried to hold coffee in her lap and it spilled.

you can get 3rd degree burns from liquid in 1 second at 156 degrees.....so even the coldest coffee on the market would have caused her 3rd degree burns.

this is why companies treat us like morons, and try to prevent us from doing moron things.....and when they cant prevent morons from being morons, they put warning labels on everything and refuse to sell you service kits.


you cant have your cake and eat it too.....you cant blame companies for your screw ups....then expect them to help you make even more screw ups.