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

[lowwall]

Although I agree with your assessment of the scuba situation in this, I would rather not have had to use workarounds. The dark period we had in scuba is what is prompting this for other industries, as they are in them now.

All may be a moot point, because it is only an executive order so the next president can change it back, or it could be decided in the courts if a manufacturer has the money to fight it.

There's no actual rules as of yet. Here's the relevant text of the Order:

(h) To address persistent and recurrent practices that inhibit competition, the Chair of the FTC, in the Chair's discretion, is also encouraged to consider working with the rest of the Commission to exercise the FTC's statutory rulemaking authority, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, in areas such as:
...

(ii) unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items, such as the restrictions imposed by powerful manufacturers that prevent farmers from repairing their own equipment;

 

[lowviz]

(ii) unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items, such as the restrictions imposed by powerful manufacturers that prevent farmers from repairing their own equipment;

Sweet Jesus (Allah)!

Question: How long will it take the politicians to get from agriculture to recreational diving?

 

[lowviz]

Maybe farmers need to pay more for a "jailbroken" tractor that isn't collecting their data.

Wow. I was biting my tongue overlong on your post. Obviously you have never spoken to a loam soil farmer.

RTFM!

 

[greeniguana]

I don't think "strawman" means what you think it means.

My example was both on point and actually occurs on a regular basis. You can read some examples here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...deere-over-who-gets-to-fix-an-800-000-tractor

I don't think your article proves the point you think it does

 

[Schwob]

To those that seem to oppose the government being involved in pushing a „right to repair“ of sorts, what exactly is the issue you see? Surely, you cannot possibly think you are the only one capable of repair or of finding someone who is? Big part of the point supposedly us that parts should become available, not just whole assemblies (i. e. heater for car seat as opposed to new seat with complete harness). And it ain‘t do great in the car industrie yet either… but better than in so e areas, like chips for apple pcbs…

 

[BoundForElsewhere]

One a general note, it would be nice if this inspired people to move away from the "disposable lifestyle". I get such satisfaction in fixing things that otherwise would be thrown out. One less thing ending up in the ocean, in my opinion.

Most regulators are so simple and the info / parts are available online, I just don't see any reason to hand it off to a shop that may or may not have any more experience than you do.

 

[The Chairman]

In all my time on this earth, I've never had any object that Ive said "gee, I wish I could fix this but I'm not allowed".

When they did this to the automotive industry, it opened up independent shops. Until then, manufacturers could require you to come to them for an oil change or void the warranty. Now, you just need proof of an oil change, like a shop or part invoice. Why is this important? I used to have to explain to many customers that my shop working on their car wasn't going to void their warranty. To this day, dealerships will say things like "have your work done by us to keep your warranty valid!" It's misleading at best. I was an ASE (NIASE) Master Certified Auth Tech, Truck Tech, and Machinist. I didn't need them except as a marketing strategy.

Want to get trained and parts for your reg?

Training is fine, but it shouldn't be a qualifier to buy parts. Regulators are simple feedback mechanisms. Compare that to GM's E2SE carburetor, which required no training certificate, and you'll get an idea of just how elegant and easy regs are to work on. We called it the Spaghetti Carb, it was so confusaled.
The first reg I ever rebuilt was in 1969. It was actually a big part of me learning how to dive from Master Cheif Williams. The Navy was tossing out a bunch of Healthways regs and they were ours for free. We just had to get them working. We spent more time on learning the reg than in the pool. If a 12-year-old can disassemble/reassemble a reg, how hard can it be? Other than the odd freeflow on first use in a while, I never had a problem with that reg. I wish I still had it.

 

[flymolo]

I don't think your article proves the point you think it does

It seems like you just didn't read the article. It illustrates the point pretty well.

 

[greeniguana]

Farmers can repair 90% of their tractor now, including parts. What they want access to by this legislation is the proprietary source code firmware. I'm not advocating for or against this, but can see both sides of the argument. After all, the farmer agreed to purchase the tractor with the proprietary code loaded on it. This code no doubt helps the farmers productivity (GPS navigation, site specific settings....) so they get a benefit from it (otherwise they would just use an Ox towed plow). The tractor companies put R&D money into their code development for this reason.

Think about Microsoft Windows OS. You can't have windows OS source code. But, if you want to "repair" your own source code, you're welcome to download and use Linux. Will you get the same productivity benefit from Linux windowsows? Maybe.

But this is all well beyond the philosophical scope of buying a baggie of orings for your regulator or an air filter for your truck...

 

[SlugLife]

To those that seem to oppose the government being involved in pushing a „right to repair“ of sorts, what exactly is the issue you see? Surely, you cannot possibly think you are the only one capable of repair or of finding someone who is? Big part of the point supposedly us that parts should become available, not just whole assemblies (i. e. heater for car seat as opposed to new seat with complete harness). And it ain‘t do great in the car industrie yet either… but better than in so e areas, like chips for apple pcbs…

I answered that question in the 2nd post in this thread:

I'll remain skeptical of any government action, but from a super-high-level, I support the general concept. The devil might be in the details.

• Forcing companies to give out schematics could get into trade-secrets, but if it's just repair manuals, perhaps that's fine.
• The idea that self-repair doesn't void warranties seems odd.
• Companies might resort to making their products more difficult to disassemble and re-assemble, potentially requiring special and expensive tools. Although it's likely some companies do this already anyway.
• This is an executive order that doesn't actually do anything at this time.
• Depending on the wording, it could cause unexpected legal problems in other industries. For example, if poorly worded it might force companies to open-source their software, which I understand would make some people excited, but would allow foreign companies to clone American products with relative ease and pose security risks.

I'll try phrasing it one other way:

• It's the fine print of any bill you should be concerned about, not the name of a bill. It's like the current "for the people act" or "patriot act" or "covid relief" or many other bills where the superficial mainstream media marketing claims it's one thing, but the fine-print reveals it to be something entirely different.
• Next is, is the concept of "rights vs obligations." (Some say positive-rights vs negative-rights, but calling both "rights" just make the term meaningless). (1) People should have the right to repair products they own? Of course, seems reasonable, otherwise do they really own it? (2) Companies should be forced to .... hold up. As soon as you use force, you need to be absolutely 100% sure, because you're taking away rights from individuals, and granting governments powers they could (and often do) selectively abuse.