More Details On How Tech Lobbyists Lobotomized NY’s Right To Repair Law With Governor Kathy Hochul’s Help
from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept
The good news: last December New York State finally passed a landmark “right to repair” bill providing American consumers some additional protection from repair monopolies. The bad news: before the bill was passed, corporate lobbyists worked with New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to covertly water the bill down almost to the point of meaninglessness.
Grist received documentation showing how Hochul specifically watered the bill down before passage to please technology giants after a wave of last-minute lobbying:
Draft versions of the bill, letters, and email correspondences shared with Grist by the repair advocacy organization Repair.org reveal that many of the changes Hochul made to the Digital Fair Repair Act are identical to those proposed by TechNet, a trade association that includes Apple, Google, Samsung, and HP among its members. Jake Egloff, the legislative director for Democratic New York state assembly member and bill sponsor Patricia Fahy, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and bill drafts shared with Grist.
The changes all directly reflect requests made by Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM and other companies desperate to thwart the right to repair movement from culminating in genuinely beneficial legislation. All of these industry giants are keen on monopolizing repair to drive up revenues, but like to hide those motivations (and the resulting environmental harms) behind flimsy claims of consumer privacy and security.
Among their asks: numerous cumbersome intellectual property protections, as well as the elimination of a requirement that manufacturers provide device owners and independent repair providers with “documentation, tools, and parts” needed to access and reset digital locks that impede the diagnosis, maintenance or repair of covered electronic devices.
Additional restriction added by industry and Hochul at the last second force consumers to buy entire “repair assemblages” instead of being able to buy just the independent parts they need, which advocates say further undermines the law (imagine being forced to buy an entire computer motherboard when just a single component is broken).
The bill already failed to include vehicles, home appliances, farm equipment or medical devices — all sectors rife with obnoxious attempts to monopolize repair via DRM or by making diagnostics either expensive or impossible. Between that and these last minute changes the bill is more ceremonial than productive, and yet another clear example of how normalized U.S. corruption cripples meaningful reform.
Filed Under: hardware, kathy hochul, legislation, new york, repair monopolies, right to repair, technology
Companies: technet
Comments on “More Details On How Tech Lobbyists Lobotomized NY’s Right To Repair Law With Governor Kathy Hochul’s Help”
‘Grist received documentation showing how Hochul specifically watered the bill down before passage to please technology giants’ and receiving a massive contribution to her ‘campaign fund’. yeah, of course she did! as with the rest of them, doesn’t give a toss for those who elected her and their rights!!
The premise that this form of customer service is good for business is a bit short sighted. The thinking is that this will bring in more profit from the repairs that only they can perform, but it ignores their competition assuming no collusion (lol). Also this thinking is similar to the Broken Windows Fallacy.
Many years ago, IBM released data on their new personal computer which hobbyists and entrepreneurs picked up and ran with, resulting in the vibrant PC business sector driving innovation in hardware and software. None of that would have happened if IBM had tried squeezing every dollar out of it. Lessons learned? LMAO!
Re:
They didn’t release anything. The PC was an entirely off-the-shelf build except for the BIOS which IBM wrote.
In the age of robotics and automation, manufacturing is set to evolve without the 20th century greed.
I believe the slogan was “robots building robots” about a decade ago, but that may have morphed into “well engineered designs being mass produced using simple processes”.
In many cases, the consumer is satisfied with a product that “just works”. If the product is too complicated, it will be replaced by simple engineering that “just works”.
The farmers are a perfect example. They will prosper with simplified designs that perform the tasks that are needed with simplified engineering. Productivity is directly correlated to uptime in many areas. That’s a solid mantra in the 21st century. Disposible commerce already had a limited use lifecycle, when well designed products could inevitably last a lifetime.
No, a farmer isn’t a perfect example. A modern farm today needs advanced technology to make a profit, because a few percent difference in yield may be the line between filing for bankruptcy or having a small profit that can be reinvested into the farm and technology to stay afloat.
Re:
You are free to read into it what you wish. The dead soil, herbicide, pesticide and GMO issues not withstanding.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/16/doj_deere_repair/
Even data pilfering is brought up in some cases.
https://nfu.org/2021/05/24/farmers-deserve-the-right-to-repair-their-tractors/
“Why buy new?” is what some farmers have opted for.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/09/23/right-to-repair-why-wyoming-farmers-are-buying-old-tractors-instead-of-new-ones/
The 21st century already provides innovation to bypass much of the diseased farming practices. The water woes in california/southwest have an interesting perspective.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/foreign-owned-farms-draining-southwest-aquifers-feed-cattle-overseas
Interesting times indeed.
Eh… computer motherboard might have been a bad example to use there…
If the component is something that’s not apart of the board itself (i.e. SDD or GPU) the idea sort of works… but that’s also ignoring the possibility of the component taking out the motherboard as well.
If it’s a component in the motherboard itself, the general options are getting it sent in for a likely costly RMA (if you can) or buying a new one.
For all the money being passed around
Why the Hell are we paying our Representatives?
This person took Bill, passed by the state congress and Augmented it. Which means its not the same Bill.
What I’m reading is that come the next election none of the public needs to donate to her election fund since it seems she’d already got a number of corporate sponsors secured.
Fuck Kathy Hochul and the John Deere she rode in on.
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Anyone who uses the term “intelletual property” is almost surely either bamboozled by it, or trying to bamboozle you. That term lumps together several disparate laws which are hardly related at all, in order to make you believe in a fictitious principle that they
supposedly all reflect.
See https://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
and https://gnu.org/philosophy/komongistan.html
for more explanation.
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