[blobbers]

Right to repair feels like it's a battle of who owns a product after it is bought.

Everyone wanting to operate their business in the way SaaS or subscription service is really annoying.

Photoshop gets jealous of saas numbers so they put out the creative cloud. Printer companies authenticate their ink cartridges. Coffee makers only accept their own branded cartridges.

Right to repair, right to modify, it all comes down to ownership.

[userbinator]

I fully agree that this is just one of the many battles in a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely. People call it a conspiracy theory but the trend is very clear to see, and has been accelerating for the past few decades. Thus it is good to see some opposition showing up.

"You will own nothing, and be happy." -WEF

[fabianhjr]

In discourse big capital has done well to erase the distinction between personal and private property.

Big capital has been fighting to strengthen private property and eroding personal property.

- ¿Drawing a schematic of a thing you own for repair?

- ¿Creating a spare part to repair a thing you own?

Those infringe on companies private property so you must have no rights over your personal property.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Personal_property#/Personal_vers...

[pitaj]

I would say that intellectual property is not part of private property.

There's also no easy distinction made between private and personal property, and any attempt to define one is nonsensical. There are endless examples where something is both personal and private property, or rapidly switched between the two.

Yet another aspect of Marxist theory that fails to hold up to even the lightest scrutiny.

[LocalH]

Intellectual property is a misnomer. The word “property” contains some very physical connotations that ideas and media are not bound by. Unfortunately, too many powerful people have a vested interest in continuing to use the word “property” in conjunction with non-physical items.

[sacrosancty]

I think that's a bit of cultural bias there. Imagine a society without personal property, like some small tribe. Wouldn't they see our property rights as artificial? Maybe their "true" property would be something we don't even recognize like their honor or wife or other things they don't want to share with each other.

I have a wheelbarrow in my yard that I'm not using. Why can't anyone else use it? There's no natural reason why they couldn't. It's just there, they can take it and wheel dirt around in it. I might no even know it's happening, but my property rights say they're not allowed to.

I think the main feature of property is to disallow others from using it in a way that restricts your own use. For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you.

I wonder how you feel about medical information being free to copy? That's not property either, is it? Are you happy with no moral rights for subjects of photographs and no rights to privacy of medical information? Should patients "own" their medical records or should hospitals be free to use them however they like?

[ISO-morphism]

> I think the main feature of property is to disallow others from using it in a way that restricts your own use. For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you.

The main difference between the wheelbarrow and IP lies in the copies. If someone else uses my wheelbarrow I can't use it while they're using it, or they may damage it. If someone copies an mp3 of a song I performed, I still have my mp3.

We had a working economic model based on physical property and we've been crippling the wonderful ability to infinitely create zero-cost copies of digital artifacts in order to fit our existing model. It's not horrendous that we've done this, and I'd optimistically view it as a step on the road to something yet unrealized.

> medical data

That deals with privacy, which is a different can of worms.

[db48x]

> Imagine a society without personal property, like some small tribe. Wouldn't they see our property rights as artificial?

This is a common argument, but one that is ungrounded in reality. Ancient tribes were small and certainly had fewer (or no) written rules, but there is plenty of evidence that they had personal property. Grave goods are just one of the most obvious. Neolithic huts with fences built around them to keep the livestock safe are another. We have stories dating all the way back into prehistory of shepherds counting their sheep. Etc, etc.

[alexvoda]

> For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you.

Just because you own something does not mean you automatically have a right to receive the revenue you want.

Being undercut by free when selling copies of x is absolutely natural for a medium where producing any additional copy of item x is free and can be done by anyone.

Want to be paid for the original new content, then sell that. Plenty of new content is already being funded that way. And before IP existed, all creative content was funded that way.

What IP allows you is to instead of demanding a bounded ammount of compensation for a bounded ammount of creative output (demand payment per creative work), you instead can demand an unlimited ammount of compensation.

IP is monopoly rights and undermines physical property.

[LocalH]

Medical information has other relevant concerns besides who "owns" it. As a matter of fact, it can be hard (if not impossible) for an individual to receive a copy of their own medical records. There are privacy concerns that simply don't often apply to the types of data which are usually referred to as "intellectual property" (software, music, movies, literature).

"Intellectual property", as a term, also serves to further layman confusion on the topic. I can't count on all my appendages the number of times I've spoken to an average person (whether in person or via the internet) where they've said something about "copyrighting" a business name or other trademark. Let's call "intellectual property" what it really is - copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Each of those has a completely different framework of regulation and philosophy, and it doesn't really serve us to lump them all together into one term for most productive discourse on the topic.

[cturner]

The concept of property evolved independently in every civilisation that grew beyond a small tribe and predates the nation-state.

It exists to deal with the dynamics of scarce goods. If person a is using your wheelbarrow, then person b cannot use it as well. You can't raise cows on a piece of land, but also plant a crop of wheat there. This definition goes back thousands of years and is respected across cultures.

There is another practice that was respected across cultures for thousands of years: the free sharing and open remixing of songs, stories and ideas.

IP is a weaselly project to carry the advantages of property rights to non-scarce goods, and to things which were previously fiercely regarded as public domain. It creates a set of rights which did not previously exist and which created new benefits for people who were already elites.

"For IP, others selling copies would restrict your ability to sell copies as they undercut you." This does not follow from the argument you are making. Selling something is not a use of it. Carting things around in a wheelbarrow or playing a compact disk - these are examples of use.

Perhaps you bring some cultural bias to this conversation. Having grown up in a setting with IP, and having a career in a field where some people gain great advantage from IP, you have come to believe that it is reasonable to regard ideas as property.

But IP is an aberration, even in our time. It is not law in all places, it is not enforced well in the places where it is, and in those places people who are morally conscious and otherwise law-abiding routinely violate it.

IP is impractical to enforce equally, is inconsistent with the principle of live-and-let-live, it raises the barrier-of-entry to a range of industries, it grants extra privileges to existing elites, it is easily gamed by bad-faith actors, it is disrespected by the general population, it has at best a hand-wavey economic justification that is backed by no real evidence. IP is complicated when good laws are simple, and IP muddies the water for a concept that is a genuine foundation of our civilisation - property. IP fails all tests for what is reasonable law.

If the government were to say that black were white, this would not make it so. So it is with property.

[Retric]

Physical objects break down with use. That’s the natural impetus for personal property to be a thing. Ideas however don’t fail with use which is why no legal system has the concept of actually owning an idea rather than say getting a patent for a few years etc.

Intellectual property doesn’t exist, it’s all just privileges handed out at the whims of the the state the same way only Dentists can practice dentistry.

[jimmygrapes]

You contract out the use of the wheelbarrow so that you are aware it is not accessible.

[tremon]

I think that's just an unfortunate consequence of overloading in the English language (and others, btw). One of the meanings of the word "property" is just "ownership" and has nothing to do with the physicality of the items under discussion. In Dutch, it's called intellectueel eigendom which translates as ownership, not property. When the Dutch "eigendom" refers to physical items, it's usually used in the plural (e.g. mijn eigendommen == my belongings).

[pitaj]

Yes, that was exactly what I meant. Intellectual property is not property, and is therefore not private property.

[kurikuri]

What about this is ‘Marxist?’

[pitaj]

The parent comment linked to "personal vs private property" on the page. The section specifically cites "socialist, Marxist, and most anarchist philosophies".

[scythe]

This is indeed a battle. One could even, by identifying patterns, refer to it as a "class struggle". But isn't it a little bit too telekinetic to suggest that the World Economic Forum is working to advance its ideology through Harley-Davidson?

What's happening is more like a lot of bugs trying to get into a box of food. The marketers and their lawyers have always used whatever tricks are at their disposal to sell one product and ship another, and if the latter is just a use license, so much the better. They don't need to be actively coordinated; their actions naturally support one another by damaging the box.

>The FTC also alleged that Harley-Davidson failed to fully disclose all of the terms of its warranty in a single document, requiring consumers to contact an authorized dealership for full details.

>By telling consumers their warranties will be voided if they choose third-party parts or repair services, the companies force consumers to use potentially more expensive options provided by the manufacturer. This violates the Warranty Act , which prohibits these clauses unless a manufacturer provides the required parts or services for free under the warranty or is granted an exception from the FTC.

The Warranty Act was enacted in 1975. This is not a new fight. It is an ongoing conflict that requires each generation to be engaged in defending the box and repairing it.

[unlikelymordant]

The whole "you will own nothing and be happy" was part of what amounted to a creative writing exercise by economics researchers on possible futures. Certainly not some guiding principle of the world economic forum.

[segfaultbuserr]

+1. I think it’s misinterpreted without context. The quote came from a thought experiment about an extrapolated and exaggerated version of the future based on current tendencies in society. In that universe, everything is provided as a service, SaaS-style, and gives no control to their customers. Other topics in the same presentation included "what if personal privacy becomes a luxury?", where most people accept the invasiveness of such services in exchange of convenience, and only a minority can even afford their alternatives in practice.

The authors were not saying it’s the society that the World Economic Forum should be working to create, just that it seems remotely possible, certainly not a plan for a conspiracy. Rather, it’s more similar to a fiction like The Brave New World... On second thought, regardless of whether you treat it as a fiction or as an actual conspiracy, you get the same message, so I’d say the thought experiment is successful in that aspect.

[userbinator]

Do you think it was a warning, in the same way as 1984? Perhaps if it came from the EFF, FSF, or similar groups I would think of it as such, but given who the WEF represents, I highly doubt that. It is as much a thought experiment as it is an invitation to advance the state of "Everything as a Service" rent-seeking among those in power. Their vision of utopia is our dystopia.

[unlikelymordant]

It wasnt written by the WEF or anyone who works for the WEF, the story was written by danish MP Ida Auken. The stated goal of the exercise was to provoke thought. Which Id say it has done.

[alexvoda]

The point segfaultbuserr and unlikelymordant are making and I support, is that the WEF is not a conspiracy.

Yes, it is in the interest of many owners of corporations that own IP to push for XaaS model, a rent everything model. And some of those may attend the WEF.

But the WEF is not a conspiratorial group. And that often quoted and misunderstood fragment is not some declaration of their values.

People like to hate the WEF, or Soros, or the illuminati, or whatever because it gives the enemy a face and it directs the anger.

The reality is that most of the things damaging humanity are not masterminded by someone or some group. They happen organically due to the various self-interests of individuals.

Edit: Just to make it extra clear.

The difference is not in the interestes of the members of a group. You will find wide agreement that wealthy and powerfull people are interested in getting even wealthier and even more powerfull. Or at the very least retain all of their priviledges.

The difference is that conspiracy theories presupppose that the group has a structure, that the group can coordinate. And by extension, that the group has a leader, which if only you could KO, all of the worlds problems would be solved.

The structure is not there. And even if you eliminate all the individuals designated as enemies by a conspiracy theory, the greed and the pride is still there and they will be replaced by others.

[segfaultbuserr]

> Do you think it was a warning, in the same way as 1984? [...] Their vision of utopia is our dystopia.

I think it was a neutral thought experiment, and you're free to make your own interpretation, it's neither an utopia nor a dystopia.

> It is as much a thought experiment as it is an invitation to advance the state of "Everything as a Service" rent-seeking among those in power

I don't disagree here.

[lelandfe]

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the...

"We asked experts from our Global Future Councils for their take on the world in 2030" is not much of a preface, if this was as purposefully exaggerated as you're saying.

[petre]

Isn't this something communists strived for? Common ownership of the means of production. It's interesting to see it in a capitalist context.

[glogla]

Communists strived for common ownership by a classless society. They believed the progress would be feudalism -> capitalism -> communism.

In this new vision, the billionaires own everything and others owning nothing - at which point they become serfs. It is a regression to feudalism.

[wongarsu]

If anything the means of production are even more owned by capitalists. A copy of Photoshop is arguably a mean of production, but where previously everyone owned their copy they now rent it from Adobe for a fee.

If anything, it's the logical continuation of the trends Marx saw.

[ratww]

Even under communism the collective ownership was for the "means of production", not for they call "personal property" aka "things you bought".

[drstewart]

>"You will own nothing, and be happy." -WEF

And studies show the more stuff you own, the happier you are, so this is a direct attack on happiness. Experiences don't matter, stuff does.

[cptskippy]

> I fully agree that this is just one of the many battles in a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely. People call it a conspiracy theory but the trend is very clear to see, and has been accelerating for the past few decades.

I think the conspiracy theory is imagining a bunch of wealthy elites sitting around in a dark room Illuminati style discussing how they can turn everyone into serfs renting everything from them.

The reality is that our capitalist economy is very short sighted and wants quarterly profits and returns. Subscriptions provide predictable and constant income, you can tweak the later both by raising prices or increasing subscribers.

[trhway]

>a long war by the elite to erase private ownership completely

well, according to Marxism that is a way to socialism :) And USSR was exactly it - a country of wage-slaves not owning anything and ruled by the elite.

[amelius]

The problem is products that are tethered by the manufacturer.

This tethering should not be allowed. Anything that a manufacturer does to a product after it is sold should in principle be possible through another party.

[soared]

This only makes sense if a company is no longer liable for damages if a product has been modified. Then we need to define for every product what is considered a modification, and figure out how to factually determine that.

It’s not as simple as it seems.

[analog31]

At least in the case of motorcycles, they are close enough to cars (and bicycles) that there is probably an extensive history of case law and perhaps even regulations already in place. Car makers are obligated to provide parts to third party mechanics and even consumers. So this is not uncharted legal territory.

If nothing else, other industries wrestling with right-to-repair should probably assume that they can model themselves after the automotive industry.

There are other industries that have long traditions of repairability, such as home appliances, gas powered garden equipment, and so forth. I've repaired most of the appliances in my house at some point. I've found replacement parts to be readily available and not exorbitant.

[petre]

> Car makers are obligated to provide parts to third party mechanics and even consumers

Same goes for John Deere.

[asiachick]

I don't know where to draw the line but assuming self driving cars are a thing they'll arguably need constant new data and constant updates so unlike most cars to date, they aren't things you'll just be able to buy and the sever your connection with the company you bought it from.

Motorcycles are probably different for the time being. Not expecting people to really want self driving motorcycles.

Like I said, I don't really know where to draw the line. I hate that my multi-colored LED lights have an app that talks to a server. I don't run that app, but my iPhone tells me I need up update the lights and to do so I need to get a 3rd party app. Is that another thing where regulation should require being able to update without an account or is the fact that they had to spend time making the update mean I need some kind of relationship with them?

[MrStonedOne]

>I don't know where to draw the line but assuming self driving cars are a thing they'll arguably need constant new data and constant updates so unlike most cars to date, they aren't things you'll just be able to buy and the sever your connection with the company you bought it from.

That sounds like an argument against self driving cars.

[wrycoder]

Try buying grease to lubricate your mixer from Kitchenaid!

[CSMastermind]

Is that a thing?

I just bought a new Kitchenaid mixer (albeit a commercial one) and it included instructions on how to tear it down for both maintenance and cleaning.

[wrycoder]

I’ve twice tried to buy grease from KA for my K45, a home machine. The second time I decided to be pretty persistent, just for amusement. I kept the associate tied up for half an hour, but, no, they won’t sell to a non-commercial customer. Reasons given were I could hurt myself or damage ‘my’ machine. I’d have to be a KA certified appliance repair shop.

Finally, food-grade grease appeared on Amazon, so I got that.

It’s very different for commercial users, because the machines have to be lubed regularly, and bakers can’t wait around.

(The famous third party service of McD’s ice cream machines comes to mind.)

[R0b0t1]

Just search for "food grade grease," no reason to go through Kitchenaid.

[mnadkvlb]

I will have to write-off my rights, if my 20 bucks coffee machine kills me due to using a re-usable cartridge instead of the one blessed by the vendor /s

[soared]

Consider if kuerig sells a commercial coffee maker to McDonald’s. McDonald’s modified the machine’s hold time to prolong the lifetime of coffee. McDonald’s serves scalding hot coffee to a customer, it spills, she sues.

From kuerig’s perspective it’s a better decision to build a machine that cannot be modified, as they may be at blame and will have to spend millions on lawyer fees proving McDonald’s modified and misused their product.

[deckeraa]

In that case Kuerig's legal argument would be straightforward:

- The injury due to the coffee burn was due entirely to the elevated temperature.

- The machine would not have served at the scalding temperature had McDonald's not made the modification.

- The modification was specifically made to raise the temperature to a level that turned out to be unsafe.

The question of whether a modification was made would almost certainly come out in court because a McDonald's employee would be unlikely to perjure themselves over it.

Therefore, all the liability would be on McDonald's.

Though I do see your point about legal costs being incurred even if the case of Kuering being completely innocent. It seems that having a culture instilled with a nebulous concept of "liability" encourages people to limit other's ability to take their own risks.

(Edit: formatting)

[blobbers]

I’m not even sure the liability should be on McDonalds. In stupid America, everyone tries to blame someone. Sometimes it’s just you spilled your own coffee on you. If it was a McDonald’s employee that spilled it on you, different story.

There doesn’t need to be “walk don’t run” signs everywhere, and liability waivers for every activity.

[coredog64]

Contemporaneous with the McD coffee case, there was a lady who sued Bunn-O-Matic as the deepest pockets in a similar coffee from a convenience store case. So there’s even settled case law WRT equipment manufacturer liability.

[Barrin92]

aren't we doing this already? When you try to overclock your CPU or GPU it says "if you do this you void your warranty", and that's pretty much it. It's not that simple but it's also not that hard, there's often a pretty big line between trivial modifications or modifications that might fry whatever device you're dealing with.

If there's a gray line it'll come down to some third party judging it but I don't think this is any different from say, verifying an insurance claim.

[toss1]

EXACTLY

If you don't want anyone else to work on your products, then you need to only rent or lease them out.

If you claim to "sell" the product to the customer, then THE CUSTOMER OWNS IT, and should be able to do whatever T.F. they want, including decompiling, reverse-engineering, breaking locks or codes, etc.. The only thing they should not be able to do is manufacture and resell copies of it.

And, if you only lease/rent your product, you are responsible for disposal at the end.

Seems like a reasonable distinction and deal to make.

Acting like you are selling something when you are really only leasing it out, and withholding information and rights to the object is dishonest.

Just because it is profitable does not mean that it is right.

This needs to be codified into law.

[daniel-cussen]

Yeah the word "sell" and "buy" is false advertising right there, it's very ingrained that buying and selling imply absolute ownership, all the way down to chattel slavery, where "buy" and "sell" are insulting. Very very ingrained.

[Spivak]

What you’re describing is already the case, the law you want is that people who sell things have to give you the keys, tools, specs, and parts necessary to do the modifying.

[joshmarinacci]

Not true in the US. Thanks to the DMCA it is illegal to break encryption on objects you own.

[toss1]

Can you please tell me in what country that is the case, and to what extent?

What do they do about vendors that don't cooperate, like John Deere, or Sony?

(Serious question, not sarc. It definitely is not the case in the US, and the country that already has such laws might be a good indicator of a good place to move).

[blobbers]

I mean the whole PlayStation Blu-ray debacle basically drove that home… sorry referring to the encryption reply.

[BoorishBears]

Authenticating cartridges is so 2008

Leasing ink on a per page basis is in now: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/cv/instantink

[blobbers]

The ink disappears if you don’t pay your subscription fee.

It’s amazing libraries have managed to stay true to their goal and not charge membership fees. Should authors be getting residuals on every read of their book in the same way every Netflix play of a movie pays an actor???

[petre]

The movie industry would cease to be an industry otherwise. It would become all indie movies, Cannes and the like and maybe some state sponsored propaganda. So no Spiderman or X-men for you, just movies about real life, Sweedish movies about the super rich getting marooned on an island after a storm and ending up at the mercy of the housekeeper.

[tingol]

Uhm, that would be great. Not having my Cinema filled with comic book (or whatever the flavor of the decade is) trash but quality passion projects from people that actually care about art sounds amazing. And most money would go to actual artists and not faceless mega corps.

[lelanthran]

> Sweedish movies about the super rich getting marooned on an island after a storm and ending up at the mercy of the housekeeper.

TBH, I'd see that.

[petre]

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7322224/

[blobbers]

This movie is about to get hackernews'ed ;)

The residuals for whatever service will stream it are going through the roof. Funded. Get ready for swedish marooned family part 2!!!!

[blobbers]

Did not realize that; I think you likely know more about movie economics than I do. Why only movies about real life? (or said swedish maroon stories)

[nebula8804]

This is actually not such a bad idea for liquid inks. Terrible idea for toner though.

Those liquid cartridges are always drying up essentially causing you to throw away money you spent. For this type of cartridge getting the cartridge replaced frequently puts the burden on them and saves you money if you don't print much.

For toner it makes more sense to just buy the cartridge and hold on to it.

[BoorishBears]

I mean the cartridges could just be designed to last longer, I'd bet you their high capacity models for this program do since now the cost benefit leans towards that...

[nebula8804]

Yeah I was going to address this but deleted that part of my comment. Fundamentally I think there are design limitations.

I used to work in IT at a public school district 15 years ago where they had hundreds of Epson printers with fixed printheads. This saved costs in the cartridges but the inks(which were designed to produce excellent photographic results) had some substance that caused them to clog up these very microscopic printheads essentially rendering the printheads and thus the printer destroyed. This happened a lot on printers where people would only print once in a blue moon.

Seems like you can have two options: poor quality but thin water based inks. I'd argue Laser had taken that market away from inkjet for good. The other option is hight quality photographic ink that is much thicker and gels up easier. Not to mention the printheads are more delicate due to their finer pitch.

[chongli]

That would require some incredible chemistry and engineering. It's just a fact of life that liquids are volatile substances and not shelf-stable once the seal is broken. Toner is superior because it's an inert solid powder.

[BoorishBears]

You realize there's options between "lasts indefinitely" and "dries up if you don't use it every day" right?

Even within different lines from the same manufacturers I remember that varied because of the design of the cartridge.

And similarly commercial printers would be more aggressive about automatically ensuring the cartridge ran every once in a while than home ones. All things they could (and probably did) tweak when moving to this model

[chongli]

It's not the cartridge that's the problem, it's the print head. Inkjet printheads have a large number of tiny nozzles that are fed by tiny lines (which resemble a ribbon cable). The Achilles' heel of the technology is that ink can dry up inside the lines and the nozzles and destroy the print head, necessitating replacement. To combat this printer manufacturers have designed the printers with automatic ink-flushing routines which keep them clear of drying ink. This wastes a lot of ink if you aren't printing every day.

It's fine to want something better. I, personally, gave up on inkjet printers and switched to laser a long time ago. I have only ever been an occasional printer but I always want a printer available for when I need it. I have no interest in photo printing either, so a laser is perfect for my needs. Perhaps you have different needs. I can imagine it being very frustrating if you want to print the occasional photo and are always finding the ink cartridge empty or dried up. Personally, if I wanted to occasionally print a photo I would probably get it done professionally rather than waste money on yet another inkjet printer.

[weq]

bananas!!!

[mcv]

I don't think that's the issue in this case, though. This is about a more subtle issue.

From what I understand from the article, Harley and Westinghouse aren't stopping you from repairing your own stuff, it's just that doing so voids their warranty. Presumably on the logic that you may have made changes that they can't be expected to support, or inexpert repairs could have caused damage.

And there's some logic to that, but it ignores the fact that if the item is still under warranty, those independent repairs should have been done under warranty too. (I guess emergency repairs where the owner can't afford to wait for the official repairs are the primary reason for such repairs?) And also that such repairs could have been done expertly or have been very limited, so revoking warranty for them may still be unjustified.

But I'd say there's a bit of grey area here. I don't think you can expect manufacturers to clean up other people's mess for free under warranty.

[FPGAhacker]

I don’t disagree but this is about warranties. Apple etc make it difficult to just repair, because they glue stuff together and invent weird screws that need specialized tools. Just hard to repair.

This legal action is about Harley saying your warranty is void if you have repairs done through a third party.

I mean the law says whatever it says and that’s the end of it, but it sounds like crap to me.

If I sell you a widget and I guarantee it’ll work for 5 years as long as you have me repair it instead of bob the janitor, I have a hard time seeing the problem. Frankly I think if you have bob the janitor repair your widget it’s now on bob to provide a warranty.

But what I think doesn’t matter, whatever the law requires is.

[NonNefarious]

That's not the point at all. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty act arose out of scams perpetrated by car manufacturers, who tried to invalidate warranties unless you bought "Ford" oil or "Chevrolet" tires.

This goes beyond third-party repairs. The law says the company can't invalidate a warranty even if the user MODIFIED the product in question, unless the modification caused the issue for which the customer is seeking warranty service.

So the problem is this attempt to invalidate an entire warranty because of irrelevant actions the owner might have taken.

[rasz]

Is a concept of consumer rights really that alien to you?

>I guarantee it’ll work for 5 years as long as you have me repair it instead of bob the janitor

Its called a lease aka I dont own a thing, I just pay rent. https://www.gmfinancial.com/en-us/business-financing/busines...

[FPGAhacker]

I’m not saying you can’t have bob the janitor fix it. I’m just not going to guarantee bob the janitor didn’t screw the whole thing up. But knock yourself out, have bob fix whatever. It’s your widget.

[rasz]

Its on you to prove bob the janitor caused damage I want fixed under warranty.

[tbran]

Realistically, while it's "about warranties", it's also about making more money: "How can we deny more warranty claims and make more money?"

It also starts from the assumption that the "authorized" repairer can repair something better than an unauthorized repairer, which is silly.

Also see this comment for a practical take:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31856699

[bobthepanda]

At least in the consumer foods space, Juicero put paid to going too far in this direction when the product reviewers found you could just as easily manually squish the bags to make juice.

[mytailorisrich]

The case is really about abusive restrictions on warranties by attempting to void warranties if repairs were made by independent dealers.

I think it was deemed abusive partly because independent dealers are deemed skilled professionals. But I also thing that it might not have been a restriction on the "right to repairs" if warranty had been void if you had tried to repair yourself (and perhaps they do have such a clause as well).

[BiteCode_dev]

Yes, all the companies are rent seeking.

They don't want having to keep producing value to deserve the money, they want to just cash in, indefinitely, like nobles used to do.

[JoeAltmaier]

Left out, walled gardens for phones.