This is an awesome resource, but I'm left wondering how to interpret the data. For instance I see that Microsoft paid for a bunch of lobbying for a bunch of things, and it's clear they had 2 meetings with NY Senators and Executive staff about S 4104. What I don't see is what they were advocating for. Are they for or against it? Did they push some language that would benefit them in the long run? All I can see so far is that they were at the table. I haven't seen the video just yet but I'm sure Louis will break it down.

I think in this case it's fair to assume all the donors here are against right to repair.

That’s a bad assumption. The “DIGITAL RIGHT TO REPAIR COALITION” and “ AGRIBUSINESS ASSOCIATION (NYS)“ were on that list. I’d find it hard to believe they were involved with neutering this bill.

I would still agree with you though, most of the orgs on that list were likely at the table attempting to ruin the bill.

Spectacular. Doing government as if it was a Sotheby’s auction. The law goes to the highest bidder.

Can confirm DIGITAL RIGHT TO REPAIR COALITION is Repair.org and was the opposition to TechNet and all the OEMs lobbying against this bill.

That's a good confirmation because misleadingly named organisations (and bills) have been a norm in politics for a long time.

Yes, my friend, we ought to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, since they gave us VSCode and GitHub. Why would they lobby for such an evil thing? Surely, this must be some grave misunderstanding!

Monopolies give things away to destroy competition, not to warm the hearts of consumers.

Seems to me like the parent comment was being sarcastic, though in fairness you never know on the internet.

That's a piss poor take. I see the "DIGITAL RIGHT TO REPAIR COALITION" on the list, shall we assume they were also against the right to repair?

We already know precisely how it happened. The governor made it happen and is fully responsible.

Lobbying in its current implementation is functionally equivalent to bribery. That doesn’t mean interest groups can’t talk to politicians. But the attention should be proportional to the people they represent.

For instance, I’m sure that the execs at Microsoft, and a subset of their employees, agree with their lobbying. But I don’t understand how politicians can justify the level of engagement with a big economic player, who represents a tiny amount of people. When we vote, we have one vote each. But when we lobby, our “votes” differ in several orders of magnitude.

When it comes to autocratic foreign regimes, we understand the risks and monitor for behavior that can hurt the nation. But corporations are also autocratic, sometimes nation-state sized, and their interests are often directly opposed to the interests of our citizens. Even from an economic perspective, corporations are semi-detached from their original host nation through tax planning and funneling of assets overseas. However, since their public identity appears shared, from a nationalist perspective, we seem to put our guard down even though they have both the incentives and abilities to harm us in similar ways.

This description is not politically biased, even though it may sound leftist in our bizarre political climate. But this is equally – if not more concerning – from a free market perspective. Corporations don’t just lobby against consumers, but also against the competition. In the case of right to repair, we don’t actually need Apple to provide cheap components and repairs, we just need to be able to get them elsewhere on the free market.

I love how the USA essentially rebranded bribery and corruption as "lobbying", so it can pretend corruption is something that only happens elsewhere.