I feel like they had to exempt those ones to avoid the lobbyists. I think this is a good first step. First, it applies to all new industries that pop up. Also, I think it will be good to collect evidence that right to repair benefits consumers and the environment. That might provide the footing the state would need to fight for right for repair for those specific products

Agricultural product producers are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to "right to repair". There's no reason why farmers shouldn't be able to fix their own equipment. These companies make it so farmers can't fix their tractors, they have to go to a dealership. Farmers that, for over a hundred years, have been doing repairs on their own in the field (literally) to get their tractor working again so harvest finishes, still aren't allowed to fix their own equipment. It's not a "reasonable" exemption when there is decades of precedence. Adding a computer to these things should not stop someone from doing this work, and there's no reasonable explanation why someone shouldn't be able to repair something they've had the rights to repair for decades.

Agricultural equipment falls into industrial equipment which has different liability concerns for the manufacturer.

If you modify a Ford truck and that modification kills you, you're liable.

If you modify a John Deer tractor and John Deer didn't do everything in their power to stop you from making an unsafe modification, they're liable.

Furthermore, if a farm worker gets killed, maimed, injured from the framer's modification, the farmer is immune from liability and it is still John Deer that would be liable.

https://nationalaglawcenter.org/workers-compensation-for-agr...

> Whether or not someone is eligible for workers’ compensation depends on their state and the industry they work in. There are no requirements at the federal level that mandate states to have workers’ compensation laws. Nevertheless, every state, except for Texas, requires most employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. However, the majority of state workers’ compensation laws specifically exclude or limit agricultural employers from the workers’ compensation requirement.

Those liability laws need to be corrected.

Industrial operators who modify their equipment are not children, they should be responsible for their actions and trusted to repair it.

Yep - that's where the legal fix needs to start. Until people making the changes are liable for the changes they make to industrial equipment (and this includes things like cranes and generators and such that also have similar issues of repair), the industrial equipment makers are going to be very hard to persuade to support right to repair as it puts them in the spot of even more liability.

And that same reasoning applies to a Nintendo Switch? How many people died from self-repaired Joy-Cons?

I was only addressing the agricultural equipment part.

I suspect that the argument that gaming consoles made was that it is necessary for them to be able to restrict access to repair because failing to do so would make them unable to enforce intellectual property and copy protection on their equipment as required by licenses that they have from publishers.

"This game can only be played in Japan because of {content/licensing}". Enabling full repairs would mean that someone could more easily modify their device to present itself as a Japanese version and now the company and maker is liable for content that is allowed in Japan but illegal elsewhere.

Again, this is an "I suspect" - I don't know for sure what argument they're making - just trying to channel the mind of the corporate lawyers (which isn't an entirely pleasant way to be thinking).

Do you have any references for the equipment manufacturer's liability? I find it hard to believe your point as written.

Product Liability in the Farm Equipment Industry - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY

Pay close attention to the standards section and the verdict allocation of case study #1.

> Farmer, arguably the person most at fault, is essentially immune from liability. This would be true in most states due to Workers Comp

> Jury cannot attribute % of fault to Gonzales because he used Employer's equipment. This would not be true in most states.

> Jury wishing to give Gonzales "something" has only Bush Hog and Massey Ferguson to fault. Cannot do a % reduction for fault of Farmer or Gonzales

Thanks for the link, but I still think there's enough nuance in the court system (in any country) to recognise that a manufacturer shouldn't always be held liable for a system just because their logo is on it. There's no law dictating that manufacturers have a duty to make farming equipment impervious to mechanics' failures, and unless there's a clear indication that courts will interpret some law this way, I wouldn't bet on it.

Even in this case, one of the lines of argument seems to have been that the manufacturer was aware of pre-existing safety issues and injuries, yet did not recall the product or adjust its design. That's certainly different than a one-off unauthorised modification blowing up.

this is a first step, but its a step to disjoin the incentives of farmers and consumers on the ballot.

> this is a first step, but its a step to disjoin the incentives of farmers and consumers on the ballot.

How does this disjoin? Assuming it becomes popular, wouldn't both parties be in favor of future legislation to remove the carveouts?

Consumers won't feel the pressure, so there will be less solidarity and therefore less political will. Very nasty manipulation tactic.

See also Medicare offering significantly more healthcare for old people, removing them from the pool of voters motivated to pass Medicare for all type legislation.

Lots of examples of “cracking” the voting population to stall political will.

Why are lobbyists even allowed to lobby? It's plain corruption.

Lobbyists aren't necessarily bad. They're _supposed_ to be there to educate those who make decisions. But they go far far beyond that and we need to regulate them massively.

> we need to regulate them massively

If you put the blame on the lobbyists then no regulator can save you, because you forgive corruptable regulators.

When you want to be educated on a product do you ever look to the marketing produced by the sellers for that education?

The US was NEVER a democracy. It was founded as a “democratic republic”. And basically operates as a republic, in which the aristocrat class sneers in contempt at the “deplorables”, utterly convinced they are the only ones fit to make decisions and thus driven to a mad desperation to keep direct representation out:

Republicanism (supposedly) offers a solution to alleged instability, rashness, impetuosity, and social and political tyranny of democratic politics because it recognizes that the majority does not equal the whole of the community. US citizens elect what are basically proxies for power, but those proxies have only a facade of accountability. Instead, the elected enter a sphere where they ultimately control the institutions that control life for everyone in the US. It allows them to erect sets of rules that are never uniformly applied, it thrashes violently against efforts to combat such corruption, and have known for centuries that ultimately the voters are immaterial to the perpetuation of this system.

Absolutely no one in the US does any kind of governing whatsoever. The chickenshit house and senate AND executive branch punt lawmaking into the Supreme Court. Laws are all written by the Praetorian guard of lobbyists, piece of shit attorneys, and NGOs/think tanks. The judiciary exists to rubber stamp plutocrats’ agenda, nothing more. Binding arbitration ensures that the “deplorables” are forced into a parallel legal system, which robs them of the opportunity to take companies to court.

Hey now. As a liberal, I really don't like the way you're talking about the US government. They're the good guys and they are only corrupt when republicans are in control. What are you, some kind of racist nazi?

Lobbying is not a magical activity. The public servants whose salaries come from money you have no option but to give them should not be giving in to lobbyists.

I view it as a First Amendment issue. We can call out "privileges" that lobbyist groups have that ordinary citizens don't (which as far as I know are not granted by law, they just have to do with the size and influence of the groups). But a lobbyist is just a person or group that voices an opinion to law makers. In theory, literally any individual person can be a "lobbyist" and preventing the practice would prevent people from talking about issues to lawmakers. Which would be the exact opposite of what we would want in a democratic system.

It is a perversion of free speech. Money should have no place in a functioning democracy.

Double-edged sword. We may not even have this version of right to repair at all if not for lobbyists...

What is the substantial difference between an ethical lobbyist (that is, one who just hounds a law maker all the time, but does not engage in gift-giving, favor trading, political donations, etc) and a particularly engaged citizenry? The lobbyist takes a pay check?

Lobbying is the engagement with members of the government to promote a certain agenda. The reason the offices of our legislators are open to the public is so that the public can go in and do exactly that. It's called "lobbying" because it is what is done in the lobbies of state houses.

There is nothing wrong with lobbying as such, but the combination of campaign-donations-as-protected-speech-for-corporations with lobbying makes for a very powerful, legal flavor of corruption.

> I feel like they had to exempt those ones to avoid the lobbyists

Lobbyists have no power over regulators except to threaten to withhold bribes from them. The only reason why a regulator would care about a lobbyist is if they're corrupt and receiving bribes - as in this case.

>Exemptions: game consoles, alarm systems, agricultural and forestry equipment

I don't understand how people seem to think their food just appears out of thin air. Farming is a 24/7 job and is hard on equipment. Repairing farm equipment is at least 50% of the job. Games consoles, alarm systems, or trees don't feed anyone.

Maybe if farmers go on strike now of all times the fall which is harvest time and let the food rot. Let's see how long people can go without or with reduced availability of food. "Oh no my tractor broke down and I can't repair it"

I agree. I'm honestly surprised by how much shit US farmers are willing to take from John Deere. Not to make this political, but you'd expect a group that largely votes Republican to be a bit more radical and unfair in fighting an unethical company.

They're probably tired, scared, and unorganized. John Deere's bullshit only makes them more scared and unorganized, and not less tired. I'm sure they're not taking this shit because they're ok with it, but farmers have to take a lot of shit from a lot of powerful organizations to get by.

> unorganized

If they are anything like British farmers they would rather get shafted by John Deere than work together with their neighbours.

Well, if/when they ever do fight back, they will immediately be labelled right wing nutjobs by the mainstream media and no one will care about who/what they're fighting against, and you'll see lots of "well, I usually support right to repair, but those trump hats were really scary and john deere's position is actually kind of reasonable" comments here.

I think if we've learned anything during corona it should be that there are different tiers of economic activity.

4) that what we absolutely need, 3) that what would be nice to have, 2) that what serves no purpose/we would be better of without and 1) that what we've failed to ban.

If we strictly define those we can then proceed to rate those who consume our attention and those tasked with governing by the ratio of time they spend on each.

No doubt we are all guilty pondering niceties rather than necessities. Imagine an idea for a startup that is necessary.

The alarm systems, I kind of understand, insofar as there are

1. security certifications depending on these being present and functioning, and nobody's going to certify equipment with arbitrary third-party repairs; and

2. these devices always work only with some kind of subscription paid to a security company anyway, since the point of them is to send some signal to said company to get something to happen.

> I don't need a devil's advocate for what it's worth

Maybe you don't understand hierarchical commenting systems, but people mostly don't reply to comments on HN/Reddit/etc for the sake of engaging the parent poster in discussion; they do it for the sake of "transcluding" the parent poster's comment as the necessary context for understanding their own follow-on comment; where that follow-on comment is itself aimed at the same general audience of the comments that the top-level comments are aimed at.

Yes alarm systems are connected to fear of insurance fraud.

Although!

Right to repair does not forbid insurance companies to forbid it. But can I please repair my home alarm system, thanks.

The problem is that it's impossible to tell that an alarm system has been repaired by a third party. For building repairs, we have building inspectors; but there's no such thing as a tiny-electronics-soldering-job inspector.

So let me get this straight. I can now claim right to repair for all my cars, computer, phones, tvs, furnaces, smart meters, water heaters, smart bulbs, lamps, tablets, laptops, smart speakers, speakers in general, microwaves, gym equipment, and lawnmowers (not agricultural or forestry!). I call that a win. Sorry we didn't catch em all yet.

You have to start somewhere. I rather the right to repair cover 90% of things than 0% of things. We can eventually fight for right to repair the rest.

We did start somewhere. We started with "we are allowed to do with our own property whatever we want." this law codified removal of those rights.

Did you read the article or the law?

This law requires manufacturers to provide parts, tools and documentation for how to repair their products. It didn't change anything about rights of people to do whatever they want with their property.

This is not at all accurate. From the bill introduction:

  The bill would require... the manufacturer of an above-described electronic or appliance product... to make available, on fair and reasonable terms, to product owners, service and repair facilities, and service dealers, the means, as described, to effect the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of the product, as provided.
  The bill would also require a service and repair facility or service dealer that is not an authorized repair provider, as defined, of a manufacturer to provide a written notice of that fact to any customer seeking repair...
  The bill would also authorize a city, a county, a city and county, or the state to bring an action in superior court to impose civil penalties on a person or entity for violating the Right to Repair Act, as provided.
  The bill would make these requirements and enforcement provisions operative on July 1, 2024.

Would love to be proven wrong though, could easily be missing something hidden in there. Both pages seem to be purely about requiring things of people though, not allowing things.

The law explicitly excludes some items:

> Exemptions: game consoles, alarm systems, agricultural and forestry equipment

(This is from the linked article.)

Please explain

Agreed. As much as I hate that John Deere escaped this one, we can regroup now and will have a getter position of bargaining since it's only "expanding" an existing law rather than creating a new one from scratch.

We can regroup? The people who write these laws have all the power already. They just have to write things down and if you don't do the things they get some of your company's money or occasionally can lock you in a box.

By "we" I mean those of us who have no direct power, but work to convince those with power to pass the laws. The legislature isn't going to do it without that

Something tells me that 90% figure is only ever going to decrease.

Exempting game consoles is funny, because it proves the question is "How much money can a company make from their products?"

Because we know that consoles are typically sold at a loss or barely break-even point, at least at launch (and some for their entire lifetime - like with Xbox[1]), with their cut of digital & physical sales funding the continued R&D of the consoles.

The only difference with iPhones is that Apple both makes money up-front on the hardware and on the backend with app/game sales.

If Apple were to cut the price of the iPhone, or fill it with diamonds (or an actually-valuable rare material like Tungsten) to bring the COGS up to the MSRP, would the EU and Cali suddenly bow to Apple and let them off the hook on being a gatekeeper/anti-R2R practices?

0: https://www.thegamer.com/standard-ps5-break-even-profit-june...

1: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/322561-microsoft-says-it-...

I think legistlators would make the case that while general purpose computing devices should have right to repair laws, game consoles are machines dedicated to frivolous entertainment and that consumers shouldn't mess with them. It's very silly, but I think it does present activists a schism to exploit. Apple believes that it's phones are a closed ecosystem that they have the sole right to distirbute software and, until recently, provide hardware repairs for. But legislators clearly understand that smart-phones serve an important societal function. Thus they should be subject to right to repair. They will come around eventually on electronic entertainment, There is tons of politcal pressure around farming equipment, and consumer alarm systems (think ring) are due for a whole heap of government regulation.

Lol, these exemptions are pretty hilarious. I can get the logic of regulations that prevent tampering with alarm systems for safety reasons, or potentially dangerous heavy machinery like that found in agricultural equipment. Carving them out of right to repair is super silly.

Still a net win for right to repair. On the game side, everyone is just going to play on a steam deck in the future anyway.

Sadly, agriculture is a large part of the "right to repair" movement and one of the groups that would benefit the most from it, as they've been repairing their own equipment for a long time and John Deere et al have been closing down as much as they can so people can't repair their own stuff.

And that's the group of people make it possible for us to stuff down all this food we're consuming, and somehow lawmakers find it OK to not give them more rights...

Oh yes, I definitely agree, and I support the rights of farmers to repair the equipment they use. The carve out for agricultural equipment is clearly a concession to John Deere lobbying.

John Deere sees value in IoT data gathered from its equipment to do all sorts of predictive analysis. That very much undercuts the basis of American food production, which relies on government subsidies for a variety of reasons. I ultimately believe that this value is derived by front running American farming subsidies, a complex form of insider trading. An existential crises is brewing in American farming that repairing tractors is on the forefront of.

However, fixing a combine harvester is definitely a different prospect to modifying your game console or cell phone. We can acknowledge that. I still think that farmers are capable of repairing and modifying the equipment they depend on to make a living and provide all of us with food. But there definitely needs to be some form of safety regulation.

No, we are not there yet, but we're part-way there. Some people just look for the negative aspect of everything rather than admit that a step might represent progress toward a goal.

By the time this takes effect, all large cars will be classified as farm equipment and all small cars will be classified as game consoles.

Clearly they don't want you to release the magic smoke

Does documentation mean how to replace the operating system/firmware and any necessary signing keys?

If you are new to the third-world politics, I'll give you a 101: you "donate" enough cache to the ruling party - you get your business exempted from regulations, you don't - you get squashed. All you can see in this case is who paid and who didn't.

How did Sony and Microsoft avoid this fate and Apple didn’t?

The agricultural exemption really sucks, but the force was probably too strong. We'll get John Deere next time.

Perfect is the enemy of good. This right to repair law still covers ~97% of the economy.

The best defense is: Politics is not a game of morals, virtues, or arguments, but a game of power, manipulation, and maneuvers. In that context, I think we can agree this is a win :) It'll be easier to override that clause down the line than it was to pass this bill.

If this legislation somehow turns out to be a mistake would you rather it affect everything everywhere or be scoped in this way?

what if we take earth to be flat but "flat" in the sense of 'euclid-ness' like in a Manifold[1] ?

or maybe we gotta work on accepting that it may be possible for two completely different, even opposing theories, to explain similar things? (in completely different ways?)

it's just that one is easier (for some use cases) than the other one, and to fight over which is right is all wrong. I think that in the future the whole debate will be understood as an instance of the blind men and the elephant[2]

but we just don't have the mathematics (nor the philosophy...) for this. either it's not invented or it hasn't managed to become widespread

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

yes, that's right, I just tried to apologize for flat earth. your cue to downvote me away from sight. maybe I just want to make bridges... impossible bridges... between suckers lagging but still trying to understand and others who refuse or are unable to explain

I bet you haven't heard all the arguments. Here's one that came to mind when I read the actual text of the repair law as to why there might be two of those three exceptions.

For agricultural and forestry equipment there is already extensive California law dealing with them in the the California Business and Professional Code (BPC).

To wit, the "Fair Practices of Equipment Manufacturers, Distributors, Wholesalers, and Dealers Act" which is Chapter 28 of Division 8 ("Special Business Regulations") of the BPC.

Alarm systems are also regulated under the BPC.

This new "Right to Repair Act" is part of the Public Resources Code. It is is Division 30, Part 3, Chapter 8.6.

Division 30 is "Waste Management". Part 3 is "State Programs".

Chapter 8.6 was the "Cell Phone Recycling Act of 2004" so presumably is getting renumbered to 8.7, and the "Right to Repair Act" is being inserted right before that, after the "Rechargeable Battery Recycling Act of 2006" (Chapter 8.4) and a chapter called "Electronic Waste Recycling" (Chapter 8.5).

(Why is this done as waste management under the Public Resources Code rather than under whatever California's consumer protection code is called? I have no idea!)

It seems at least plausible that the exceptions other than the video game console exception are there because legislators feel that changes to how those things are handled should be done separately via changes to the BPC.