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Technology

New York Senate Passes Landmark Right To Repair Bill (ifixit.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the moving-the-needle dept.
A Right to Repair bill that would give everyone the information, parts, and tools they need to fix their electronic devices passed in the New York State Senate, the first such bill to pass in the country. Kevin Purdy writes via iFixit: At a virtual session, the Senate approved S4104 by a margin of 51 to 12. Normally the next step would be a vote on an identical bill in the state's Assembly. But Thursday is the last day of session for the NY legislature, and the bill has not yet escaped committee, making a vote by the full Assembly unlikely. The battle for fair repair in New York will continue into next year's session, with a strong record of success. But don't get the wrong idea -- this is big. This shows that Right to Repair has real support when the issue gets an actual vote, despite the efforts of tech manufacturers' lobbyists.

Sen. Philip Boyle, a Republican from Bay Shore on Long Island and the bill's original sponsor, said at Thursday's session that the Digital Fair Repair Act both protected consumers from monopolistic companies and curtailed e-waste. Customers can fix their own "smartphones, tablets, and farm equipment," Boyle said. Or, if they have "no technical skills at all, like me," they can turn to local repair shops and reuse programs to avoid simply tossing things out, Boyle said. While time is likely to run out on the Assembly bill, New Yorkers can still tell their representatives to move next year's bill to a vote, and to vote yes. A U.S. PIRG survey found that New Yorkers would save a collective $2.4 billion per year by fixing electronics instead of replacing them. The average family stands to save $330 per year, and help curtail the 655,000 tons of e-waste generated in New York each year.
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New York Senate Passes Landmark Right To Repair Bill More

New York Senate Passes Landmark Right To Repair Bill

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  • Louis Rossman (Score:5, Informative)

    by nifibig336 ( 7985108 ) on Friday June 11, 2021 @04:46PM (#61478238) Homepage
    Kudos to Louis who did a lot to help get this passed. Check him out on YouTube. He is entertaining as well.

  • Good now do California (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 11, 2021 @05:00PM (#61478278)
    The way these things usually work in America is that the major markets California and New York pass a law and although the other states refuse to follow suit it doesn't matter because it's not worth the extra cost to make two product lines. At least not for most consumer goods. Now if we can just get our printers in America to be made to the specs that a European one is.

    • Re:Good now do California (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hjf ( 703092 ) on Friday June 11, 2021 @05:18PM (#61478324) Homepage

      Right to repair isn't about making "repairable" products. It's about manufacturers providing manuals, parts, and tools to repair the devices they sell, and also, stop the bullshit litigiosity from them. They spend millions in lawyers to prevent service people from getting replacement parts. That's just plain bullshit.
      And by "tools" I mean things like software tools. For example, if you try to replace the screen or the touch sensor on an iPhone, it will refuse to work. Because you need to "bless" it with an Apple tool that will tell the iPhone that it's ok to run this fingerprint sensor that was retrieved from another iPhone with a broken screen.

      It's really got nothing to do with, say, making PCs with RAM slots instead of soldered chips.

      • Passing a law that requires products to be "repairable" could hinder innovation (for real), because defining what is "repairable" in a piece of legislation, in a way that doesn't hinder innovation, is downright impossible. For example, if there was a law defining "repairable" as "can be opened with a screwdriver", Sony wouldn't have been able to bring their first water-resistant phones to market (because water-resistant phones need to have their panel gaps sealed with glue). Which is a pity, because it's a
        • Which is a pity = Which would 've been a pity

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by gmack ( 197796 )

          because water-resistant phones need to have their panel gaps sealed with glue

          Completely not true. My current phone and my last phone are both water resistant (IP68 Rating) and have screws.

          • Which phones are those? BTW having screws doesn't mean "can be opened with a screwdriver" (non-destructively obv) if it means having to replace rubber seals and glues.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gmack ( 197796 )

              Doogee S60 is my old phone. My new phone is the Doogie S96 Pro. I opened the S60 to replace the battery and I only needed to make sure the rubber seal went back into it's track.

              • Okay, but these phones look like they jumped out of a crossover between MadMax and Predator. Making the normal phones most people actually buy water-resistant (using glue) was a piece of innovation we got because there were no "repairability" laws mandating everything should be openable with a screwdriver.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by gmack ( 197796 )

                  Of course they do.. My S60 did 10 meters into concrete and barely got scuffed, It's why I buy them. The seal is small enough that it could be used in a thinner phone.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          It "could" hinder innovation. It could also paint the road yellow. But in actual reality it will not do either. For your phone example, there is no requirement to glue things that is just the usual bogus claims by the industry. There are numerous other ways to make electronic devices water resistant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        And by "tools" I mean things like software tools. For example, if you try to replace the screen or the touch sensor on an iPhone, it will refuse to work. Because you need to "bless" it with an Apple tool that will tell the iPhone that it's ok to run this fingerprint sensor that was retrieved from another iPhone with a broken screen.

        The question is - where does security come into play? Because the primary reason for needing to bless the fingerprint sensor is to prevent replacement. And you want this to preve

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          And by "tools" I mean things like software tools. For example, if you try to replace the screen or the touch sensor on an iPhone, it will refuse to work. Because you need to "bless" it with an Apple tool that will tell the iPhone that it's ok to run this fingerprint sensor that was retrieved from another iPhone with a broken screen.

          The question is - where does security come into play? Because the primary reason for needing to bless the fingerprint sensor is to prevent replacement. And you want this to prevent bypass - perhaps someone changes out your phone's fingerprint sensor with one that secretly records your fingerprints, so if they want to hack into your phone, they can have the sensor replay the stored fingerprints.

          Certainly you'd want to know, and Apple did that by disabling it (and accidentally disabling the OS once). But if the blessing tool is public, well, if I was an FBI agent, I'd make sure to run the blessing tool so my hacked sensor will work just fine on your phone.

          It's a valid question. It can't be just an app either - because obviously it would make the tool useless once the device falls out of support.

          The right solution to that problem is glaringly obvious. Separate testing from restoring function:

          • Provide a tool that lets you put the device into a hardware test mode that lets you validate the screen and fingerprint reader without booting the device.
          • Let the operating system prompt the user at sign-in time if the hardware has changed. If the user says, "Yes, this was an expected change," it then prompts the user to re-add fingerprints, and then the hardware becomes authorized.

          Having a tool, secret or ot

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You see problems where there are none. For the case at hand, the user gets a recovery code and can use that to "bless" new sensors for exactly their own phone. They can select whether Apple keep a backup copy of that code or not, depending on their own security requirements. See, that was not so hard. The trick is to look for a solution to make it possible, not for a problem to keep the old approach.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            Also, 99.999 whatever percent of iPhone users will never in their life have to worry about the FBI (or anyone TBH) secretly replacing their fingerprint sensor with a hacked one.

            It's such an extreme edge case that it's irrelevant AND relatively easy to work around. Give the phone the ability to bless new hardware - authenticating with your AppleID/PIN/etc. - so you'll know if something was swapped. If someone knows your password already, then hacking a fingerprint reader to access the devices seems kind of

      • that's a huge waste of money since 95 percent of their market has no interest in repairing or modifying anything though. That's why it won't happen.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by torkus ( 1133985 )

          And 87.5% of statistics are meaningless or just made up entirely.

          LOTS of people have interest in repairing their phones - and many do. Refer to the pretty large aftermarket screen replacement industry. What stops many people is the high cost, difficulty, or both.

          Also - I'll argue that many people have 'no interest' in repair because they have a device that makes repair intentionally difficult, not because they prefer to buy another current-generation iPhone when their kids drops it on them.

          • Nonsense, most consumers don't electronic devices nor do they want to. That is why there aren't complaints except in geek forums. You have a weird and unnatural view of the world, do you only type at geeks in forums?

            Most people don't repair electronic devices, don't have either the tools nor the knowledge to do so, that's what anyone who actually socializes with a variety of people knows.

            • From my experience of non-geeks over the years, most of them would love to be able to repair a broken phone, partly for environmental reasons, partly because they're attached to it, partly because of the hassle of migrating their data.

              The main reasons they don't is the disproportionate cost and the time it takes, particularly if it involves sending it away.

              Would right to repair help with this? Capitalist economic theory says yes. Vested interest says no. We'll see how it plays out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Right to repair isn't about making "repairable" products.

        Not directly, no. At the moment it is about letting 3rd parties or the user repair devices, _if_ they can do that skill-wise. Parts have to be sold at reasonable prices and documentation has to be provided. Basically, if the vendor itself can repair something, others can now too. A classical example is a screen-replacement in an iPhone.
        Bit a second step in this (and we will have to have that eventually) is "repairability". This is more difficult because it impacts design. There are approaches to solve this,

      • Making something like complex electronics user repairable is basically redesigning them to be repairable. Parts have to be recast, exchanged for availability reasons, and the entire unit has to be classified from a security standpoint. Not a small security issue in electronics is how the device, parts of the device can be modified by users for unintended purposes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hjf ( 703092 )

          parts of the device can be modified by users for unintended purposes.

          Well, it's MY device and I can do whatever the fuck I want with it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by torkus ( 1133985 )

          Yes and no.

          Instead you just design that into the next generation of products. It's not all that difficult compared to the engineering that goes into making a phone in the first place.

          It's ALSO about not intentionally digitally locking someone out from repairing or actively preventing the import and resale of replacement parts.

  • Like a broken clock, it's statistically possible for New York not to fuck up... but still unlikely; there's bound to be a dealbreaker of a catch.
  • Better watch Louis's latest video about this specific situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] the bill passed the senate, now it needs to pass the assembly, which apparently it won't do this time, maybe next time, which might be later this year, or more likely next year... sigh. typical politics.
  • A few of the historical buildings downtown really could use a bit of paint, finally I’ll be able to touch them up myself. We really need to do proper maintenance on many of our landmarks.

  • hopefully this goes nation wide (Score:3)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Friday June 11, 2021 @06:15PM (#61478500)
    and we can start seeing smartphones and tablets with removable back covers with easily replaceable batteries, and even some of those fairphones & pinephones in the EU be built for the US Market, i know i would be shopping for a fairphone or pinephone (depending on which one i liked best)

    i read a few forums and i notice a few people getting burned by botched repair jobs, and others buying phones that are more than likely being sold because the owner was disappointed in a botched repair job
    • Not going to happen. Phones are going to be increasingly impossible to fix. This and laws like it won't change that, it just prevents manufacturers from artificially preventing repairs. And if they try to go further with the law they are retarded.

      • Not going to happen. Phones are going to be increasingly impossible to fix. This and laws like it won't change that,

        They're becoming increasingly impossible to fix BECAUSE there have been no laws (on the side of the consumer).

  • This is just a bill, not yet a law

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      Do you have a particular reason to think that either the state assembly or governor would reject it, or is your position based just on blind pessimism?
  • The way these things usually work in America is that the major markets California and New York pass a law and although the other states

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