Some products — like devices powered by combustion engines, medical equipment, farming equipment, HVAC equipment, video game consoles, and energy storage systems — are excluded from Oregon’s rules entirely.
It’s interesting to me that Game Consoles get an exception… Not sure whats up there, other than straight up bribery lobbying.
HVAC makes sense when you consider environmental concerns (some refrigerants are really terrible pollutants).
Medical equipment, particularly equipment in public health care should be held to high standards. Authorized, properly trained repair; peoples lives depend on it.
Energy storage when attached to public infrastructure (you back-feeding the grid) can be a saftey concern for workers and the supply/load needs to be balanced to prevent damaging that infrastructure and other private equipment attached to it. Not sure preventing repair is the right move here; you can still buy and install new without oversight. Perhaps it’s again a saftey concern (for the person performing repair).
Vehicles, farming or otherwise, I’m on the fence about; there’s an argument to be made for public saftey/roadworthness, but I’m not sure that’s enough of an argument to prevent home-repair. Again seems more to do with lobbying than anything else.
That’s rather short sighted. I just listed several.
Don’t know about you: I’d rather not have the ventilator keeping grandma alive repaired by the hospitals underpaid maintenance department; but a trained technician from the company that built it.
Some things are about more than just an individuals personal liberties.
The hospitals underpaid maintenance team vrs a licensed tech from the manufacturer is a false dichotomy. The choice could easily be the hospital’s underpaid maintenance team or no repairs at all.
Realistically, they don’t put grandma on the vent because they won’t buy or keep a device they can’t afford to repair.
And why would the company spend more time/effort on their repair staff than the hospital? The company license is no guarantee they aren’t minimum wage nobodies.
HVAC also makes sense because some idiots do things like using propane as a refrigerant in systems not designed for it, and then get a literal flamethrower next to their house.
HVAC makes no sense to me considering the only real hazard in there is the actual refrigerant gas.
unless they manage to pair the gas, im sure they would if they could
You joke but we’re almost there. Refrigerants are getting more and more proprietary. I work in the industry and with the push to go to lower global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants manufacturers have developed their own formulas here. It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer even amongst almost identical equipment. Getting the right refrigerant will only become more and more expensive the more boutique it is. The equipment can already tell what kind of refrigerant is in there based on the system pressures and temperatures.
I’ve been watching Hyperspace Pirate on Youtube and he talks about how hard it is to get commercial access to some basic refrigerants (like ethylene) as someone who isn’t a Pro HVAC tech, and he uses it as an excuse to to create them himself for part of his content.
Cars have been home repaired since cars existed. It has never been a notable safety concern. Somehow it suddenly is?
Cars emissions is going to be a thing of the past when ICE cars are gone. Can’t wait.
Even cheap cars now have hundreds of processors. Modules can throw errors, send the car into limp, or deactivate the vehicle entirely.
Plus, emissions.
It’s a different game now.
It’s always been a concern; just not enough of one to explicitly forbid working on a vehicle without specific training/licensing. Hence vehicle inspections/roadworthy tests; someplaces more strictly than others.
It’s possible that concern was part of the justification for not requiring manufacturers to make it easier. Spitballing.
As I said, I’m on the fence about it myself. Thing is, a vehicle on public roads has a lot of opportunity to injure or kill someone if a repair was made incorrectly. It’s about more than just a person and the thing they own.
I work for a medical device manufacturer and you are missing a important reason for that exception. Yes human lives are on the line. In addition WE (meaning my company) are responsible for finding out why it broke and how we will prevent other devices we make from breaking.
We make a device and say it will last 10 years, 2 years later it stops. We have to replace it, We have to investigate to the best of our ability, We have to report our findings to the government, if several cases happen We need to come up with a prevention for the future dailures(or prevention if severe enough). We have entire departments for this. It is our burden not the consumer and it’s our burden so we have enough evidence to determine root cause and final solution so we can prevent further failures.
The farming equipment exemption smells like John Deere’s lobbies have been involved.
There are lots of loyal green customers who are really pissed about the ability to not be able to repair their own stuff, but yet keep buying it. (Similar to a lot of iPhone users)
but yet keep buying it.
Probably because they’ll keep repairing it themselves anyway. Making it legal would just make it easier for them to repair it without triggering the tractor’s version of DRM (can’t remember what it’s called).
It’s interesting to me that Game Consoles get an exception… Not sure whats up there, other than straight up bribery lobbying.
Lots and LOTS of lobbying.
Let your representative know that that is not ok with you.
John Deere probably bribed lobbied hard for that carve out. It was their practices that helped drive the right to repair movement. Giving them a pass really diminishes the accomplishment.
Smaller farms are going to get screwed over with all the fees and mandatory maintenance that can be imposed.
Everyone gets angry about printers needing a debit card on file but manufacturers like John Deere do similar stuff. If they think you’ve tinkered with it, they can disable the equipment remotely.
The refrigerant wouldn’t have anything to do with parts pairing though. This is just the electronic components.
Is this actually good news? What can a single state do? Shouldn’t this be federal?
Special exceptions are hard to deal with when you’re mass producing. That’s why a fair amount of the rulings made by the European Union also end up applying to North America when it comes to international businesses.
It basically means someone like Apple has to decide between not selling in Oregon at all, making special phones for Oregon, or making all of their phones not have paired parts. It’s a pretty big thorn in their side, and it would only take a few more states to join in before they really have to start committing to a solution.
If Apple’s approach in the EU is anything to go by, they’ll disable repaired phones if they’re taken outside Oregon.
A single state is still a large market to pass up, and tooling costs make it impractical to manufacture different versions of things.
Even for software, the US experiences positive externalities of the GDPR and the rest of the US does from privacy laws in California and Illinois (likely others that I don’t know off the top of my head)
State laws also often serve as the prototype for federal ones.
It should be federal, but this is absolutely good news.
“We need to cut down the insane cycle of churning through personal electronics”
Translation: We need to slow down the pace of innovation!
Looking at their account, I’d honestly bet money that they’re an apple employee. Half of their posts and comments are about, and very much in favor of, Apple
The innovation of DRM and Intels SGX extention is the reason no current-gen PC can play 4K Blurays in 4K.
This has to be one of the stupidest takes ive seen. They aren’t innovating, they are making it so things break after set amounts of time, you cant repair it without massive headaches and the expense of proprietary parts, so people end up basically having to buy a new device that is either the exact same or had only a few changes to it but costs more money than the original. That’s not innovation, that’s just a cash grab.
I can’t wait to get back to Oregon
Now we need to do this California to seal the deal.
