A Ton Of Folks Don’t Know What ‘Right To Repair’ Is, But Strongly Support It Once They Do https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/21/a-ton-of-folks-dont-know-what-right-to-repair-is-but-strongly-support-it-once-they-do/ #RightToRepair #technology #tech
@freetechproject @rysiek I’m a little surprised that it's not universally understood.
"Suppose that chair you're sitting in broke.”
"Yeah?”
“And you want to fix it, right?”
"Sure."
“What if someone told you it was illegal to fix it?”
"I'd laugh at them."
“There, now you get it.”
@tek no no see but a chair is not a computer! And here it's about computers! Computers are complicated and scary and magical, we can't have just anyone fixing their own computer, can we now!
To be fair, if we replaced "chair" with "a gas furnace", in some countries that would be illegal, but the reasons for that don't apply to general purpose computers.
@robryk @rysiek @freetechproject That’s not a fair comparison. If you break your chair, or a farmer breaks their tractor, the scope of the risk is tiny. Maybe you fall on your butt. Perhaps the tractor catches fire. Either way, it doesn’t affect anyone else outside contrived scenarios. If the yokel next door screws up his furnace, he could take out a city block.
Right to repair doesn’t have safety consequences outside of lobbyist talking points.
BTW. For tractors the scope of _additional_ risk is usually tiny: if someone is likely to break their tractor in a dangerous way (e.g. by removing covers over revolving elements, or defeating deadman switches), they're IMO likely to also use it in a dangerous way (e.g. by having people ride on an unsuitable part of the tractor).
But, all of that applies to the parts of tractors that TTBOMK owners are not prevented from repairing (IIUC that's mostly the drivetrain and other electronics, right?), which makes attempts to prevent that even weirder.
