Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how
Speaker 1: the tech are you? I think I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: little tech stuff Tidbits episode. These episodes tend to be
Speaker 1: a little shorter than aren't normal episodes. They tend to
Speaker 1: be sometimes they're longer, but this one should be a
Speaker 1: bit shorter. And it's about one of the ongoing stories
Speaker 1: in tech right now, which is the right to repair movement.
Speaker 1: And I've talked about this a few times on this show,
Speaker 1: so this is really more of a kind of a
Speaker 1: state of the right to repair movement in the United States.
Speaker 1: One of the stories I mentioned in yesterday's news episodes
Speaker 1: was about this very topic. So the basic idea behind
Speaker 1: right to repair is this, when a consumer buys something
Speaker 1: a product, that product should be reparable by the consumer,
Speaker 1: or the consumer should be reasonably able to make their
Speaker 1: own repairs, perform maintenance, or even change it something about
Speaker 1: the product because they bought it, right, they bought the thing,
Speaker 1: they should be able to repair the thing or change
Speaker 1: the thing because the product at that point is no
Speaker 1: longer the property of the manufacturer or the retailer or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It belongs to the consumer. It is
Speaker 1: there thing the transaction has concluded, and if the product
Speaker 1: requires some TLC down the line, the consumers should be
Speaker 1: able to do it themselves or choose whomever they want
Speaker 1: to do the work, because it's theirs. But that's not
Speaker 1: how a lot of tech product companies have evolved. Especially
Speaker 1: in recent years. Many companies have embraced the idea of
Speaker 1: an entire ecosystem, from product to maintenance to repair. Capturing
Speaker 1: a customer in such an go system creates an ongoing
Speaker 1: source of revenue, and you can see how that would
Speaker 1: be attractive from a business perspective. In fact, we're gonna
Speaker 1: break it down just for funzies. Let's say we've got
Speaker 1: a company that makes widgets and it has two broad
Speaker 1: strategies it could choose between. Strategy Number one is to
Speaker 1: make the best gosh darn widgets in the world and
Speaker 1: to sell them to customers with pride. And every person
Speaker 1: walking into your widget store represents an opportunity for a sale,
Speaker 1: and each sale represents the one and only revenue point
Speaker 1: with that customer, unless, of course, the customer decides to
Speaker 1: come back to you for their future widget needs. It's
Speaker 1: not easy work, but by golly, it sure is wholesome
Speaker 1: and rewarding. If that customer's widget breaks, well, the customer
Speaker 1: has every right to fix it themselves, or to take
Speaker 1: it to an independent repair shop. Or maybe they'll come
Speaker 1: back to you and buy a brand new widget with
Speaker 1: the latest features. But your business lies on sales, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. Strategy number two. You have set
Speaker 1: up an entire widget ecosystem. You own the means of production.
Speaker 1: Maybe you own retail establishments that sell finished products. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a widget store in every major city, including flagship
Speaker 1: widget stores in places like New York or San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Inside those stores, you've also created customer service departments. Let's
Speaker 1: call them the bar of smarty pants is. And if
Speaker 1: a customer buys a widget and something goes wrong with it, well,
Speaker 1: you create a policy that discourages the customer from trying
Speaker 1: to fix the widget themselves. Maybe you indicate that any
Speaker 1: such attempt will avoid the warranty, and that will leave
Speaker 1: the customer high and dry if something else happens that
Speaker 1: they are not able to address themselves. Maybe you make
Speaker 1: the widget with special kinds of fasteners and you're the
Speaker 1: only one who has the appropriate tools to remove them.
Speaker 1: Using some other tool is likely to damn the widget further,
Speaker 1: and so your customers desperate to have a working widget
Speaker 1: come crawling to your store, lining up at the bar
Speaker 1: of smartie pants is for their turn to have someone
Speaker 1: who actually does have access to the proper tools to
Speaker 1: make the changes, and the customers pay for this privilege. Heck,
Speaker 1: maybe you even set up a program where the customer
Speaker 1: can pay in advance for services that they may never need,
Speaker 1: and maybe you even call it something really ironic like
Speaker 1: widget cares. Now, with strategy one, you make money from
Speaker 1: a customer once or to be generous once per sale,
Speaker 1: since if the customers happy, they might come back to
Speaker 1: buy another one of your widgets later on. But each
Speaker 1: transaction is isolated and finite. But with strategy too, you've
Speaker 1: looped that customer into a system where you can potentially
Speaker 1: make money off them multiple times, all from one purchase.
Speaker 1: So of course a lot of company these are going
Speaker 1: to go in that direction. It helps the company, but
Speaker 1: it can be potentially harmful or at the very least
Speaker 1: inconvenient to the customer. And for independent repair shops, it's
Speaker 1: really bad news because in order to be part of
Speaker 1: this ecosystem, they would likely have to pay a hefty
Speaker 1: licensing fee to be welcomed into the fold. So either
Speaker 1: your your options then as an independent repair service person
Speaker 1: are to either pay money so that you can be
Speaker 1: part of this world or not pay the money, but
Speaker 1: then you miss out on a lot of repairs because
Speaker 1: of that. And in a big way, technology is facilitating
Speaker 1: this trend. It's not just a business practice. The technology
Speaker 1: itself is making this easier to do because as technology
Speaker 1: gets more complex, you know, as products get more computerized,
Speaker 1: it gets more challenging for the average person or even
Speaker 1: some smaller repair shops to work on products effectively. Some
Speaker 1: products but come what we call black boxes, and by
Speaker 1: that we mean there is a lack of transparency. You
Speaker 1: cannot see how the device actually works. You could say
Speaker 1: a lot of modern cars fall into this category. Now
Speaker 1: where even to get a diagnosis of whatever the problem is,
Speaker 1: you need to have a specialized computer to connect to
Speaker 1: your vehicle, as well as a knowledge of what all
Speaker 1: those error codes mean. And stuff like repair manuals can
Speaker 1: be well kept secrets in tech, meaning you might not
Speaker 1: be able to access the documents you would need to
Speaker 1: see how to go about making a repair in the
Speaker 1: first place. The only folks who have access to these
Speaker 1: documents and the tools and the parts are the people
Speaker 1: who are already part of this ecosystem. Now, in some cases,
Speaker 1: customers can still attempt to do their own maintenance and repair,
Speaker 1: though they might have to jump through some arguably unnecessary
Speaker 1: hoops to do it. But in other cases, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, even attempting to do anything like that will
Speaker 1: violate the warranty on a product. Companies say they do
Speaker 1: this to discourage folks from causing further damage to their
Speaker 1: devices by also to avoid sidestepping safety features that could
Speaker 1: bring harm to people anything that might be bad that
Speaker 1: could come as a result of tampering with a device.
Speaker 1: But the right to repair advocates argue that really this
Speaker 1: policy isn't to protect the consumer, it's a threat the
Speaker 1: companies hold over customers to keep them within these closed
Speaker 1: ecosystems so that they can continue to exploit their customer base. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you picked up on my subtle
Speaker 1: hints in my example earlier, but I was firing some
Speaker 1: shots at Apple and I know I'm a master of
Speaker 1: the veiled reference right. Anyway, Apple for a long time
Speaker 1: had a reputation for locking people into an ecosystem in
Speaker 1: multiple ways. They actually did it in a few different approaches.
Speaker 1: So in one way, it was that whole maintenance and
Speaker 1: repair strategy in which for many years Apple did it's
Speaker 1: best to discourage or outright prevent customers from accessing and
Speaker 1: changing Apple products that they purchased. But it also extended
Speaker 1: to the interoperability of Apple products, where in order to
Speaker 1: get the most out Apple product A, you also needed
Speaker 1: Apple product B. So, for example, when the iPod first
Speaker 1: came out, initially you really needed a Mac in order
Speaker 1: to set up the iPod and transfer music from your
Speaker 1: computer to the iPod because you couldn't do it just
Speaker 1: from the iPod itself. It wasn't, you know, uh, wireless.
Speaker 1: You couldn't connect it to WiFi or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You had to pair it with a computer, and that
Speaker 1: computer initially had to be a Mac. Now, over time,
Speaker 1: Apple created ways for folks who had Windows based PCs
Speaker 1: to do the same sort of thing, though in my experience,
Speaker 1: the PC version of Apple products always felt clunky and bloated.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, was this just a way
Speaker 1: for Apple to try and nudge people to purchase a
Speaker 1: Mac as their next computer. Because within the ecosystem things
Speaker 1: worked great. It only started to really get cumbersome once
Speaker 1: you were starting to step outside that ecosystem. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know if Apple was purposefully trying to make Windows
Speaker 1: based software worse on purpose, but I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if that were true. It's it's entirely possible that it
Speaker 1: was just that's just how it developed and it wasn't intentional,
Speaker 1: But I also wouldn't be shocked if it were intentional. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's getting off track a little bit. It's related to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, but not directly about it. So
Speaker 1: Apple as a company was really looking at ways to
Speaker 1: extend revenue generation through hardware because that's what the company
Speaker 1: was primarily. It was a hardware company, and it made
Speaker 1: computers and B three players and smartphones and tablets. So
Speaker 1: most of its revenue generation strategies related to the production,
Speaker 1: the selling, the maintenance and the repair of those pieces
Speaker 1: of hardware. But last year Apple launched a self service
Speaker 1: repair store, and through this store, Apple customers can access
Speaker 1: repair manuals, they can order genuine Apple tools and parts,
Speaker 1: and they can make their own repairs to their own purchases.
Speaker 1: The company gradually rolled out support for various Apple products,
Speaker 1: starting with the Iphoe twelve and thirteen lineups, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't cover everything Apple makes, but it is gradually covering
Speaker 1: more and more products that Apple has produced. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk more about why Apple did this and
Speaker 1: how it works when we come back from this quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back. So before the break, I mentioned that Apple
Speaker 1: had rolled out a self service repair store last year,
Speaker 1: and you might think, well, why would Apple do that?
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different reasons. One reason is
Speaker 1: that there has been this rise in the right to
Speaker 1: repair movement, and it's it's a tide that's slowly gaining
Speaker 1: some ground in the industry, and some companies like Apple
Speaker 1: might be trying to get ahead of that to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're not caught unawares when or if this
Speaker 1: ends up becoming you know, law in various places. So
Speaker 1: they're getting ahead of the game. But another one is
Speaker 1: that for the last several years, Tim Cook has really
Speaker 1: been pivoting Apple to become more of a service oriented company.
Speaker 1: So it still makes hardware and still sells it obviously,
Speaker 1: but Tim Cook has really focused on making services a
Speaker 1: major part this major source of revenue for the company,
Speaker 1: and the company has done very well as a result
Speaker 1: of that, although there has been more recent resistance to
Speaker 1: that approach to but you could argue, well, one reason
Speaker 1: Apple can ease off on the whole ecosystem thing is
Speaker 1: because it has found a different avenue for generating money,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's taking an enormous hit. Another
Speaker 1: reason is that the self service repair store it's not
Speaker 1: exactly something that the average person is going to take
Speaker 1: advantage of. So a customer wanting to repair their own,
Speaker 1: say iPhone twelve, can use the self service repair store
Speaker 1: to get access to the repair manual, they can identify
Speaker 1: the parts and tools they'll need to perform the specific
Speaker 1: repair they're interested in. Then they can order those tools
Speaker 1: and parts from Apple itself. And Apple promises that it
Speaker 1: will send out the same quality parts and tools that
Speaker 1: it would provide to officially licensed Apple repair providers. So
Speaker 1: it's not like the self repair folks are going to get,
Speaker 1: you know, cheap knockoffs. They're going to get the real thing.
Speaker 1: And this was a pretty darn darn big change for
Speaker 1: the company. Uh and I think the reason why they
Speaker 1: feel comfortable doing it is they really don't expect most
Speaker 1: customers to actually go the self repair route. It turns
Speaker 1: out the specialized tools that Apple has developed do not
Speaker 1: come cheap, and unless you are running your own repair business,
Speaker 1: it starts to get hard to justify the expense. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Apple has a display press. It looks a
Speaker 1: bit like a major printing press, and it's, as the
Speaker 1: name would indicate, its purpose is to help install a
Speaker 1: display in an iPhone. This is a tricky and delicate job,
Speaker 1: so the press on its own, which is just one
Speaker 1: tool you would need to do a display replacement within
Speaker 1: an iPhone, costs more than two dollars. So when you
Speaker 1: start looking at the cost of repairs, it can get
Speaker 1: to a point where it would make more sense financially
Speaker 1: to bring the device into an Apple store and have
Speaker 1: it repaired there, or to bring it to a licensed
Speaker 1: Apple repair shop, because you'd be likely to spend less
Speaker 1: money going through Apple's ecosystem anyway. Then if you try
Speaker 1: to sidestep it. Now, Apple does allow customers to rent
Speaker 1: a toolkit that contains most of the tools you would need,
Speaker 1: but apparently not all of them according to at least
Speaker 1: some of the reviews I've read, and that would cost
Speaker 1: forty nine dollars each time you rented the toolkit. So
Speaker 1: for some repairs, the rental plus the cost of replacement
Speaker 1: parts might squeak in under the amount that you would
Speaker 1: spend at a repair shop. But then you start asking
Speaker 1: yourself if it makes more sense to just go with
Speaker 1: the experts and spend a little bit more without having
Speaker 1: to worry about doing the whole thing yourself, because there's
Speaker 1: also the investment of time and effort, and if you've
Speaker 1: never done it before, there's a really good chance that
Speaker 1: you're not going to get it exactly right first time
Speaker 1: out the gate. So that's a lot of trial and
Speaker 1: error as well, and a lot of frustrations. You started
Speaker 1: asking yourself, well, is it worth it or should I
Speaker 1: just go to the Apple store anyway. On top of that,
Speaker 1: I've read some articles in which journalists attempted to use
Speaker 1: the self repair system to do some work on their
Speaker 1: own devices, and they found it really difficult to do.
Speaker 1: The jobs can be really delicate and precise and complicated,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have to do stuff like use a
Speaker 1: certain amount of force to open a case, but if
Speaker 1: you use too much, you could break the thing. So
Speaker 1: it's tricky and a lot of articles I've read had
Speaker 1: headlines that were similar to I tried to repair my
Speaker 1: own iPhone and it was a disaster. But still Apples
Speaker 1: change means you aren't reliant solely upon the Apple Genius
Speaker 1: bar or Apple service stores to get your Apple products repaired.
Speaker 1: You could take it to an independent shop that could
Speaker 1: handle it for you, and that's where you might end
Speaker 1: up saving money. If the independent shop has invested in
Speaker 1: the parts and the tools, because over time they're gonna
Speaker 1: do enough repair jobs to pay off that investment, then
Speaker 1: that might be the best bet. So you do still
Speaker 1: have more options if you find a good independent repair
Speaker 1: store that is not an official Apple store. That is
Speaker 1: an improvement. Now, yesterday I talked about a company that
Speaker 1: has long had a history of locking down products, and
Speaker 1: this time it's John Deer. This is the company that's
Speaker 1: best known for stuff like lawn mowers and farm equipment. Now,
Speaker 1: over the years, John Deer has made their products more
Speaker 1: difficult to access and repair, urging farmers to take equipment
Speaker 1: to licensed John Deer Service centers. They do this through
Speaker 1: lots of different means. A lot of them are software related,
Speaker 1: because there actually are lots of sophisticated geter systems on
Speaker 1: John Deer equipment, and the software has meant both to
Speaker 1: enable features and to kind of lock stuff behind John
Speaker 1: dear proprietary software so that you have to go to
Speaker 1: one of these licensed service centers in order to get
Speaker 1: any maintenance or repair performed on your equipment. Now, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the most convenient or cost effective option for farmers,
Speaker 1: assuming that they had the chance to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: If you lock them into a system that could require
Speaker 1: them to travel further and spend more money just to
Speaker 1: get their equipment to a service center, that's pretty brutal.
Speaker 1: But recently, John Deer signed a memorandum of Understanding or
Speaker 1: MoU with an organization representing American farmers that will loosen
Speaker 1: these restrictions a bit. Now, farmers and independent repair shops
Speaker 1: will be allowed to access repair manuals, they'll be able
Speaker 1: to get proper to rules and replacement parts, but there
Speaker 1: are some restrictions here. One of those is that farmers
Speaker 1: and repair shops are not supposed to reveal any John
Speaker 1: dear trade secrets. So if the repair involves accessing materials
Speaker 1: that would reveal such things, they may not be able
Speaker 1: to get access to that, and they may still have
Speaker 1: to go to a John Deer service center, or they
Speaker 1: are obligated not to reveal any proprietary information. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you enforce that. Another more insidious requirement is
Speaker 1: that the m OU calls for the farming organization to
Speaker 1: tell farmers to quote refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting
Speaker 1: federal or state right to repair legislation that imposes obligations
Speaker 1: beyond the commitments in this m OU end quote. So
Speaker 1: that is a big red flag, right. They're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this should be good enough, and if it's not good enough,
Speaker 1: you need to tell farmers don't ask for something better,
Speaker 1: because we don't want to deal with that. Like the
Speaker 1: John Deer is essentially saying, knock it off with the
Speaker 1: right to repair stuff. We don't want it to become law.
Speaker 1: And this this is what has critics saying that the
Speaker 1: m O you isn't really significant progress, that John Deer
Speaker 1: might hold back on stuff by arguing that it falls
Speaker 1: under trade secrets, and that the company is also trying
Speaker 1: to hamstring any efforts for right to repair advocates to
Speaker 1: get laws passed that would require companies like John Dear
Speaker 1: to knock that kind of stuff off. And yeah, that
Speaker 1: does look pretty bad. Okay, when we come back, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk briefly about a recent law past in New
Speaker 1: York that ostensibly extends the right to repair, but in
Speaker 1: reality there are a lot of problems with it. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take this quick break. Okay, we're back. So while
Speaker 1: all this stuff is going on, late last year, we
Speaker 1: had New York passed a right to repair law sort of,
Speaker 1: and I say sort of because by the time the
Speaker 1: law actually was passed, it had been neutered quite a bit.
Speaker 1: It had been whittled back. So on December two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty two, the Governor of New York signed into law
Speaker 1: the Digital Fair Repair Act. And this act was intended
Speaker 1: to give consumers more options when repairing the tech stuff
Speaker 1: they had purchased. By that, I mean tech stuff as
Speaker 1: in like gadgets and whatnot. Not this podcast. It's not
Speaker 1: for sale, though I do have reasonable rates. However, as
Speaker 1: the bill was making its way to the finish line,
Speaker 1: in swept some amendments that effectively took the strength out
Speaker 1: of the legislation. So, for example, one amendment says that
Speaker 1: original equipment manufacturers or o e m s will not
Speaker 1: be required to hand over anything that would allow someone
Speaker 1: to bypass security features on a product. But sometimes that's
Speaker 1: exactly what you need to perform a repair, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you have a device that's locked but otherwise would
Speaker 1: work fine, the one thing you need to do is
Speaker 1: bypass the security feature. But the amendment means that companies
Speaker 1: are not obligated to share that information at all, and
Speaker 1: so customers might find that they still have to go
Speaker 1: through the ecosystem to get stuff done. Now, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, you can understand why security features should not
Speaker 1: be bypassed. Right If you know how to bypass a
Speaker 1: device is security, then arguably you could use that knowledge
Speaker 1: to do it on devices that you don't own, and
Speaker 1: that you're compromising other people's privacy and security as a process.
Speaker 1: So in that regard, it is understandable, right you want
Speaker 1: that security to be preserved. Apple has long tried to
Speaker 1: preserve security against agencies like the FBI that have been
Speaker 1: arguing that they need a way to bypass security features
Speaker 1: in order to access the contents of devices they have
Speaker 1: uh taken from suspects of crimes and such. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can understand why there is a need to preserve security.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, the worry is that o e
Speaker 1: M s could use this argument to cover stuff that
Speaker 1: maybe is only slightly related to security or privacy, just
Speaker 1: to prevent a larger number of self repair or independent
Speaker 1: repair shop jobs that otherwise could be done. The bill
Speaker 1: also allows o e M s to offer collections of
Speaker 1: parts rather than specific individual parts. So if you need
Speaker 1: to make a repair and you need some official part,
Speaker 1: you're not likely to be able to get just the
Speaker 1: thing you need. So let's say like you've got a
Speaker 1: cracked screen on a tablet and you want to order
Speaker 1: a new screen for this specific tablet. But everything else
Speaker 1: is fine, You've checked it out everything else, there's no
Speaker 1: other problems. However, the o e M only offers a
Speaker 1: collection of parts that includes the screen but also includes
Speaker 1: other stuff, and you can't order just the screen itself,
Speaker 1: so you have to spend more money because you've got
Speaker 1: to buy the whole collection, and then you've got all
Speaker 1: these spare parts cluttering up the place because you didn't
Speaker 1: need them. So In other words, this amendment can allow
Speaker 1: O e M s to make self repairs inconvenient and costly.
Speaker 1: The bill also has a bunch of exemptions on the
Speaker 1: types of tech that are covered by the right to
Speaker 1: repair law. For example, home appliances those are not covered
Speaker 1: by this right to repair legislation. So if you have
Speaker 1: a home appliance and it breaks, you're likely still going
Speaker 1: to have to go to the manufacturer for help because
Speaker 1: this law does not guarantee you any of or choice. Also,
Speaker 1: motor vehicles, those are not covered by this right to
Speaker 1: repair legislation, so if your car breaks down, well, you
Speaker 1: may have very little choice but to go to that
Speaker 1: extremely expensive service station at your local dealership. Also not
Speaker 1: covered are enterprise devices. I was sad to learn that
Speaker 1: enterprise devices are not things like transporters and photon torpedoes
Speaker 1: and replicators. No, an enterprise devices equipment that's intended for businesses,
Speaker 1: and the Verge reports that specifically enterprise devices used by
Speaker 1: organizations like data centers and hospitals and schools will not
Speaker 1: be covered by this legislation either. Now, the bill does
Speaker 1: show that there continues to be the steady push for
Speaker 1: right to repair in the United States. But the getting
Speaker 1: true sweeping legislation in place is proving to be a
Speaker 1: significant challenge, and there's no surprise there because tech companies
Speaker 1: tend to spend a lot of money on lobbying, and
Speaker 1: lobbyists can be really influential when it comes to politicians
Speaker 1: shaping policy. So if you're the cynical type, you might
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that until you get leaders in
Speaker 1: place who actually value the people they represent over their
Speaker 1: own position. In other words, it's more important to act
Speaker 1: on behalf of your constituents than it is for you
Speaker 1: to preserve your place of power, then we're gonna kind
Speaker 1: of be stuck in this halfhearted limbo of right to
Speaker 1: repair because there's so many lobbyists that target politicians who
Speaker 1: are willing to have concessions to the industry and thus
Speaker 1: weaken or in some cases, invalidate legislation that would otherwise
Speaker 1: give people the right to repair the stuff they bought.
Speaker 1: This is an ongoing thing. We've seen large protests in
Speaker 1: various parts of the nation about this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and I don't see it coming to an end anytime soon.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of where we are right now in
Speaker 1: the United States. Now, I think we're going to continue
Speaker 1: to see more movement to to support right to repair legislation.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see people calling for better bills
Speaker 1: with fewer loopholes. But I think we're also going to
Speaker 1: see continued resistance on the part of companies that have
Speaker 1: made lucrative business out of making the thing and then
Speaker 1: making the shop that repairs the thing. And yes, it
Speaker 1: does get complicated because when you have very sophisticated products
Speaker 1: that have hardware and software elements to them, and there
Speaker 1: are security concerns or safety concerns, there are some legitimate
Speaker 1: reasons why you don't want all the information just to
Speaker 1: get out there, because you don't want to cause more
Speaker 1: problems in the long run than you're actually solving. But
Speaker 1: you can't get around the fact that for the most part,
Speaker 1: this approach, this closed ecosystem approach, disproportionately benefits the companies
Speaker 1: and disproportionately puts a burden on consumers. And it's just
Speaker 1: hard to get past this idea of if I went
Speaker 1: to the store and I picked up a box that
Speaker 1: has a tech gadget in it, and I go to
Speaker 1: the cash register and I spend my hard earned money
Speaker 1: to buy this thing and I take it home. That
Speaker 1: thing now belongs to me. It is mine, it is
Speaker 1: no longer the domain of the company that made it,
Speaker 1: and then I should be able to make changes to it.
Speaker 1: This is, by the way, a big part of the
Speaker 1: hacker ethos, because originally hackers referred to people who would
Speaker 1: take tech and then mess with it to see if
Speaker 1: they can make it do other stuff, or make it
Speaker 1: work better, or all sorts of things, or just learn
Speaker 1: how it works. That was kind of like the hacker ethos.
Speaker 1: But in the world of the closed ecosystem, it's very
Speaker 1: anti hacker mentality. It's it's that it has to fit
Speaker 1: in this very bureaucratic system, and if you try to
Speaker 1: deviate from that, you are disadvantaged, you're punished for it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a complicated subject. I'm pro right to repair,
Speaker 1: not that I would ever try to repair stuff myself.
Speaker 1: If I did, I'm pretty sure I would just make
Speaker 1: it worse. I'm much more likely to take it to
Speaker 1: a repair service center, maybe an independent one, if that's
Speaker 1: an option for me, I would probably do that. For one,
Speaker 1: I like to support local business, and two I could
Speaker 1: probably save some money because it's no longer the only
Speaker 1: game in town kind of thing if you have to
Speaker 1: go to the official store. So I'm very much in
Speaker 1: that that camp. And also I don't like tech becoming
Speaker 1: more and more like a black box. I think that
Speaker 1: is a dangerous path to go down. Whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about farming equipment or motor vehicles or computers or appliances.
Speaker 1: Anytime the technology becomes less transparent, I get increasingly concerned.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's the update on the right to repair
Speaker 1: a situation here in the United States. Obviously, there are
Speaker 1: other parts of the world where there are kind of
Speaker 1: similar issues going on, but I wanted to focus on
Speaker 1: the US because it is started to become a bigger
Speaker 1: deal here in the States than it had been, say,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, So I wanted to to kind of
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Speaker 1: there's a person in tech you think I should cover
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