Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/01/u-fix-it.html
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So if a company makes a shitty device or appliance, then goes out of business in 5 years - this law will somehow kick in and make then support it for ten years?
Sorry, I don’t see how that works.
Yeah, you’re right. That’s a good reason not to force shitty companies that are still in business to support their older products.
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My point is the good companies will support their stuff. The shitty ones will just shut down and move on - and repeat again and again.
Even “good” companies won’t last 10 years or care about what happens that far down the road. Penalties that kick in ten years from now are pointless.
I’m repairing right now.
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You guys might laugh, but there is one industry this is quite literally critical to as a concept-
Watch repair.
I went to school for a couple years in Oklahoma in a program that is now shuttered, for professional watch repair. The biggest problem facing horologists (watch and clockmakers) for a couple decades now has been the availability of spare parts.
Most of us (myself not included, as I can make near anything) do not have a machining background needed for the very high level skill of replicating watch parts to correct tolerances, so the entire industry has a razor to its throat and could die a slow death starting anytime as spare parts either are restricted or are not sold at all.
Watchmakers have parts accounts of course, for certain major brands that they can get certification with like Omega and Rolex that will provide parts but you have to jump through an enormous amount of certification hoops just to have parts available to be sold to you. They are gradually making the demands of watchmakers more and more ridiculous to the point where it is completely impossible to run a business doing it, where last I checked certain brands I shall not name require approximately $100,000 US worth of a very specific list of equipment that a watchmaker must have in their shop just to be considered properly equipped to have a parts account even if much of it are things a specific watchmaker would not use.
This right to repair bill might usurp the Swiss judgments within the industry and make the watch brands provide parts to the end watchmaker so they can actually fix your watch properly. There are so many watches that actually come in for service around the world that the service centers could never keep up even if they got every single one, so the industry refusing to sell parts to watchmakers, some brands not even providing parts no matter what, this might help the industry a bit.
For the record I do not work as a watchmaker currently, but as a machinist. Still, I do work on pieces occasionally.
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I bought my Maytag washer/dryer in 1988. Still going strong. Maytag was a good company, until they got bought out my Whirlpool and moved to Mexico.
So, Apple. We need to have a talk about you becoming more and more like Facebook and Google, et al.
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Planned Obsolescence is bad for the environment. I expect eventually that is going to mean something, and that will be enough. I don’t expect fairness to have anything to do with it.
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I guess it’s one of those law we should have way earlier but I’m still glad it pass !
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That’s exactly why watering down this legislation was utter BS ^^’.
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I’m wondering about that too. I’m calling it “The Rumbelows Scenario”.
I imagine companies will have to prepare for that scenario from the outset and ring-fence funds and parts to enable repairs in the event of their corporate demise. Hopefully, however, we’ll start seeing more appliances designed with compatible parts now that there’s no incentive to make them irreparable
The world is not just flimsy electronic toys from Amazon that you’ll will just throw away when the battery is empty. There still are real companies with real factories producing stuff that is expected to last for a while. Not everyone shares the one-way culture that feeds Americas landfills.
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an interesting read for you Cory, and anyone else into this issue. Microsoft is astroturfing the repair angle for a better image.
And Cory - your submission form is too long and a nuisance, and the link to submissions off of your twitter just goes to the main page at bOING since it hasn’t been changed to the new submission page.
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