Bipartisan FTC Study Confirms Everything 'Right to Repair' Advocates Have Been Saying For Years

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

For years, "right to repair" advocates have been warning about the problems with efforts to monopolize repair. Whether it's Apple's efforts to bully small repair shops, Sony and Microsoft's efforts to monopolize repair of game consoles, or John Deere's implementation of DRM and repair restrictions so onerous customers have to drive a thousand miles and pay a small fortune to repair their own tractors, the impact is rather obvious. And the impact has only been more pronounced during Covid, as hospitals complain about the difficulty in obtaining the documentation and parts necessary to repair ventilators in a timely fashion.

There's of course numerous other problems with making it harder to promptly and inexpensively repair products consumers and companies own, including the environmental impact and waste. Pushed by Congress two years ago to issue a report on the growing problem with repair monopolies, the FTC released a new bipartisan study this week that effectively confirms what "right to repair" reformers have been arguing for years, namely that such onerous and self-serving restrictions harm consumers, innovation, and the planet itself.

Like so many other monopolization issues (broadband comes quickly to mind), the FTC study found that these restrictions often unfairly impact marginalized communities where money is already tight:

"The burden of repair restrictions may fall more heavily on communities of color and lower-income communities,” the FTC found. “Many Black-owned small businesses are in the repair and maintenance industries, and difficulties facing small businesses can disproportionately affect small businesses owned by people of color."

Annoyance at this problem has driven bipartisan calls for new right to repair legislation in more than dozen states, as well as a new federal right to repair law. Worried that this could impact revenues, companies have been doing their best to try and smear these reform efforts as some kind of dangerous, leftist cabal, an extreme risk to user privacy and security, a boon to dangerous hackers, or even a massive gift to sexual predators. None of of these things are remotely true, but so far they've been fairly effective at stalling legislative progress in numerous states among legislators who don't understand the subject.

The FTC's report dug through many of these claims, and found that the majority of them simply don't hold water:

"Although manufacturers have offered numerous explanations for their repair restrictions, the majority are not supported by the record,” the FTC said. The agency also noted that industry efforts at self-regulation had fallen well short of solving the problem."

The report also digs through the litany of ways companies try to monopolize repair, whether it's through obnoxious DRM, specific adhesives companies know can't be removed, aggressive tactics on copyright, legal attacks on small third party repair shops, or onerous restrictions on gaining access to documentation and parts. In addition to recommending better stronger state and federal laws, the FTC makes it clear the government could do a lot better job enforcing existing warranty laws, as well as the whole "unfair and deception" aspect of the FTC Act.

While right to repair advocates welcomed the FTC report as confirmation of what they've been saying all along, they were quick to note that acknowledging the problem--and taking substantive steps to fix it--are very different things.

Filed Under: drm, ftc, innovation, ownership, right to repair

Judge Lets False Advertising Case Against Apple Over 'Buying' Music You Didn't Buy Move Forward

from the you-don't-own-what-you-bought dept

A decade ago we wrote a post about what we called Schrodinger's Download, which was that the big companies in the music space would refer to digital downloads as a sale or a license in varying ways depending on which benefited them the most. This was most evident in lawsuits between artists and labels, especially with contracts signed in the pre-digital era, where the royalties for "licensing" were much higher than the royalties for "sales." In those cases, the labels tried to claim that MP3 downloads were "sales" in order to pay lower licensing fees -- but, on the flip side, when there were cases about reselling those files, suddenly the labels would insist that wasn't allowed, since it wasn't actually a sale, but a license.

And, of course, over the years, we've seen this play out in many ways -- especially with our never ending series of posts on how you don't own what you've bought, as more and more companies try to use technology and DRM to retain control over things you've "purchased." Last year, we wrote about someone suing Amazon for claiming that she had "purchased" movie downloads, but the fine print showing that she was merely "renting" them. The argument was that this was false advertising. That case is still going, but what we hadn't realized was that someone else had filed a very similar case against Apple, arguing the same thing. And, yes, it's the same lawyers on both cases...

And even though the Apple case was filed three months after the Amazon case, it's actually seen more progress. This week the judge denied Apple's motion to dismiss (first spotted on Courthouse News), saying that there's enough of a case to move forward. Apple tried to argue that the harm here is merely speculative. It hasn't actually removed the plaintiff's downloads. But the court says that Apple's wrong about that:

Apple argues that Plaintiff’s alleged injury — which it describes as the possibility that the purchased content may one day disappear — is not concrete but rather speculative.... This, however, as Plaintiff points out, misconstrues the injury. Plaintiff responds that his injury is not that he may one day lose access to his content.... Rather the injury Plaintiff asserts, is that he spent money purchasing the content that he wouldn’t have otherwise as a result of Apple’s misrepresentation.... This occurred at the time of purchase.

Another point raised by Apple is that "no reasonable consumer would believe" that when you buy a digital file, it means that it will always be available for you on iTunes. But the Court says, uh, yeah, actually, plenty of reasonable consumers probably would believe that, because that's what "buy" means:

Apple contends that “[n]o reasonable consumer would believe” that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely. Id. at 12. But in common usage, the term “buy” means to acquire possession over something. Buy Definition, merriam-webster.com, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/buy (13 April 2021). It seems plausible, at least at the motion to dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn’t be revoked.

The court did dismiss a few extraneous claims, but the key ones can now move forward -- and there's a decent chance that this will eventually become a class action lawsuit.

While some might argue that it doesn't really matter that much whether or not you're "buying" or "renting" this content, it really does matter in the legal sense, and big companies have used the distinction to their own advantage (often swapping out the words when convenient, as noted up top). Forcing the companies to actually be upfront about this stuff would be much better -- and might even get them to provide some more accurate descriptions of what they're really providing.

Filed Under: buying, class action, digital goods, licensing, ownership, purchase, renting, truth in advertising
Companies: amazon, apple

Uninformed Legislators Shoot Down Right To Repair Legislation In Colorado

from the try,-try-again dept

As we've noted a few times, 2021 is seeing record interest in new right to repair laws. Driven by grass roots activism, such laws are being pushed in more than fourteen states. Most variations not only protect your right to repair hardware you own, they open the door to more independent repair shops, and fewer corporate giants attempting to monopolize repair (Apple, John Deere, Microsoft, Sony, many more).

Unsurprisingly, said companies are engaged in a lot of theatrics to undermine such efforts, including false claims that such laws will create a boom in sexual predators, raise prices, or turn otherwise peaceful American towns and cities into diabolical meccas for hackers. This coordinated assault on such laws has been effective in states like Colorado, where the state legislature recently shot down one such legislative effort, even after hearing testimony about how repair restrictions are harming health care providers during COVID by hamstringing access to essential repair technology and documentation or replacement parts:

"The Colorado House Business Affairs & Labor committee met to consider the law on March 25. Twelve legislators voted to indefinitely postpone considering the bill. Only one voted for it. “I still have a lot of questions. I still have a lot of concerns,” Rep. Monica Duran (D) said at the end of the committee hearing. She voted no on the bill."

But these befuddled lawmakers apparently couldn't be bothered to actually ask any questions during testimony showcasing the very real harm repair monopolies are causing across countless sectors. And like many issues in tech, this isn't really a partisan debate; in fact the right to repair movement truly took off when John Deere tractor owners began to get angry about the company's draconian DRM and repair policies. Policies that often force rural farm owners to pay thousands of extra dollars and travel sometimes hundreds of additional miles just to even diagnose problems with their tractors.

Even after folks clearly testified about the scope of the harm repair monopolies cause to agriculture, health care, and other sectors, and after folks clearly illustrated the environmental impact of a wasteful culture routinely incentivized to avoid repair and buy new, the lawmakers made oodles of comments suggesting they'd bought into corporate narratives on the subject:

"In their own comments, the legislators repeated lines Apple and other companies often use to defend their repair monopolies. Shannon Bird (D), for example, said that manufacturers have the right to dictate how a customer uses its product. She stressed that Apple can sell licenses to whatever it wants. “Apple Music is different than purchasing a CD,” she said. "I have a hard time believing that we would call it Apple having a monopoly on its own product.”

Many of the legislators on the committee conflated the repair market with the phone market itself. Others said that a right-to-repair bill would increase the cost of phones for everyone.

That's false and... embarrassing. Fortunately for right to repair activists, the harder companies fight against these efforts, the more support they're seeing from the public. And there's certainly going to be no shortage of new evidence of harms when it comes to draconian DRM, ham-fisted restrictions on repair tools and technology, environmental waste, and soaring consumer repair costs. So while Colorado legislators were too uninformed this go-round, it's a subject that's not going away anytime soon. Perhaps next time lawmakers can spend more than thirty seconds trying to understand the subject.

Filed Under: colorado, ownership, right to repair
Companies: apple

Undeletable Coercive Loan Apps First Hobble Then Shut Down Your Smartphone If You Fall Behind On Repayments

from the still-think-you-own-your-hardware? dept

The modern smartphone is a technological wonder, cramming into its compact form factor multiple functions -- phone, pager, computer, camera, calculator, diary, multimedia player, radio, TV, clock, maps, GPS, voice recorder, eBook reader, gaming device, WiFi hotspot, flashlight etc. etc. -- that required over a dozen separate devices a couple of decades ago. No wonder, then, that most people want one, and would like to buy a model that offers all these features. However, in many parts of the world, the price of a good smartphone represents a big chunk of their annual wages. The obvious solution is to take out a loan, but that typically requires a credit rating, and many people in those countries lack a credit history, and may not have a bank account. To get around that problem, companies have come up with a new kind of smart loan for the "unbanked", as they are known. A fascinating article on the Rest of the World site, about the Indian Datacultr app, explains how the system works:

the easiest way for retailers and online stores to get high-end devices into working-class people's pockets has been through a new method of lending: collateralizing smartphones. Vendors are selling smartphones to first-time borrowers on high-interest payment plans financed by loan companies, but only after users install an undeletable app at the point of sale. The apps can then monitor repayment behavior throughout the duration of the loan. One late payment leads to instant blocking of the phone, rendering it useless. For loan providers and smartphone sellers, this form of lending opens their products to a new class of consumers. But users purchasing phones on loan are bearing the brunt of the coercive repayment tactics built into their devices.

The lack of formal credit scores is addressed by using the undeletable loan app to spy on the smartphone user. By looking at how people are using the smartphone, and accessing their texts, images and location, the app can gauge how likely the borrower is to default on the loan. To prevent that, software like the Datacultr app uses "nudges" of increasing severity:

The app starts by sending audiovisual prompts in regional languages as reminders. If the user misses their first repayment, it forcefully changes the wallpaper on their cellphones. If Datacultr's data scrape reveals a user to be a prolific selfie-taker, for instance, the app will send notifications every time the camera function is opened. If the user continues to default on the loan, frequently used messaging and social apps like Facebook or Instagram are progressively blocked, severely restricting the use of the device and ultimately shutting down all of the phone's functionalities.

It's not just India where these loan apps are being rolled out. The Rest of the World article says that the US company PayJoy has licensed its smartphone locking technology to lenders in over 20 countries, for example in South America and Africa. Google, too, is active in Africa with its own app called "Device Lock Controller".

Although "collateralizing smartphones" may indeed allow the "unbanked" to acquire models that would normally be well beyond their budget, there are some obvious problems. The first is the intrusive and coercive nature of the nudges and shutdowns. Secondly, the approach requires people to give access to personal files on their smartphone in order to assess their creditworthiness in real time. In other words, they must give up their privacy in return for the loan.

Finally, it's worth noting that the use of undeletable apps that can take over control of the smartphone at any time means that people don't fully own their device. That's not a new problem: Techdirt was writing about it back in 2011. And in 2014 the New York Times noted that companies lending money for cars required starter interruption devices to be fitted that could immobilize the vehicle if people fell behind on repayments. What's new is that nowadays all that is required is that most mundane of 21st-century artifacts -- a smartphone app -- which not only watches you constantly, but can punish you for "bad" behavior with a variety of tailor-made digital tortures.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: apps, india, loans, ownership, smartphones

14 States Are Now Considering 'Right to Repair' Legislation

from the this-train-is-rolling dept

Five years or so ago, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM culminated in a grassroots tech movement dubbed "right to repair." The company's crackdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM (and the company's EULA) prohibited the lion's share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

Of course the problem isn't just restricted to John Deere. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and countless other tech giants eager to monopolize repair have spent years bullying independent repair shops and demonizing consumers who simply want to reduce waste and repair devices they own.

Fast forward to 2021, and roughly fourteen different states are all considering pending right to repair legislation that would put power back in the hands of consumers and independent repair shops. Some states, like Montana, are considering different types of legislation that would cover both consumer hardware and agricultural equipment.

COVID is also pouring some gasoline on this fire, highlighting how manufacturers frequently enjoy a stranglehold over tools, documentation, and replacement parts, which can literally put human lives at risk by causing repair delays:

"Covid has changed our relationship with technology and it's obvious that laws need to catch up,” Proctor said. “We need devices to work and learn, but manufacturers won't provide tools or information even when their stores are closed."

Throughout this whole movement, companies have tried to cling tightly to nonsense in a bid to derail momentum. Usually this involves hallucinating nonexistent harms that threaten public safety and security.

Such as when Apple insisted that passing a right to repair law in Nebraska would turn the state into a "mecca for hackers." Or more recently, when the auto industry tried to claim that expanding Massachusetts' existing consumer tech law, to make sure that independent garages could access tools and diagnostic gear, would result in a "boom in sexual predators." The multi-sector quest to demonize the right to repair movement is relentless, and almost always involves making up bogus harms related to security and safety:

The problem is nobody believes them, in large part because their motivations couldn't be more obvious. And the more outlandish attacks giants like Apple make on this genuine grass roots coalition, the more attention -- and momentum -- it receives.

Filed Under: ownership, right to repair, tinkering

We Had To Pass A Law To Stop Telecom Monopolies From Charging You 'Rental Fees' For Things You Already Own

from the broken-industries dept

For much of the last few years, broadband customers have been complaining that Frontier Communications, the nation's third-biggest telco, had been charging its customers a rental fee for modems they already owned. Normally, you're supposed to be able to buy your own modem instead of paying your ISP a rental fee upwards of $10 per month. To nab some extra dough from captive customers, Frontier basically decided to charge its customers a rental fee anyway, giving them a polite, though giant, middle finger when they complained.

This façade persisted until customers had a problem with their hardware, at which point the ISP would just shrug and claim there was nothing they could do. When consumers complained to the Trump FCC about this, the agency did... absolutely nothing. As with most complaints to the Trump FCC, the agency just forwards your complaint to the ISP in question then does... nothing whatsoever.

This kind of behavior is the norm for the broadband industry, given it faces minimal pressure to try harder due to limited competition and captured regulators. So consumer advocates last year successfully pushed for the passage of the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA). The law, which likely would have never made it past a broken and corrupt Congress in standalone form, had to be shoveled into a budget bill in order to be passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in December 2019. It's not likely that many, including Trump, even noticed that the provision existed in the broader bill.

The bill prohibits charging consumers a rental fee for hardware they already own. It also requires that ISPs be a bit more transparent about all the bullshit fees broadband providers use to pad their advertised rates. And it gives you a 24 hours to cancel cable TV for any reason. It's not perfect; the bill doesn't prohibit ISPs from using bogus fees to raise your rate while under contract. It's also loosely worded enough that ISPs could likely find some new ways to tap dance around it. But it's still a step in the right direction:

"For years, consumers have been misled by pay-TV providers advertising service for one price and then charging another," Public Knowledge Senior VP Harold Feld said in a press release today. "Until now, consumers have had zero recourse for dealing with these surprise fees other than ending service and paying an unfair termination fee for the privilege. Not anymore."

Granted, even after the bill was passed, the FCC delayed implementing it for six months, arguing that not ripping consumers off was too onerous of a requirement to place on a regional telecom monopoly during a pandemic. Keep in mind Frontier is a bankrupt mess with a long history of dodgy behavior and fraud. And, more often than not, the FCC's reaction (basically: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) is pretty much the norm. Especially during the Trump FCC, which is so disinterested in consumer protection, it effectively lobotomized its authority just because Comcast and AT&T asked it to.

The cable industry alone makes a whopping $28 billion annually in bullshit fees. They've been doing this sort of thing for decades and, aside from the occasional noise, the U.S. government simply couldn't give any less of a shit. And of course it's not just telecom. Countless heavily monopolized sectors (banking, airlines) engage in the same behavior, and those in a position to do something about it simply couldn't care less. There's almost an understated American belief that tricking users into paying more via bogus fees is just creative pricing and it's the consumer's fault for being ripped off.

So here we are. Having to sneakily pass a new law to stop monopolies from charging you even more money for things you already own. Now we have to wait to see if anybody can be bothered to actually enforce it.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, fees, ownership, rental fees, sneaky fees, tvpa
Companies: frontier communications

Your Slingbox Will Be A Useless Brick In A Few Years

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

Remember the Slingbox? It was a piece of hardware by Dish subsidiary Sling Media that let users beam TV content from your home cable box to anywhere else. Sling was public enemy number one among entrenched cable and broadcast industry gatekeepers, because its products (*gasp*) not only made life easier on consumers, but at one point integrated ad-skipping technology. Back in 2013 the broadcast and cable industry was so pissed at Sling, it managed to get a best-of-show CES award retracted by CNET and CBS simply because the industry didn't like the disruptive nature of the company's technologies. Ah, memories.

This week, Sling Media announced that all Slingboxes will effectively become useless paperweights in a few years. In a company announcement, it says the technology will no longer work at all as of November 9, 2022:

"Slingbox servers will be permanently taken offline 24 months after the discontinued announcement date (November 9, 2020), at which point ALL Slingbox devices and services will become inoperable.

Until then, most Slingbox models will continue to work normally, but the number of supported devices for viewing will steadily decrease as versions of the SlingPlayer apps become outdated and/or lose compatibility.

The shift isn't particularly surprising given that the streaming era has effectively made such technology irrelevant. Users can now obtain streams of numerous apps on any platform they like. And software like Plex similarly let users stream content from their home PC anywhere they have a reliable internet connection. Streaming from your home cable box isn't as popular because people are not only cutting the cord at a record pace, they're shifting to streaming platforms that are inherently more flexible. Evolution made Sling irrelevant. The company kind of explains this all to users, but not really:

Q: Why is Slingbox being discontinued?

A: We’ve had to make room for new innovative products so that we can continue to serve our customers in the best way possible.

Q: Will Slingbox be releasing any new products?

A: No.

At the same time, it's yet another example of how in the modern era, you simply don't really own the things you buy. Firmware updates can often eliminate functionality promised to you at launch, as we saw with the Sony PlayStation 3. And with everything now relying on internet-connectivity, companies can often give up on supporting devices entirely, often leaving users with very expensive paperweights as we saw after Google acquired Revolv, then bricked users' $300 smart home hub. Now it's the Slingbox's turn to head to that great gadget graveyard in the sky.

Filed Under: brick, end of life, ownership, slingbox, streaming, tv
Companies: sling media

Massachusetts Voters Overwhelmingly Support Expanded 'Right To Repair' Law

from the baby-steps-toward-basic-rights dept

Back in 2015, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM culminated in a grassroots tech movement dubbed "right to repair." The company's crackdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM (and the company's EULA) prohibited the lion's share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

Of course the problem isn't just restricted to John Deere. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and countless other tech giants eager to monopolize repair have made a habit of suing and bullying independent repair shops and demonizing consumers who simply want to reduce waste and repair devices they own. This, in turn, has resulted in a growing push for right to repair legislation in countless states.

The movement scored another big win this week on the news that 74.8% of Massachusetts voters (so far) just approved an expansion to an existing Massachusetts law, resulting in one of the most comprehensive right to repair laws in the nation. The original law was the first in the nation to be passed in 2013. The update dramatically improves the law, requiring that as of 2022, all new telematics-equipped vehicles be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform that allows owners and third-party repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device.

More simply, that means users can take their vehicle to any repair shop and have easy, transparent access to vehicle data, without running into obnoxious restrictions or having to visit a more expensive dealership mechanic using proprietary tools. The auto industry, as you might expect, tried really hard to scuttle the law, at one point falsely arguing it would "aid sexual predators" (seriously). Apple, Microsoft and others eager to boost revenues via repair monopolies have also, routinely, tried to falsely portray basic repair rights as somehow nefarious and dangerous.

Needless to say, right to repair advocates like iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens were very happy with the law's passage:

"Kyle Wiens, iFixit CEO, is thrilled. “Modern cars can send maintenance information directly to the manufacturers, cutting out local mechanics. Question 1 makes sure that consumers can continue to fix their own vehicles, or get them fixed at the shop of their choice.”

That means that independent repair shops will have a level playing field with car makers and dealerships, which have turned increasingly to locked-down wirelessly collected repair data, or telematics. Car owners, too, will be able to see their cars’ maintenance information through a smartphone app. And it opens the door for innovations, like wireless diagnostic apps for iOS and Android.

The more companies attempt to lock down their systems, bully independent repair shops, and otherwise erode consumer choice (all to detrimental environmental impact) the greater this movement grows. And companies and industries out there trying to frame basic consumer tech rights as somehow dangerous and nefarious clearly haven't quite gotten the message yet.

Filed Under: massachusetts, ownership, property rights, right to repair

Focals 'Smart' Glasses Become Dumb As A Brick After Google Acquisition

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

Time and time again we've highlighted how, in the modern era, you don't really own the hardware you buy. Music, ebooks, and videos can disappear on a dime without recourse, your game console can lose important features after a purchase, and a wide variety of "smart" tech can quickly become dumb as a rock in the face of company struggles, hacks, or acquisitions, leaving you with pricey paperweights where innovation once stood.

The latest case in point: Google acquired Waterloo, Ontario based North back in June. For several years, North had been selling AR capable "smart" glasses dubbed Focal. Generally well reviewed, Focal glasses started at $600, went dramatically up from there, and required you visit one of two North stores -- either in Brooklyn or Toronto -- to carefully measure your head using 11 3D modeling cameras. The glasses themselves integrated traditional prescription glasses with smart technology, letting you enjoy a heads up display and AR notifications directly from your phone.

But with the Google acquisition, North posted a statement to its website, stating the company was forced to make the "difficult decision" to wind down support for Focal as of the end of July, at which point the "smart" tech will become rather dumb:

The full blog post notes that not only will it be killing off all online functionality for its first generation of Focal glasses, but it's cancelling production of its second generation, Focal 2.0 product:

"Focals smart glasses and its services are being discontinued and will no longer be available after July 31st, 2020. You won’t be able to connect your glasses through the app or use any features, abilities, or experiments from your glasses...We will not be shipping Focals 2.0, but we hope you will continue the journey with us as we start this next chapter."

Fortunately, the company says it's giving an automatic refund to all Focals 1.0 customers, though we'll have to see how well that works out in practice as the company shifts the lion's share of its focus toward getting swallowed up by Google and spending wheelbarrows full of acquisition money. Still, whether it's your smart glasses or your smart pet food bowl, it's yet another example of how sticking with dumb tech is very often less hassle and the better option.

Filed Under: ar, brick, focals, ownership, smart technology
Companies: google, north