Oregon’s governor signs right-to-repair law that bans “parts pairing”
Oregon’s governor signs right-to-repair law that bans “parts pairing”
It’s the strongest right-to-repair law passed so far.
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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
briberylobbying.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.
The farming equipment exemption smells like John Deere's lobbies have been involved.
Oh definitely.
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).
That is getting really hard to do. Seems like someone could make a market in controllers that replace the factory ones but hook to the factory sensors.
John Deere probably
bribedlobbied 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.
Cars have been home repaired since cars existed. It has never been a notable safety concern. Somehow it suddenly is?
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.
Emissions is the biggest concern honestly
Cars emissions is going to be a thing of the past when ICE cars are gone. Can't wait.
Yeah hopefully so.
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.
I'm sure that is what the car manufacturers claim.
Don’t take my word for it. Tear into any one of the dozens of black boxes in your car and take it apart. Analyze the chips soldered on the boards. You might get lucky and find all standard chips with information available from suppliers.
Try looking at the data going across any one of the several buses transiting your vehicle. OBD is easy. The others are usually encrypted and much higher speed.
Cars are legitimately complex. Don’t just listen to the manufacturers and scoff. Look up some research into breaking the communication protocols that MB or BMW use. Compare that with GM’s newest standard. Go ahead and practice your reverse engineering skills, because these things aren’t published.
They're made that way so you can't repair them. They don't need to be that complex and nothing on a car needs to be encrypted.
Idk person, encryption on cars has a valid place.
If nothing else, it increases the time to attack and own the system. Networked modules are more efficient and higher performing than old systems. This is the price of progress.
Just one example is the ECU. Old analog engines were crude and inflexible. Simple environmental changes would cause engines to run out of their efficient zones and dump more or less fuel than is appropriate for the conditions they’re experiencing. Modern engines take pressures and temperatures (from several locations) into account, along with throttle desired by the user and calculated load to change the engine parameters on the fly. This is why a modern Mustang can hit 30 mpg on the highway with 500hp and the 80’s model struggles with 20mpg and less power than a current Civic.
These ECUs can be the difference between safely driving and unsafe unintended acceleration into a truck in front of you. We haven’t seen any attacks which turn ordinary occupied vehicles into missiles… yet. I have absolutely no doubt that we will experience one in the next 10 years. Encryption and security may be the difference between this being a rare occurrence conducted by powerful nation state actors and something script kiddies can perform with a laptop and a weekend.
Sounds like the problem is lack of regulations, not people repairing their own stuff. We are letting companies create unmanageable products then blaming owners for trying to take ownership. Encryption is a solved problem, and doesn't require a black box to be secure, in fact is more secure when it isn't. And this isn't the first time that Cara breaking on the road a risk. If someone put after market breaks on their car and they failed, people would die too, yet somehow we allowed that. Car manufacturers are being allowed to make anti-consumer decisions and are blaming us for them.
I’m not getting the feeling that you actually know what you’re talking about.
This isn’t a discussion about encryption, it’s about pairing modules. Encryption is absolutely necessary and is already used widely across the industry. It might not be transparent (open, published standards), but it’s there.
Illegitimate and low quality parts have always been a concern. You don’t seem like you are a car enthusiast, so go on any car forum or facebook group and ask about some fake wheels or eBay special turbos. You’ll get roasted and start a real stupid discussion on if knockoffs are great for the money or if you’ll die in a fiery wreck. These are simple physical objects which you can fake by casting a mould and pouring something vaguely metallic inside. Fake car electronics can be cheaply remade in a similar fashion. How do you know if a replacement ECU is actually taking in one of the hundreds of datapoints in order to calculate the exact fuel trim to safely use in the millisecond you’re polling? How do you know if your rebuilt or replacement transmission is equipped with the proper logic modules to not cause you to drop into first on the highway, causing you to destroy your engine and probably cause a serious accident?
How do you know the manufacturer-supplied module is doing the work it's supposed to without being able to verify it yourself? Boeing aircraft are having similar problems; if an industry that regulated is having issues, what is going to stop vehicle manufacturers from doing the same?
Give us the diagnostic tools and the parts. Operating with zero trust and verifying everything before and after install is the only way to be sure.
Encryption is a must if your car has anything-by-wire on it.
Acceleration is already commonly used this way.
If the car has internet, even more so.
I know, cars don't need internet, but it's there and it's convenient and it's easier to collect data that way..
The problem with the black box approach is not only does it mess with right to repair, competition, and home build jobs, but even people who make cars! I've literally been to talks in car manufacturing events where a speaker from a large car manufacturing give talks about how hard it is making life for them. Does that car manufacturer do anything different? Nope. Whole culture is infected with "my secrets" thinking which makes everyone's life hard. Things are at a complexity now, everything should be built to be debugged.
One thing I've notice is you can't modify the software "because of safety", but breaks, fuel pipes, ignition systems, that all fine to modify!
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.
I'll have to check out the channel. Sounds interesting!
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.
As long as you offer a 10 year replacement warranty that's perfectly fine. Tandem was great about replacing my daughter's failed insulin pump.
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.
The refrigerant wouldn't have anything to do with parts pairing though. This is just the electronic components.
Parts pairing is just one piece of the puzzle; this is more broadly about access to parts, which would include proprietary refrigerants.
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.
People were able to do that before this law so what's changed?
Honestly I tried to summarize what right ti repair is, but you’ll be better off actually looking into what this bill does.
Basically, for this application nothing changes. That’s kinda the point.
Didn't Apple try and class their iPhones as game consoles a couple months back?
Aside from maybe HVAC dealing with refrigerant needing a licensed tech to work on, the rest of these not being included is such a scam.