NY Sabotages Right to Repair Bill [video]

I believe the analysis. Here in Canada, the government passed a law not that long ago (during the pandemic) to enshrine rights of passengers for delayed and cancelled flights, which included right to specific amounts of monetary compensation in those scenarios. The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. Lo and behold, the airlines have started classifying almost every delay and cancellation as a safety issue [1] and denying compensation claims left and right.<p>[1] Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue, even when it is things completely within their power to control: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;canada&#x2F;air-canada-denies-compensation-1.6544234" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;canada&#x2F;air-canada-denies-compensatio...</a>

I don&#x27;t understand. The bill was passed with an overwhelming, veto-proof majority. Then it sat on the Governor&#x27;s desk until she made changes (after intense lobbying)? But the NY legislature is not in session, but the bill is signed? So how were the changes approved by the legislature? What is the precise legal mechanism here? Is this legal? My initial impression is that this is an illegal act of tyranny and should be met like that. The governor should be impeached.<p>Or, the very fundamentals of the American democratic system have been eroded to a point I previously did not comprehend. This is not anything like the picture Schoolhouse Rock painted about how this all works.<p>Also, with a veto-proof majority, why on earth would the legislature ever even agree to any changes?<p>Also also, fuck the governor.

Every such event reminds me of that celebrated fraud of an academic who argued that corporations exist to maximize profit within the applicable legal framework and that it is how things should be.<p>The fact that corporate entities actively shape the legal framework to suit narrow interests that frequently undermine collective welfware somehow escaped him.<p>When intellectual dishonesty and amoral behavior reach such systemic levels society crosses boiling points

For folks wondering how the late changes to the bill happened, you can see who funded the lobby efforts here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reports.ethics.ny.gov&#x2F;publicquery&#x2F;AssociatedFilings&#x2F;AssociatedFocus&#x2F;QTcwMDYtQg2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reports.ethics.ny.gov&#x2F;publicquery&#x2F;AssociatedFilings&#x2F;...</a>

Shameless plug, the organization Louis (and I) work for, FUTO, is hosting a fellowship program sponsoring people to work on open-source software for three months for $20k-$80k and free housing in Austin. Applications are due Jan 1st!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;futo.org&#x2F;fellows" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;futo.org&#x2F;fellows</a>

&quot;Albany is where good legislation goes to die.&quot; -- Quote from a personal friend<p>It&#x27;s takes decades to change policy, enact legislation. A very readable intro is the Waxman Report. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Waxman-Report-Congress-Really-Works&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0446519251" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Waxman-Report-Congress-Really-Works&#x2F;d...</a><p>My unsolicited advice is:<p>- Convert this outrage into action. Do fund raising.<p>- Set up an organization that can run a marathon. Burnout for activists is very high.<p>- Someone, somewhere will pass this legislation. Find them. Even if it&#x27;s just for virtue signaling. Like a city, which can&#x27;t enforce such laws, passes a measure, to build awareness and demonstrate support for a policy.<p>- Get politicians on record. Create a candidate questionnaire. Send it out to all campaigns. Publish the answers.<p>- Encourage various local political parties (congressional districts, state level legislative districts, etc) to include your questionnaire (as part of their endorsement processes).<p>- Get various parties to include your policy in their platforms. Again, builds aweness and demonstrates support.

All of US politics is corrupted by the donors because Supreme Court has declared many laws against corruption unconstitutional. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;resources&#x2F;learn&#x2F;timeline" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;resources&#x2F;learn&#x2F;timeline</a>

This is really sad. I used to watch Louis when he was coming up. I didn&#x27;t even own an Apple device, I just liked how he&#x27;d treat customers and show all of us his approach, and how to do it, for free.<p>The corrupt government ruined him. It turned a beautiful young mind ready to change the world into a really bitter person. That&#x27;s not a knock against him, but against the NYS Government. Glad he moved away, and hope he has more success in other districts.

What is the justification for being able to change the terms after the votes have taken place?

I just can’t watch Rossmann’s videos anymore. He’s a smart guy with important things to say, but it’s hard to take him seriously. His videos are 90% hyperbole, cynicism, and snide remarks. It’s too much to put up with to figure out what he’s really trying to say. I have to wonder if this style appeals to his audience, or if he’d be more effective without it.

It seems like ballot measures are the only way a real R2R bill will pass. The incentives will never allow it to pass through the usual legislative route.

Another important point that the video doesn&#x27;t touch on: the environment.<p>Not being able to repair a device means less reuse, more e-waste, more garbage and that&#x27;s bad for the environment.<p>So this bill can be interpreted not only as &quot;fuck the consumer&quot;, it&#x27;s also &quot;fuck the environment&quot;, &quot;fuck our future&quot;, &quot;fuck the planet&quot;, etc.<p>It&#x27;s doubling down on planned obsolescence.

tl;dr Kathy Hochul sabotaged the version of the bill passed by the state legislature so that it requires only what Apple and Samsung are already doing<p>The version that came out of the legislature would have required OEMs to sell individual components instead of only larger assemblies. For example, if something on a macbook board breaks they have to sell the individual component. Currently Apple&#x2F;Samsung require you to buy the whole board for several hundred dollars<p>reading between the lines here it&#x27;s likely that Hochul was lobbied by the listed OEMs and NY law allows the governor to make sweeping changes to a bill before signing it (for some reason?? doesn&#x27;t seem very pro-democracy to me). Video title should be &quot;Kathy Hochul Sabotages Right to Repair Bill&quot;

Sadly, the only surprising thing about this is that anyone is surprised the bill got &#x27;mysteriously&#x27; nerfed at the last minute. This is the danger of centralizing too much power in government. A very good first step would be &quot;one-and-done&quot; term limits for all state and federal elected officials with restrictions on accepting employment with lobbyists or stakeholders with significant government business for five years after holding office.

Right to repair is quickly starting to enter similar territory as the &#x27;free software&#x27; absolutists. Basically, people who refuse to basically look at the current environment of software &#x2F; hardware realistically and decry their outdated ideals onto everyone else.<p>All I generally care about is that I can get my data off of a device after some kind of failure or having a reasonably priced solution from the manufacturer. If the company I purchase from doesn&#x27;t hold up their side of the bargain - I just buy somewhere else. I have five machines I&#x27;ve built in the past three years, admittedly I&#x27;ve only changed things in those maybe once a year. Never actually ended up needing an upgrade in any of my laptops.<p>Independent repair shops have done more damage than good to every device I brought them in most cases, I&#x27;ve legitimately never had an issue getting devices fixed or replaced by Apple.<p>Granted, as a prior fan of Louis&#x27; content, after meeting him in person and being treated awfully (after just saying hi and being chastised for living in the wrong part of NYC) I again have less respect for this &quot;movement&quot;.

Link to thread this week on another of Louis&#x27;s video about the same topic:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34170525" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34170525</a> (17 comments)

This is really sad. I don&#x27;t follow politics, but I didn&#x27;t think this level of blatant corruption really existed in the US.

There are manufacturers that explicitly encourage repairability, right? Lenovo? Any others?

&quot;safety and security&quot;...<p>I&#x27;ve always thought the infamous Ben Franklin quote, despite this not being the intended context originally, has become a memorable and brief way to show your opposition for this sort of thing.

Louis Rossmann claims in this video that the bills text was changed in the last few days, an argument that hinges solely on the text of the memorandum attached to the governor signing it, which mentions an &quot;agreement&quot; between Governor and legislative, and hints at the content of said agreement. The document number mentioned in the memorandum as the signed bill is S4104-A<p>According to the New York State Senate[1] the current version of the bill is S4104A from May 2022, which passed both Senate and Assembly in June. Note that nysenate.gov, at the time of me writing this, has not yet acknowledged the governor signing the bill, or filed any &quot;agreement&quot; with the governor or a changed version of the document. The New York State Assembly[2] has noted the signing and memorandum under actions, but published neither, nor an updated version of the bill.<p>Are such &quot;agreements to last minute changes&quot; an actual thing in New York? Without changing the document number? Without filing the changes in a public documentation system? Without Senate and Assembly voting on the changes and documenting the vote? Can the New York State governor just scribble annotations in the margins when signing bills and those also become law?<p>My first guess was that the memorandum includes a badly worded summary of the changes made earlier this year (S4104 -&gt; S4104A) which passed the Senate and Assembly in June. But the memorandum mentions &quot;provide assemblies of parts instead of individual components&quot;, which is the main hot button issue in the video, as well as eliminating the requirement to override security features, a big change to section 2.B of the bill, and exempting business-to-business and business-to-government sales. None of that seems to be present in document S4104A. So the memorandum seems to not be talking about the changes made earlier this year.<p>Is the text of the memorandum about some agreement between governor and legislative complete and utter nonsense? Does the legislative process in New York State allow such last minute changes?<p>The more i look at this, the worse it gets. There is a lot of criticize this bill for, like exempting motor vehicles and home appliances even if they include electronics. Some rather weird notice about federal law having a problem with repairing gaming consoles. But more than the law itself the process is broken. Why is the only source of this memorandum the twitter account of a journalist[3]? There is a press release on the governors website[4] but where is the canonical source of the memorandum? Does the Governor of New York State not operate a public filing system? And who is responsible to publish the actual signed bill to the public? According to Wikipedia[5] getting deep insight into the legislative process requires a paid subscription. WTF?<p>New York State may need to repair more than just their consumer electronics.<p>---<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nysenate.gov&#x2F;legislation&#x2F;bills&#x2F;2021&#x2F;s4104&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nysenate.gov&#x2F;legislation&#x2F;bills&#x2F;2021&#x2F;s4104&#x2F;</a> Bill according to Senate<p>2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nyassembly.gov&#x2F;leg&#x2F;?bn=A07006&amp;term=2021&amp;Actions=Y" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nyassembly.gov&#x2F;leg&#x2F;?bn=A07006&amp;term=2021&amp;Actions=Y</a> Bill according to Assembly<p>3: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;JonCampbellNY&#x2F;status&#x2F;1608327624526548993" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;JonCampbellNY&#x2F;status&#x2F;1608327624526548993</a> Memorandum 93<p>4: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.governor.ny.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;governor-hochul-signs-digital-fair-repair-act-law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.governor.ny.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;governor-hochul-signs-digit...</a> Governors Press Release<p>5: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Legislative_Bill_Drafting_Commission" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Legislative_Bill_Drafting_Comm...</a>

As a country with a strong economy of defining things of producing IP, it makes no sense to allow others to modify our definitions; they are immutable and sacrosanct. On the other hand, if we were a country with an economy producing tangible things like parts or assemblies that can be used to repair something, it would make sense to allow folks to repair things.<p>I am all for right to repair, but that is a pipe dream in our country, given our economic realities.

I wonder what Gov Hochul’s powerbrokers got in return from the manufacturers in exchange for sabotaging this bill.

Whenever I read about NY mayors or governors, it&#x27;s like they are trying to be Gotham.

I am sure the Governors net worth just went significantly up.

Figures

sucks

For those of us that cannot <i>stand</i> listening to Louis babble on, is there a concise summary written somewhere?