#RightToRepair is a no-brainer. You - not manufacturers - should have the right to decide whom you trust to fix your stuff, even (especially) when that stuff is "smart" and an unscrupulous repair could create unquantifiable "cyber-risk."
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And yet...DOZENS of state #R2R bills were defeated in 2018, thanks to an unholy coalition of Big Ag, Big Tech, and consumer electronics monopolists like @WahlGrooming. That supervillain gang reassembled to fight and kill still more bills in 2020/1.
It's part of the long trend in which all levels of government make policy based on what serves the interests of the rich and powerful, not the people they serve.
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2014's "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (Cambirdge University Pree) quantifies this phenomenon:
"Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
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Right to Repair advocates never lost hope. May's "Nixing the Fix" report from the @FTC establishes a factual record in support of the right to repair across many sectors, but especially agricultural equipment.
Big Ag is a particularly odious repair troll, and @JohnDeere is its standard-bearer. The company has been trying to felonize farmers' repairing their own tractors since at least 2015:
They told the US @CopyrightOffice that farmers don't own their tractors - because tractor firmware is copyrighted, it is licensed, not sold, and farmers must abide by the company's license terms.
At the same time, Deere started pushing the insulting story that farmers are yokels, too stupid to fix their tractors. This despite Deere's long history of turning farmers' modifications of their equipment into money-making features in new tractors.
Farmers have been fixing their own gear literally since the dawn of civilization, hacking their own plows. Every farm has a workshop, because when you're at the end of a country road and there's a hailstorm coming, you need to bring in the crops, not wait for a repair tech.
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Deere's arguments that independent repair will expose America's food supply to cyber-risk are equally hollow, because Deere has some of the WORST cybersecurity of ANY industry - winning the infosec race to the bottom.
Despite Deere's lobbying, patronizing and FUD, the right to repair has - finally - triumphed.
Today, the Biden administration announced an executive order directing the Department of Ag and the FTC to develop R2R rules for agricultural equipment!
The fight's not over yet. The devil is in the details, those rules the FTC and Ag develop. But with superheroes like @linakhanFTC running the FTC, there's reason to believe that we're going to get good, evidence-based and fair rules.
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This is HUGE, a massive vindication for R2R activists and their long, tireless struggle.
ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Gojek is a $10B Indonesian "super app" that combines "Postmates, Apple Pay, Venmo, and Uber" serviced by an army of ojol - drivers - who are subjected to all the high-handed algorithmic horrors that gig workers everywhere suffer through.
But Indonesian ojol aren't helpless before their apps; a legion of toolsmiths produce, share, sell and support "#tuyul apps" named for "a child-like spirit in Indonesian folklore that helps his human master earn money by stealing," which modify the Gojek app.
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As part of her MIT PhD, @qadrida studied Gojek, ojol and tuyul apps, and her account of the grey-market Gojek ecosystem for @motherboard is riveting.
One of the great sf/comics/collectibles stores in America is Houston's @3rdPlanetOnline. One of the worst-managed hotels in America is the Crowne Plaza River Oaks, who happen to be Third Planet's next door neighbors.
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The Crowne Plaza River Oaks is home to routine "physical assault, sexual assault, public disturbances, criminal mischief, burgalry, theft and other criminal activities," which are "permitted to occur on hotel premises."
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Among the many downsides of owning the business next to this hotel? They permit guests and residents to congregate on the fire escape and hurl garbage ("ceramic mugs, plates, silverware, bottles...cinderblocks, luggage racks and ladders") into Third Planet's roof.
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My latest @locusmag column is "Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability," an essay about the goal of competition and its handmaiden, interoperability, namely, "technological self-determination."
I don't fight monopolies because they're "inefficient." I fight them because they deprive everyone - workers, users, suppliers - of the right to decide how to live our lives, both by eliminating competitors who might offer superior choices and by locking us into their silos.
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A monopolized world is one in which a tiny number of people get the final say over every aspect of your life: where and how you live, work, socialize, shop, politick, love, convalesce - even how you die.
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At its outset, American copyright provided for 14 years of exclusivity, renewable for another 14 years by the author, but - crucially - not by the publisher. This was a shrewd move by the US Framers, because it meant the publisher had to convince the author to file paperwork.
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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Most authors have very little bargaining leverage at the outset of their publishing deals, and even when the author's prior accomplishments afford them some bargaining power, a new book is, by definition, an unknown quantity, and the fair price for it is debatable.
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