technet – Techdirt (original) (raw)

More Details On How Tech Lobbyists Lobotomized NY’s Right To Repair Law With Governor Kathy Hochul’s Help

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

The good news: last December New York State finally passed a landmark “right to repair” bill providing American consumers some additional protection from repair monopolies. The bad news: before the bill was passed, corporate lobbyists worked with New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to covertly water the bill down almost to the point of meaninglessness.

Grist received documentation showing how Hochul specifically watered the bill down before passage to please technology giants after a wave of last-minute lobbying:

Draft versions of the bill, letters, and email correspondences shared with Grist by the repair advocacy organization Repair.org reveal that many of the changes Hochul made to the Digital Fair Repair Act are identical to those proposed by TechNet, a trade association that includes Apple, Google, Samsung, and HP among its members. Jake Egloff, the legislative director for Democratic New York state assembly member and bill sponsor Patricia Fahy, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and bill drafts shared with Grist.

The changes all directly reflect requests made by Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM and other companies desperate to thwart the right to repair movement from culminating in genuinely beneficial legislation. All of these industry giants are keen on monopolizing repair to drive up revenues, but like to hide those motivations (and the resulting environmental harms) behind flimsy claims of consumer privacy and security.

Among their asks: numerous cumbersome intellectual property protections, as well as the elimination of a requirement that manufacturers provide device owners and independent repair providers with “documentation, tools, and parts” needed to access and reset digital locks that impede the diagnosis, maintenance or repair of covered electronic devices.

Additional restriction added by industry and Hochul at the last second force consumers to buy entire “repair assemblages” instead of being able to buy just the independent parts they need, which advocates say further undermines the law (imagine being forced to buy an entire computer motherboard when just a single component is broken).

The bill already failed to include vehicles, home appliances, farm equipment or medical devices — all sectors rife with obnoxious attempts to monopolize repair via DRM or by making diagnostics either expensive or impossible. Between that and these last minute changes the bill is more ceremonial than productive, and yet another clear example of how normalized U.S. corruption cripples meaningful reform.

Filed Under: hardware, kathy hochul, legislation, new york, repair monopolies, right to repair, technology
Companies: technet

Shameful: Tech Companies Fighting Against Necessary CFAA Reform And CISPA Fixes

from the bad-news dept

We’ve been talking a lot about the importance of CFAA reform lately, even highlighting how, under the CFAA, the founders of some of the most successful tech and software companies of our time could have been thrown in jail under the CFAA. For that reason, it’s ridiculous and shameful that many of the largest software companies, via the powerful SIIA lobbying group, are fighting hard against CFAA reform. We’ve been hearing for a while that companies like Oracle and Adobe were particularly strongly against it, but the SIIA represents an awful lot of tech companies, many of whom otherwise seem to be in favor of CFAA reform. Certainly, in talking to engineers at many of these companies, they think the CFAA is ridiculous, turning ordinary everyday activity into a possible felony. But some of the execs at these companies see a weapon to be used against people who make off with digital information — especially rogue employees (or ex-employees).

This is silly. The tech companies are refusing to fix a very dangerous and broad law, because of a very specific circumstance that can be dealt with via other existing laws. Also, it’s going against basic common sense and the views of many of these companies’ own engineers. When companies are so focused on protecting one weapon that they’re willing to allow such bad laws to stay, those are companies who are showing that they’re not focused on innovation but on litigation and protectionist views.

Similarly troubling is the news that TechNet, an organization representing a bunch of tech companies has sent a letter to the House Intelligence Committee supporting the post-markup version of CISPA. This isn’t a huge surprise. TechNet had already been listed as a supporter of CISPA, and the bills’ sponsors in Congress had worked overtime (or, rather, had their staffs work overtime) seeking to appease the tech industry on the mistaken belief that the fight against SOPA was really lead by the tech industry, rather than an angry public. The public isn’t quite as angry about CISPA, since the threats of CISPA aren’t quite as immediately obvious to everyday people, but winning over the tech companies by giving them immunity should they violate their users’ privacy is a bad long term strategy.

Yes, tech companies were a part of the coalition who fought against SOPA, but part of that was because those tech companies were focused on what was best for their users. Choosing to go against those same users when it comes to their own privacy is going to backfire eventually. Some people think that it was the tech companies who drove the fight against SOPA, when the reality was that it was the internet users, who pulled the tech companies into the fight. Not listening to their users would be a big mistake, as a vocal internet turning against these companies isn’t a good sign for their future.

On that note, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has kicked off a campaign looking to shame Google, Facebook and Twitter into coming out against CISPA. Hopefully, he’ll do something similar around CFAA reform as well. Having tech companies come down on the wrong side of these two laws is a bad long term strategy for the tech industry.

Filed Under: cfaa, cispa, lobbying, tech companies
Companies: siia, technet