Comment on The end of Stop Killing Games [Accursed Farms]
echodot@feddit.uk 13 hours agoSo how is that different?
I don’t understand, the arguement is whether or not they should have equated this to the right to repair movement, And then you say you think that’s a bad idea but I don’t understand your justification. Your justification seems to be that people don’t care about software, but my if they do not care about software, then they also do not care about hardware, and therefore your comment is irrelevant.
I literally don’t understand your justification for not equating game preservation to right to repair.
lime@feddit.nu 12 hours ago
i was on mobile so i was keeping it terse. let’s see if i can expand a bit now that i’m at a keyboard.
the right to repair movement is fighting companies that deliberately make it harder to fix things, so that customers will have to use company services to repair their stuff, or buy new stuff. john deere and apple are two big players here, with cryptographical signatures built into parts that void the warranty if they don’t match. this is actively adversarial behavior and should plainly be illegal. skg, on the other hand, is fighting companies that just leave their stuff to rot. they’re just neglecting their product once there is no profit in it, which you can’t really say about e.g. john deere; they are obligated by law to provide parts for the things they sell for x amount of years after they no longer sell the product itself.
so, the two are in different legal frameworks: right to repair is trying to stop capture of the spare parts market, while skg is fighting for there to even be a spare parts market. and that’s where my previous point comes in: while machines are inherently understood to be repairable (because they used to be) and the fact that companies are trying to clamp down on that is plainly obvious, software has never been generally understood to be changeable by the end user. it has always been an enthusiast/professional-only thing.
so, equating the two may harm either
a) rtr, because of the assumption that only people with the correct credentials should have access to repair parts,
b) skg, because of the assumption that they want companies to provide support for things for up to several years like in the parts market, or
c) both, because of the assumption that they want the same thing, which, if implemented, would make neither side happy.
i’m not 100% sure i’m making sense here, because on some level i do think they share similarities. of course they do. but how do you present that to a group of amateurs (legislators) in a coherent way? i don’t think you can without harming either cause.