so we have a great panel to start for you guys today something that we're
probably all really concerned about and want to talk a lot about the talk is
called Brazil redo Redux circuiting tech enabled dystopia with the right to
repair so please give a big hand to these guys for coming here today and let
me hand it over to Paul all right hey everybody thanks for thanks for showing
up early my name is Paul Roberts I'm the founder of secure repairs which is a
group of information security information technology professionals who
support the right to repair and we're here today to talk about right to repair
and the first thing I want to do is to you know clarify why the title of the
the talk is Brazil because Brazil is something that actually the movie
brazil something that sort of has a lot of
tie-in with Brazil.
with our talk so i'm going to play a clip from the 1980 film 1985 film brazil
harry tuttle heating engineer at your service
are you from central services
i called central services well they're a little overworked these days luckily i intercepted your
call you didn't just a minute what was that business with the gun just a precaution sir
just a precaution i've had traps set for me before now
there are plenty of people in central services who'd love to get their hands on harry tuttle
you telling me that this is illegal
well yes no officially only central service officers are supposed to touch the stuff would
you hold this please but nowadays with all the new rules and regulations they can't get decent
staff anymore so they tend to turn a blind eye as long as i'm careful and i find you
something they could prove that i've been working on their equipment well that's a type of good
but wouldn't it be simple just to you know
please sorry yes i was saying wouldn't it be simpler to work for central services
getting warm you know what couldn't stand the work paperwork we couldn't stay in the paperwork
listen this whole system of yours could be on fire and i couldn't even turn on a kitchen tap
without filling out a 27 b stroke six bloody paperwork i suppose one has to expect a certain
amount why i came into this game for the action the excitement going anywhere
travel light get in get out wherever there's trouble a man alone
now they got the whole country sectioned off you can't make a move without a phone
okay um so brazil is a movie about a dystopian future in which um central services
a repair organization run by the state basically controls uh everything and if you want to get your
in this case air conditioner repaired you have to go through central services and harry tuttle is
kind of a rogue repairman who like repels down the sides of buildings and swoops into people's
apartments to do rogue repairs and the whole movie kind of hinges on trying to catch harry
tuttle and a whole bunch of stuff that happened as a result of the state trying to arrest him and
stop him for doing what he's doing um so the the big picture of this uh panel is to talk about how
brazil is our current
our present is a lot closer to the future imagined in brazil than you might think and we've got an
amazing panel here to talk about that the goals of the panel to get you informed as a community i
think the defcon community is really important in this struggle to get you engaged in this
problem because some of you might kind of know a little bit about right to repair but you're going
to know a lot more by the time we're done and hopefully to get you involved because we need
people involved to get this done as
a society and as an economy um and so what i'd like to do oh sorry is um fool around with
powerpoint and make you watch me um no what i'd like to do is um first of all introduce our panel
and i'm i'm sorry my windows skills are terrible at this point um here we go um so uh why don't we do that so um if i can do that
just figure out yeah there we go sorry I'm gonna go down the I'm gonna go down our table and let
each of them introduce themselves to you and say hello and then we've got some discussing to do
I'll start with you Corinne hi I'm Corinne McSherry and I'm the legal director at the
electronic frontier foundation I'm Kyle Wiens and I started I fix it I've been involved with
right repair for a good while now I'm Louis Rossman I have a repair shop in New York City
that is component level repair on Apple products and I have a YouTube channel where I make an
enemy of lobbyist professionally
my name is Joe grand also known as kingpin and I'm a hardware hacker and this is definitely the
most serious panel I've ever been on but very important as well so thanks for being here I'm
really excited to have all of them and I'm very thankful that they took time away from their busy
lives to come and talk to you about this so I think to start probably a good place to start
would be if you could give us a little bit of background on what you're doing and what you're
going to be with the problem and so why do we need to have this talk why is there even a question
about our right to repair stuff because we own it right and I thought to start I just sort of toss
that to Corinne because I think you're the lawyer on the panel and you're the best suited to talk to
us about this if I have a thing like let's say I'm an Xbox owner or PlayStation owner and some
discreet component on my Xbox or PlayStation breaks why can't I just repair it what's standing in my
way
why is that a legal issue let me count the ways um okay so let me say first that I I this is this
is a conversation where like I'm really sorry that the lawyers are showing up and you know if the
lawyers are showing up it's probably not good probably not and when it comes to repair that is
very very true um so do you want to hit my slides or should I just oh sure sorry sorry but I'll just
I'll get started so so the key problem
is that if there's software in your thing in your device in your refrigerator in your car in
anything that makes it smart also makes it a copyrighted work that software is going to be
a copyrighted work very likely and with copyright comes problems um so yeah so if software then
and copyright. Okay, so what are the different problems? Do the next one. Yeah, so copyright
comes with restrictions. The reason you have a copyright is you can then license the work,
and it gives you a lot of control over how that work is used, how that software is used. Now,
there's limits on that, like fair use, and a lot of other limits. It's not unlimited,
unlike what many copyright owners think, but still, it comes with restrictions. So as a practical
matter, that looks like problems for repair. So the first thing is end-user license agreements.
So very often, you will buy a device, and again, by device, think car, think refrigerator,
not just your phone, right? And you own the thing, but the software in it is licensed to you,
and somewhere along the line, you're going to, something's going to pop up, and you're going to
agree to it, because everyone does, as everyone knows. No one will read it, but it will be a
thing, and it will have a limit. It will have all kinds of limits on how you can
implement it, and it will have all kinds of limits on how you can implement it, and it will
interact with the software in your device. Now, as a practical matter, people often ignore these
rules, and that's not the end of the world, but if you are a third party, and you are helping
somebody ignore those rules by providing some kind of interoperable service or something like
that, well, then they can sue you for interfering with that contract, because that license agreement
is a contract, whether or not you read it. The law on this is terrible. So that's a problem,
and if you think those rules are a problem, then you're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. You're
wrong.
If these lawsuits won't happen, they already have happened. So that's a thing that chills
everybody. So for example, this is sort of a classic example, but there's a million of them.
So the Xbox Uless says you can't modify it, e.g. through unauthorized repairs or unauthorized
upgrades or downloads, okay? So it's like, you know, we want to be in charge of how you use the
thing. So that's problem one. Problem two. Often that software's going to be locked down with some
kind of DRM. I think people in this room are going to be in a lot of trouble because they're going to
are very familiar with this problem but just quickly at this point they weren't ten years
ago we started talking about it but people know about it now so if if you've got lock on the
software and you break it which is often trivially easy to do so you can get access to that software
and mess with it well then you have engaged in an act of circumvention very likely and if you
tell people what you did you have now trafficked you engage in trafficking of both of those things
are illegal under section 1201 of the DMC additional millennium copyright act so that's
further limits it doesn't matter if you're doing it for an otherwise lawful purpose to be clear
you can get reverse engineering for the most part is a fair use it is protected you're allowed to do
it but the DMCA will stop you even if again if it's a very trivially easy lock to break okay
lastly other and this really is the most irritating thing basic stuff maybe you just want
to have access to
a manual maybe somebody might like to take that manual and scan it and make it available online
so people could use them or easily compare different manuals just get access to it you
could use to search and you can find the right thing that you need not try to flip through maybe
you don't have your manually might be somebody in this panel who wants to do those very good
so the manufacturers very often will claim those manuals are copyrighted and they have gone after
people for
posting them online or they'll claim that they have they involve trade secrets now this isn't
the manual that is made necessarily available to the consumer but rather the manuals that they make
available to their authorized repair people they will say that is even if they make it available to
thousands of people they will say it's still confidential business information because we only
share it with them subject to an NDA so I'm very sorry to have to be here but I am glad to tell you
I told you the bad news but there is good news and we will talk about that next thank you there
is good news indeed and the good news really is the the right to repair movement and on the panel
we have what I consider kind of a prime mover of the right to repair movement which is Kyle
Wiens of I fix it who not only started I fix it which is of course it's just a huge and valuable
resource for people who want to do repair but has also really helped promote right to repair laws in
the states not only actually in the states but actually in the EU as well and so Kyle I thought
I'd toss it to you to kind of give us the TLDR on right to repair laws and what are they what do
they try and do and why are they important that was great mind if I click through myself yeah no
I'm sorry no all right so we have been working on this I would say I've been tilting at this
particular windmill for a while now fundamentally we need to find a way to kind of reset expectations
back to where things used to be and so that's why I started I fix it in the first place we've built
a open source repository of repair information with the the goal of attempting to enable everybody to
repair all their things but there's a lot of problems with that and so let me tell you about
a buddy of mine Tim Hicks who we really need to get here sometime Tim would be awesome but Tim is
in Australia it's a bit of a walk to get here Tim runs a very creatively named website called
and on it he posts service manuals from all kinds of different things and of course he he gets uh he
is facing the brunt of the issue that Corinne describes so this is a letter that Toshiba sent
him they said hey on your website we can see that you're distributing by download copyright
repair manuals that are proprietary to Toshiba these are only available to Toshiba authorized
service providers under strict confidentiality agreements this is this is where I like they're
like you are not a Toshiba authorized service provider
okay no duh thanks guys um so Tim uh in response to this you know Tim he's just a kid running the
website he he went ahead and took the manuals offline and we decided like this cannot stand
this is ridiculous and so we launched operation fixed Toshiba uh and we crowdsourced we went
on GoFundMe we said hey guys we need like ten thousand dollars to buy one of every laptop that
got taken offline we were buying them used and uh and then we disassembled all of them we wrote new
software service manuals we put them online and then in the process we decided we would make Toshiba
a new logo which I think they were super thrilled about
so we're kind of we're chipping away at this around the edges there's there's a variety of
challenges that we're running into uh one problem that we see with all kinds of gizmos you say well
why do you need the service manual because this stuff is crazy glued together um
anyone here have the original airpods raise your hand bought the original airpods okay now keep
your hand up if they still work we got like one okay very impressive the guy who didn't use his
airpods very much these taking them out of the box so these gizmos have like the moment you glue
in a battery to a device you're like you're attaching a death clock to it it's absolutely
insane and it is the way that we buy gadgets today is like if you bought cars and the tires
are welded to the frame it's like when the tires wear out just buy a new car no one will put up
with that but we put up with this for electronics and it's not okay uh and uh so we we I as I I
started doing the you know like we're just going to write our own repair manuals and we wrote lots
of manuals uh we were you know creating everything ourselves Creative Commons um and our our cameras
and we just got really tired we've been doing it over and over our community has written 75 000
we're not going to stop but every year at CES manufacturers introduce like 15 000 new gadgets
it's very hard to keep up so we have to bring manufacturers into the ecosystem and then when
you get into the world of embedded software we need access to schematics we need access
um we need to be able to legally you know bypass DRM so that's where we started working
on right to repair legislation uh we've gone to the powers that be and it turns out some
of them agree with us which is pretty cool so we went to the Federal Trade Commission
a couple years ago and said hey what's the deal with those warranty voided for move stickers
that we see everywhere and I think we're all here we like breaking rules and I've seen people
walking around here with you know I void warranty t-shirts cool but why is it voiding warranty if
you disassemble a thing it turns out uh I guess we could ask the lawyer is it legal so uh yeah
go for it break the warranty so it turns out there's a law that says it's perfectly
legal to open stuff up and it does if you remove a sticker that says warranty voided removed it
doesn't actually void the warranty and the Federal Trade Commission has asked all of us if you see
those stickers to send them pictures to report fraud.ftc.gov so if if you I mean you're welcome
to send it to the FTC directly um as a matter of fact uh the FTC has launched uh uh uh they just
reached a settlement with Weber grills and Harley Davidson where the terms of their warranty were
explicitly banning people's right to tinker and then uh what's crazy is just this week the state
of Wisconsin where Harley Davidson is built the AG of Wisconsin is suing Harley Davidson for
screwing over their customers avoiding their warranties this kind of hits home for me because
my dad was actually a Harley Davidson dealer so I know a little bit about this world and I think
it's I think Harley Davidson has it coming um so we're going beyond that and we're working on
the Shrine the right to repair and and I've been working on this with Lewis and Paul and Corrine and
we've all been you know uh it has been a journey we're up to the point where this year 25 different
states introduced right to repair laws and I have here a little bit of a grid of where we're at um
uh Nevada I don't think is on this so someone's asked me last night where we're at with Nevada
someone who lives here is welcome to get Nevada on the list yeah we had it last year and then and
then it died it didn't get reintroduced this year uh this is
this log we're trying to do this in parallel across all of these but the thing is all of you
in the security research world knows you try you attack on it on a number of different fronts you
really only need to get root once right we don't have to get it on all of these we just need to
win one of these things because what right trip here laws say is if you make a product and you're
going to sell it in this state you have to make service manuals available online for free you
have to sell parts online you have to make the tools available online once one state passes
this we're going to get right to repair uh for the world um and uh fortunately um we think we've
got that in New York right now uh so the New York state uh and this is thanks in in uh much part to
Lewis who's been in New York on the ground going to Albany regularly New York it has passed the
house it has passed the Senate and it is sitting on the governor's desk waiting for her to sign
it we're hopeful she will sign it any day now this is huge
the New York law applies to all products that have electronics in them that are not agriculture
equipment motor vehicle a medical device and cost more than ten dollars home appliances home
appliances we didn't get home appliances included we'll get that next time uh but that's a pretty
broad Swath right that's most of the things that we deal with that's satellite uplinks that's uh a
boat there's a there's a large number of products that are included in this
um uh so it'll be very very interesting to see how this how this goes and how we can uh you know
take advantage of this we're hopeful that we will see more states pass this in addition to New York
we also going back to this slide we also got a electric wheelchair right to repair bill passed
in Colorado uh this year and that one has been signed so that's exciting and that's that's really
important unfortunately we're at like exactly opposite a medical right to repair panel that's
happening right now
and there's some doctors talking and we were just before this panel we were talking about how like
if you have an electric wheelchair and you want to change the traction control settings it's hidden
behind the service password that they don't give the owners uh and bypassing that service password
uh do I need to consult a lawyer before I bypass the service password actually don't don't ask
I'm telling you just do it she'll have a more nuanced answer yeah this is how to make Karen feel
perfect uh so we're super jazz I want to mention uh I know there's a lot of International folks
this is an international movement the European Parliament has has been on board with this as well
um so there's a lot of momentum happening uh but we still have a long way to go I mean we we are
in a Brazil style dystopia now we're trying to get to a world where where maybe stickers like this
are uh are not the law of the land I think these stickers are so insidious because they they're like
breaking rules most people follow rules and so when you have a rule that's on every device like
people tend to follow it I I do I do repair workshops where we'll give a kid a tool and
we'll say hey do you want to take apart this iPod and they look at me like I'm crazy because the
rules their teachers their parents everyone in society has been telling them don't take that
thing apart where does that come from where does this desire to be sheeple and follow these rules
I swear it's these rules printed on every single thing so getting rid of these stickers is going
to be huge I want to mention one other thing about John Deere and there's going to be a John
Deere session at five o'clock today which track you you know this one okay here at five o'clock
today epic John Deere news you have to be here it will be much more technically in depth uh it's
going to be awesome uh I have been kind of fighting John Deere for a while they don't like
me very much uh along with with EFF and others we applied for an exemption to section 1201 a
copyright we applied for the ability for tractors to be or for farmers to be illegally fixed tractors
magazine about how they were saying you don't really own your tractor and then John Deere sent
this letter to all their dealers telling them that I was a liar which was kind of awesome and
in it they said similar to a car or computer ownership of equipment does not include the
right to copy modify or distribute software that is embedded in that equipment and their example
here is perfect a purchaser may own a book but he or she does not have a right to copy the book to
modify the book or to distribute unauthorized copies to others do you want to comment on that
comment on that you could totally do all those things
so I mean these people are living in a totally different world they're like you buy a tractor
and you don't own the software on the tractor you have an implied right to operate the software like
what this is this is nonsense so uh we need to take back our right to tinker and that's that's
what I'm super jazzed excited to be here with everybody here today to talk about thank you Kyle
hey Paul yes I just want to I want to make a comment about this sort of like from the from
the hacker world you know like what these kind of heavy-handed tactics that we're seeing from
mostly consumer product vendors like this is not new for most of us right like if you've
ever found some sort of vulnerability and you've reported that to a company and they try to squelch
you or they sue you or they threaten to sue you this has been going on for 30 40 years of people
to yes and to enlighten companies about problems right so the thing that's important about this is
it's not just sort of security related hackers it's the mainstream everything it's every company
is going to see what one company's tactics are and say oh that works we're going to do that also
we're going to prevent people from modifying something which then ends up coming back to
us because it's going to make it harder for us and what you'll also mention is and as you'll
see is like these lobbyists are basically going up anti-right to repair saying kind of blaming
the reason why we can't repair our stuff on security which effectively is like you know
giving us a bad name right giving hackers a bad name which we've also had to deal with forever so
none of these issues are really new it's just they've gotten bigger and broader and most people
believe them just like the sticker like I had no idea that you couldn't actually take this sticker
off because people which of course I do but people most people don't and if you have something that
you've paid money for you would like to assume you own it but then you see something like that
in my warranty like that and I want to get in trouble so yeah we're kind of like pawns in this
thing as the lobbyists and as these corporations are using us as hackers and us as researchers and
us as end users to gain their kind of political advantage and their legal advantage which is like
total crap correct yeah I just want to I would be remiss just the John Deere reference reminded me
of something that I meant to mention earlier that's also hopefully good news which is so
the John Deere that whole letter came up in the context
of us applying applying for exemptions from section 1201 of the DMCA which every three
years you can go hat in hand to the Copyright Office and say please please can I do this thing
um and this is ridiculous it's stupid and we've been fighting that at EFF for 20 years and next
month we have a hearing before the DC Court of Appeals in our challenge on behalf of Matt Green
and Bunny Wang challenging that whole law and if we win we at least get rid of that piece so fingers
crossed indeed yeah that would be huge okay so the question is why a defcon and I think one of the
reasons that I wanted to bring this to this conference is that cyber security actually
figures pretty prominently in the debate both pro and con on right to repair I founded secure
repairs because I was told Nathan Proctor at US Perg told me listen we're in these hearings with
you know legislators on right to repair laws and what we're hearing from the opponents is
for hackers you know one lobbyist told Nebraska lawmakers that if you pass this right to repair
law Nebraska will become a Mecca for hackers you know they're going to move to this state just so
they can hack stuff um and so I thought I'd I'd but that's not all I mean so cyber security is a
big part of it and I thought just to give you kind of a flavor of what we hear Lewis has gone around
to hearings all over the country Kyle and I as well Joe's uh testified on behalf of right to
repair um give you a sense or a flavor of the arguments
that we hear uh from the other side so um if you don't mind we're going to just take a journey
down the um anti-right to repair rabbit hole here has anybody here ever seen a magnetometer explode
to point out it's interesting this whole discussion I think underscores the evolution
in the notion of ownership that we're seeing in the economy right now you know it used to
be before software was embedded in these devices ownership was very cut and dried
you owned it uh or you didn't but now with software that has become a little bit more
complicated and then another twist and I think this is true of a lot of the folks in this room
uh now we have services uh so the combination of hardware of software and services is an
interesting mix and I think it does um put some of these topics or issues into the gray area
okay so the first idea is on the part of the oems ownership is complicated and by
that they mean you actually don't own this stuff uh you're you're licensing it I mean you might
own the hardware but you're licensing the software and therefore we still have a seat at the table
um really common uh that was from the nixing the fix conference at the FTC ran sorry in 2019.
um here's the other argument which is that security and repairability are actually in tension with
each other that if you want to make something repairable kind of by definition um you're not
going to make it securable
forcing repair on third parties like Enterprise customers and manufacturers can make security
worse and not better for all of us and here's how first is the loss of accountability for security
it's difficult to hold oems accountable for security of their products if we also legislate
design changes that will negatively impact security second is the risk of backsliding
the security progress that we've made
so consumers have plenty of choices in the marketplace and they can choose some
manufacturers that prioritize security and others that prioritize repairability but there's no reason
that legislation should Band-Aid repairability and take away consumer choice between repairability
and security this is I wish this guy would show up to Defcon cool to have him on our panel that's
Dr Earl crane who is a PhD and I think is like a adjunct professor or teaches somewhere but he was
there that I think still exists it was basically a lobbying front group yeah it was Astro turf group
of security experts who you know support I don't know what they call responsible repair or something
like that um he showed up to a bunch of hearings including that FTC hearing but he's kind of that
whole group's kind of gone on the down low manufacturers tend to hire experts so they
show up and do stuff like this and then I think they realize that they're going to be on stage
at Defcon saying stupid like that and they quit yeah um uh so we had uh secure repairs had Gary
on the same panel as Earl and um that was great um okay uh third idea um just a whole bunch just
a word salad of scary sounding cyber stuff this is if you are changing out any component at the
hardware level uh with another piece of hardware you're not able to provide the same level of
assurance that something else
didn't happen uh so that's the first key piece of that what does that mean right uh the second one
is there it's a fundamental rule of security that the the best security is that like with
a crypto algorithm that it's open to the public it's open for inspection good crypto algorithms
are those that are open for the public and for inspection what's not okay is when you open up
the signing keys the secrets inside and
the the challenge has been that in the uh uh repair conversation it has not been articulated
enough we haven't had enough of a security discussion in here to make clear uh what will
be mandated to be uh released and where the overreach is okay so as you can tell he kind
of got lost in the woods here at the end of that because he was he was uh pretty pretty far removed
there it's about okay and the final one uh well actually yeah the final our final argument you
hear a lot um is this idea about source code and intellectual property I'm sorry
my name is Daniel Carson and I represent Schmidt Equipment Incorporated our dealership represents
John Deere construction equipment however to the extent that the owner has the right to lawfully
repair his or her equipment John Deere recommends against unauthorized modification of the embedded
software code providing access to the source code would not only undermine the manufacturer's
Innovation and intellectual property rights would also risk data privacy and allow unauthorized and
illegal tampering a legal tampering of safety and emissions requirements for the equipment okay
um so so that's that's kind of a taste of what I think we're we're up against um in the right to
repair movement um and so I thought um we'd start first of all with the the person on the panel who
actually is most involved in like the in just the the trenches of repair and that's Lewis um who does
this for a living and I mean I guess Lewis could you talk to like some of the arguments that you
heard there about this you know cyber security risk in repair
and you know whether you know the work that you do as a repair professional really poses a
cyber security risk to your customers or or to the public the one question that I've had at every
single one of these hearings is can you provide one single example I mean this is you know repair
is a four billion dollar industry per year so surely you should be able to give one example
of one time anything like this has happened usually they can't but I can so for instance
when they say that Independence may be able to hack into your data and do bad things I'd point
out how in June of 2021 there was an article
released on how somebody who had sent a phone to Apple wound up having their sex tape uploaded not
only to Facebook but to their Facebook because the person logged into their Facebook so it would look
like they were uploading their own sex tape that happened at Apple not at us or in 2019 when the
Washington Post showed that this one horny person at the Genius Bar was texting himself raunchy
photos from that customer's phone happened at the Genius Bar not here there are a number of examples
of things like this happening and there's this idea that there's this magical human being that
exists this you know
a Soviet man that you get when you go to authorized repair Center where they just magically screens
out creeps and weirdos and anybody that's going to do anything like that you'd think with the industry
being as large as it is that you'd be able to find a single example of us doing something like
that and yet you can't some of the the other arguments that wind up getting used is just
typically safety and security so for instance in Massachusetts in 2020 there was a ballot initiative
for right to repair for motor vehicles and they would have commercials where you'd have a woman
in a parking lot always with the really scary blue fluorescent lights and there'd be some string
playing in the background and somebody walking very slowly behind her and then you can have it go
to a crescendo right as he's his hand shows up on the screen as if he's about to knock her out
because if your mechanic is able to get an error code from your car apparently you're going to be
sexually assaulted in a parking lot but there was another one where you'd have a a man in a flannel
shirt because that's how you know the guy's a creep walking up on somebody's garage really
slowly this final shirt getting slowly into focus you could see all the green and the black in there
and he's walking into her garage because that's what happens when you get access to an error code in a car
has anybody here ever seen a magnetometer explode before show hands that's because it doesn't exist
but a ham was telling people that if appliance technicians work on your devices in your home
that a magnetometer which doesn't exist is going to explode it called a magnetron it's in a
microwave and they don't explode the people that make these arguments don't even know what the
names of the gear inside of them are the scariest argument for me came from Catherine at the ESA in
2020 where she said that if this gets implemented the game will play the console which I think is the
scariest one of them all
but this is the level of knowledge that we're dealing with and at the end of the day they the most
frustrating part is listening to these arguments realizing you have 90 seconds to get your point
across they get to they get their point across afterwards and you don't get to say anything
actually my personal favorite was a person named Charlie Brown from CTA who represents Samsung he
showed up and said we have a network of authorized people to make sure that you know when you get
your phone fixed you don't have tik-tok installed on it well three months ago on the budget series
Samsung phones they now pre-install
tiktok whether you like it or not so many of the things that they wind up accusing us of are not
only things that they're doing but things that they're getting in trouble for and the news for
doing and they never seem to face any sort of accountability or responsibility for it if I make
things up then I'm gonna get a one-star yelp review I'm gonna get a charge back my store is
gonna close they get to make things up on a regular basis and make a hundred to four hundred thousand
dollars a year to do it and for some reason people believe them so those are some of the arguments
that I hear and there's my one more my personal favorite 2015 this is the one that actually got
me started in this because I'm not a political
professional or lobbyist or anything. One of the assembly people in New York
State said that the Apple lobbyists had said that when I replace a fuse on a
MacBook motherboard that what I've done is I've now converted it into a PC
because I changed the fuse and when I give it back to my customer I'm still
letting them think it's a MacBook when in reality it's a PC that's fraud and if
so if you want to prevent fraud you won't let Lewis get access to that
through this bill. I just stared at him I'm trying my best not to just fume and
curse him out because he's my assembly person I don't want to get on it again
and I'm just thinking about is that why did you believe this horse shit and he
says nobody else came here to tell me otherwise now you did and he actually
signed and co-sponsored the bill right in front of me and that got me to
realize you know from there are all these people that think there's no point
to bothering why would I call my assembly person or senator why would I
say anything and the reality is the reason these people win is nobody else
shows up. And yeah I mean what one of the big one of the big lies that which is
the same lie that your car dealership tells you right is that you know their
their repair people are walking around and
lab coats with PhDs and the you know the corner garage are you know criminals and
never do wells when in fact you know you get excellent quality from the corner
garage more often than not and you get good quality from the authorized repair
provider and that's a great example of you know Apple talking about their
authorized repair as if these people are all highly highly vetted and what we
learned actually only through a lawsuit was that in fact Apple just outsources
their device repair when you ship a device out to a company that actually
outsourced it to a third company where these you know obviously not very well vetted employees
stole images and posted them. Lewis I mean maybe if you could just talk about the restrictions on
your business for repair like what are some of the hurdles that you need to get over I know
there's one just around you have parts that might you might have to order from China replacement
screens they might be original Apple parts but they're getting seized at the border because
they're they're being declared counterfeit.
And and some of the some of those types of things.
Yes so one of the largest problems that I'm facing right now is let's just get by a show how many people have had a device they plug it in to charge it and it dies.
Okay common problems let's say you have a three thousand dollar device that does that.
What would you guess the repair price for that is.
So yell out any guesses.
Well.
Close.
Fifteen about fifteen is fifteen hundred to seventy hundred dollars and the chip that winds up dying is about five dollars from Texas Instruments.
Now in that particular chip dies used to be able to just buy this chip you could buy it from a Texas Instruments reseller or an interest or reseller go to mouse or did you can work and spend five bucks by it.
And then bring it to any one of the smorgasbord of repair shops some charge seventy five some charge four hundred some charge two hundred and they would all be competing in the market for your business now what they do is they tell in or so they tell Texas Instruments don't sell this basic chip to anybody with us.
So I'll take it take a chip that is a basic normal function but modified in one small way like what address it communicates on.
So now you can't buy these.
But what they do is they take a chip that is a basic off the shelf chip.
And then they will make that ship that they slightly modify not available to anybody else.
So what we will have to do is wait for some wait for donor boards to come from China so what people will do is they will take these boards that are being thrown away because the defective and that about to get recycled.
And we will we will buy.
Now five years ago Apple started to get a little smart about that so they started searching people as they're leaving the facility and they started shredding up all the devices that they throw away.
So now you can't buy a donor board to get that ship anymore.
I have to.
they have to they sneak it out in their underwear they'll be a wing a breast a thigh it'll look
like it'll you'll get like a little box of bits and pieces of board and you have to see if the
chip is on there that you need to put it on the board to be able to fix it for a customer and
the people that are making this stuff available i imagine are not exactly doing it in the most
legal of ways so when i explain this to senators i'll say you know i signed up to be a nerd a
device repair person i wasn't trying to be nicholas cage's character from lord of war
running guns all around the world for it but that's what it feels like when you hear your
supplier say yeah the reason we're cutting these things up is because they have to sneak it out in
their underwear before it comes to you i mean obviously the first thing i did is i dropped the
donor board in front of me i went to wash my hands but this is part of the process or let's say the
schematic diagram that winds up getting taken from somebody when you know their computer is
free and somebody walks in the room or like and uh plugs in usb and then sneaks out and then
makes it available to all of us i mean you used to have repair manuals
written on the back of the device now you and you can't get access to this even if you're an
authorized repair center yeah if i get authorized by any of these companies i still can't buy those
chips i still can't buy those manuals even if i'm willing to pay and go through all of their
vetting process yeah joe you talked about that as well yeah just kind of the the talk about that
oh i just wanted to comment on your thing about you know vendors trying to make off-the-shelf
components inaccessible to small companies which is which just reminded me so i'm working on it
and you might even have something to say about this
i'm working on a project right now so extracting you know raw nand flash from a macbook
motherboard we take it off standard footprint looks like any other regular type of memory
device but it turns out that apple has worked with toshiba to actually change the pin out in
such a way that all of the available sockets and interfaces don't work with it so there's there's
stuff you can buy in china on aliexpress and different sockets that have pins coming up to
touch on different pads of a stand
or chip that doesn't work so you have to manufacture or create all your own custom
stuff just to read a pin out functionally it's exactly the same but they've changed that pin
out for no other reason i believe other than to make it impossible to get the parts other than
from donor boards and for somebody like me to actually get the contents off to do something
with it which is which i'd never even experienced that before have you seen that on most of them i
mean the most insidious part of this is that they don't actually even offer these services that they
would be competing with you on so let's say that you'd be offering data recovery services and they
would be asking you to do it right if warren buffett walks in there and says here's 100
million dollars try to get my stuff and it's a basic problem they say no yeah yeah and they just
make it hard so now it's like what would have been an easy problem to help somebody with is
now like a multi-month process you have to buy donor boards and test it and build circuit boards
to interface with other stuff and like it's it's almost a lot of times you know security we know is
is kind of how hard is is something and is it worth the adversary from doing and i think a lot
worth the effort so then they just kind of get their way with it yeah i think i think some of
this conversation is we're concerned about a repair monopoly and and they're screwing over
the independent repair shops to you know get monopolized repairs that's certainly what john
deere is doing what i think apple is doing is it's a flat-out war on repair they don't want
this stuff fixed by anyone including apple folks they it's it's a it's a cycle of disposability
the airpods were never designed to be serviced by apple or anyone else they're designed you buy it
and then you go back and you hand them another 179 that's what they want right and and actually
right repair laws are sort of silent on that if you want to make a product like the ipods that are
not repairable or serviceable you know knock yourself out presumably that would be it would
fall to consumers to sort of put pressure on manufacturers to consumers and europe is working
france has rolled out a repairable label where rates products from zero to ten on how fixable
it is it's right next to the price right and that's starting to have an impact i mean joe you
have talked a little bit about this the concept of jailbreaking devices because i kind of feel
like this is this is sort of the future which is you know i i would love a future in which it's
sort of like hey thanks for the hardware john deere this is a really nice tractor i'm now
going to load my own os on it right and my own services i'm going to keep my data and sending
that instead of sending them to your cloud to monetize and but great job on the tractor you
know works great but so um so talk about this notion of like just sort of jailbreaking and and
and and what role that might play in in creating a more you know repairable ecosystem sure i mean
i think you know from the from a general perspective right if you're not familiar with
jailbreaking i kind of think about it as just like bypassing controls of some system to give
you access to other resources and those resources are already available but not to you right so
it's something where i think a lot of companies are are implementing heavy security so they can
rely on dmca and rely on legal action but if you're buying a product why should you not be
able to gain access to all of the resources john deere tractor which you know 5 pm right stay tuned
it's sort of like if you can't modify your hardware do you actually own it and it comes back to all of
that so it really is like you know breaking out of a sandbox or i thought about today in the shower
like it's not it's not even a sandbox it's like a playpen you know like they're trying to keep all
the children inside and you know not not letting you out to actually use their hardware but i i
still can i cannot wrap my head around why that shouldn't be other than the fact that we know they
know really they want to make a lot of money and they don't want you to use their hardware so they
want you to buy new stuff but you know it's just a it's just another way to make things difficult
for us that is not necessary other than they want to make money and they want to maintain control of
what people do with their stuff which is exactly why i think we're at defcon to have control of
things and break things and make things do things that they weren't intended to and this is just
another step in that process
i mean this affects all different kinds of products we talk a lot about smartphones we talk
a lot about laptops because those are just things that everybody uses but it's also home appliances
agricultural equipment heavy equipment can we just talk um sort of are there are there companies
vendors oems that are doing this right um and are there oems who are maybe on the road to doing
things right and are there oems who are totally lost in the woods on this i think that's a good
question for you yeah
i mean the heroes are probably the the the startups the folks like fairphone
out of netherlands has a uh super repairable modular phone uh then you have framework with
uh anyone framework customers here no awesome in the back yeah uh check out framework laptop
framework is killer uh what i love about framework i mean amongst other things is super
modular modular ports advanced but you can if you upgrade the laptop you take your board out of your
old laptop put the new board in you can upgrade the laptop you take your board out of your old laptop put the new board in
and then the board that you upgraded is a full-blown standalone pc you could 3d print a case
and use it as another computer this this computers are modular why the hell aren't we doing this all
the time so uh you have startups you know paving the path but now as as right-to-repair laws are
are starting to get passed we are starting to see some companies uh come to us so so far this year i
fix this launch partnerships with microsoft uh with uh google and with samsung where we're and and valve with with the
uh with google and with samsung where we're and and valve with with the atlas you have brand
the steam deck which is probably the most important one where we're
distributing parts for them so we're starting to see movement but we have to
get this from the fringe to mainstream and having some of these large
manufacturers very grudgingly come on board and start to work with us is
important Corinne I mean one of the things that that companies are doing a
lot now is like things like you know putting putting little like trademarks
or logos on even really tiny parts right so that they can to the point
about counterfeit parts versus authentic parts and whatever talk about how
they're really trying to sort of frustrate the repair the aftermarket
ecosystem for parts around you know what you need to do repair and and what the
legal theory behind that is yeah so it's a long-standing practice from sort of
the creative industry
the traditional Hollywood copyright industries sort of if you can't get it
via copyright see what you can get via trademark the good thing about
trademarks is they last forever as long as you maintain them as long as you're
using the mark in connection with whatever the good is in commerce
there's no term it like as you all probably know copyright term limit is
ridiculous anyway because give you up to 90 years but trademark coca-cola's had
trademarks for 120 years now they're maintaining that
yeah I mean
close to 120 so so so the idea is yeah okay well maybe copyright isn't
completely helping us but if we put our trademark on every single little bitty
thing then we can go after folks who might be providing an alternative but
maybe are also using the work OR using using the object in a way that we
didn't authorize and then we can say okay well that is a trademark violation
your because we have the rights to control the user ‫
of our market how it's used and so you can kind of sort of use it downstream or you can go after
people who are trying to resell those parts who have managed to like break things apart and they
want to sell it on eBay or whatever and then so they'll go and go after them and say you're not
an authorized seller of this good and so and they'll shut you down and the thing about it
that is worth thinking about is because very often a lot of this doesn't happen like one-to-one but
rather via platforms so if you're making you know parts available maybe you make it available on
eBay well then all they're gonna do and I talk to you why I talk to you that's too much trouble
I'm just gonna send a note to eBay and eBay will take it down well you know take down the shop or
Etsy or whatever like it's it's a way of bypassing actually trying to go after the individual
directly you go after the platform who is much more vulnerable and less interested probably in
defending any given seller then that then
anyway because the seller is probably not giving them very much money right they want to preserve
their entire platform and they don't want to get in litigation so it's just better to take it down
if you open an iPhone or if you look at one of iFixit's teardowns you'll see just about every
part inside the iPhone has the Apple logo on it and I met some engineers who had worked on iPhone
you know we're out of their seven-year NDA and I was like why do you guys do that is there any
engineering is there any supply chain reason for that and then he said I have no idea why well
although I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure
I'll tell you the reason why is to make it difficult for people like Lewis and I to get parts across
borders the presumption at US Customs is that you are guilty until proven innocent and you have to
show that you have permission from the trademark holder to be moving that trademark across the
border so when they when they put the Apple logo on a flex on the display how does that limit you
so let's say somebody buys an iPhone in China they take all the parts of that legally purchased
iPhone in China and then they sell them just separately to someone in America
that they will be seized because they'll say that all of those parts were counterfeit because it has
an Apple logo on it and since you're not on the list of people that should be getting those parts
then surely that must mean that it is counterfeit it's assumed to counterfeit unless you are on that
particular list so even if I'm importing parts that are either whether they're used or they came
from an actual device that somebody bought in that country that they're parting out for profit
you can't import them they have to find a way to grind the logo off of it and if they don't grind
the logo off of it then you wind up getting in trouble this is in particular
a particular problem when you're talking about something like a display assembly where they grind the logo
into the back of the case so that you're not able to actually import it so you usually wind up having
to make the package so annoying that they just don't open it to see what the logo is and you know
you'll see like you you probably get packages like this where it's been taped over and as 10 or 20
layers of cardboard they'll be my personal favorite was when they actually ship me display assemblies
what they did is they put it in so they they put them inside of laptop coolers so that these laptop
coolers little fans that you put under the laptop
broke it they broke the fan blades and they put my parts inside of it just find all these ridiculously
creative ways to get around customs and it's not that hard I mean it's kind of like getting something
past the TSA which is you know fairly simple of him Corinne how can they do that like how why
is Customs and Border Protection why is Customs and Border Protection in the in the business of
helping Apple to suppress you know the the total legal movement of of aftermarket parts jobs huh well
you'd be shocked how much federal money is and resources are spent policing IP when you think they
should be doing something else and really you think Homeland Security what does that have to do
with a Homeland Security is seizing websites I mean they're involved in copyright infringement
like this is because they're under tremendous pressure from major IP owners to be engaging this
kind of activity and you know they're responsive to that because what will happen is I think
the IP owners will come to them and say like you have no idea that the piracy the counterfeit you that
the fraud it's like you have to protect and the argument will be you are protecting consumers from
getting counterfeit parts you're protecting consumers from accessing pirate sites not
realizing it you're protected like that will be the idea you are protecting the security of
Americans and I do think most of us when we think of Department of Homeland Security we actually
don't think that's what they're doing with their time and all they're doing is they're trying to
stop us when we think of the Customs and Border Enforcement I mean yeah they are going to police
counterfeits across border that's not a crazy thing for them to do it's just perhaps you know
gone a little too far maybe gone a little too far any priorities and they I mean Customs is
the thing where as a big company you can pay Customs money to pay for their staff to do their
enforcement it's very convenient if you have buckets of money okay final question and I want
to go to some questions from the audience um and this I think Joe Kyle Lewis probably
um good question for you how do we um how do we promote this uh not only you know right to
repair so yes right promote you know right to repair laws get them passed but kind of what
Kyle was talking about this idea and Joe that you talk about a lot of getting people to start
thinking about their devices in a different way not being afraid to open them up not buying the
lie like it's cheaper to just replace it it's cheaper to just replace it and actually kind
of start thinking about these as things that they own
things that they have the right and the ability to fix themselves or get a neighbor to fix or get
Lewis to fix yeah I mean I think you know what Lewis is is doing in what Kyle is doing are sort
of the the main kind of things of getting people to realize oh you can fix stuff like I you know
ever since being a kid like most of us want to open stuff up and see how it works but not everybody
does that most people buy a device they take it for granted and say oh some magical Engineers
um and not realizing they can open it up and of course when vendors are making things harder to
open and they add all sorts of problems from a trademark perspective or anti-tamper mechanisms
to make it you know self-destruct or delete something when you open it like there's all
these things that prevent us from from doing it but it again it all comes down to profit and
control and I think really spreading the message to people of like look you can open stuff you
can modify stuff you shouldn't have to go to shenzhen to like find components
that you can bring back you know if you've seen um strange parts YouTube channel uh you know
there's people repairing things and modifying things but it shouldn't be this difficult to
do like Lewis shouldn't have to have people smuggle parts through it should be as accessible
to us as it is to other people when I'm talking about shenzhen I was there and if you've ever
go you know if you ever can go to like the SEG market and bunny Wang has written about this a
lot and you go and it's floors and floors and floors of different components for different
projects and the the
repair culture is a lot different there and the the access to information and information sharing
is a lot different there and I kind of put it on myself I showed up I had like 90 minutes and I
wanted to see could I find schematics for like an iPhone because I had heard you could do it
and through talking to different people at different booths or like talk to this person talk
to this person I had my iPhone trying to translate because even the Chinese word for schematics is
not schematic it's like you know visual drawing of something so I ended up going through and
finding books of schematics uh
that had you know confidential information blah blah blah but either somebody had taken those out
of the factory or they'd reverse engineered the board but it shouldn't be that hard right and
like I finally got them and I guess technically smuggled them over the border and brought them
back to the U.S um but why like most people are not going to be able to do that so they're going
to rely on Lewis and iFixit and other companies like iFixit shouldn't have to reverse engineer old
Toshiba laptops to make their own manuals that's just ridiculous so the whole thing is just mind
ball sort of boils down to why we're hackers in the first place and why we're here is to like educate
people and push against corporations that are trying to do something uh you know to make the
world a place that's better for them than it is for us Lewis Carl anything to add I think it comes
down to getting people personally invested in it you know there's I think that there's two different
types of activism there's the greater Thunberg type of activism with the how dare you which
results in more Ford F-350 diesels rolling coal on my electric car when I run through Pennsylvania
and then there's the type where you try to get people personally invested so you know what a part
of what I tried to do with my YouTube channel is turn it into a little bit of performance art like
Mr Rogers or Bob Ross you know when I started posting repair videos to YouTube I was looking
for them myself and they would always be 90 seconds have techno music playing super fast
very boring just got there's no you know there's no soul nothing fun about it so I would try to
make these little 9 to 15 minute clips or it seems interesting we explain the entire concept in a way
that a seventh grader could understand we would go through every single thing that we did we try to
make it a little bit interesting talk about current events while we're doing it and also not leave
anything out so when I say make it get people personally invested I mean also do it in a way
that is profitable somebody who watches this stuff could start charging two or three hundred
dollars for 15 minutes of their time to do those that type of work themselves or they could use that
to fix their own device and save a few thousand bucks and once you've saved somebody a thousand
bucks they're personally invested or once you see once somebody is actually watching going this is
kind of entertaining this is kind of cool and they watch a hundred of those videos and then I say by
these may no longer exist because the company is taking away away our ability to do that you've
kind of gotten their personal investment you said that this is what is going to be taken away you're
going to stop being able to enjoy this if this goes away so I think you have to get people as
personally invested as humanly impossible and that starts by allowing them to save money allow them
to make money and allowing them be entertained through sharing your passion and I think that
that's something that is more going to be on the cultural side than the legal side like I do a lot
for a right to repair on the legal side but at the end of the day a right to repair on the legal side
gets released that says make things available Samsung tells Kyle well we're going to give you
$213 batteries welded to the screen like there's an element of malicious compliance that it's always
going to be there and getting people personally invested in all of this so that companies like
framework exist and are actually economically viable people want to buy that because they value
repairability to the point where they can actually make schematics available for their products and
parts and everything else that's what's going to be what I think what moves this forward well I
think also that the amount of views on your channel
sort of validates the fact that people want to fix their own stuff right it's like that's that's what
the companies are afraid of because if they're going to lose money on their authorized dealerships
or whatever it it only proves the point that watch empty real estate with that or watch empty
real estate well yeah okay um of course so um one of the things that we talk about a lot at
EFF is um sometimes you have a need to speak tech to power and what that means and it's kind of what
I think Lewis did to some extent like there are times at particularly at the state level where
what we need is for someone to comment and testify or even just talk to their local assembly person
which most people don't do and kind of don't want to do and I don't blame them I understand
it's not that fun but sometimes that's really what's needed is for us to have a technologist
on the ground who can go and just talk to their representative and say I'm going to tell you the
truth because I know it and this is my profession and this is what I do
and it's actually amazing to me how responsive especially at the local level um that folks can
be because they want they they don't hear from that many people and to be honest they hear also
from some crazy people and then they hear from a bunch of really expensive corporate lobbyists
who are really good at talking yeah and despite the mumble mumble crazy that we heard earlier but
actually they're pretty good at it and they give them money so speaking tech to power is actually
can be really effective yeah I mean that's one thing that struck me in this whole process is how
when you go in and talk to legislators you know they're definitely open to hearing your opinion
but you also get a real sense of how much their day-to-day is occupied by lobbyist lawyers PR
people working on behalf of moneyed interests whether those are specific corporations industry
groups what have you like those people are there outside the John when they come out to like talk
to them on their way back
to office they're there you know taking them out to lunch and that has an impact and you you know
we have lives we have work we can't hang around state houses and Lobby so we do need to work
collectively um yes Joe I'm curious about something are there is there anybody in the
audience that works at a at a product vendor you know somebody that's designing products and selling
them so maybe doesn't have a you don't have to say if you have an opinion about right to repair
but working from that side like actually
as a consumer product vendor or anything yeah there's a couple so there's um there's there's
something that came to mind so crowd supply is a is a website you know promoting open
Hardware development and crowd funding and they have something called the proclamation of user
rights that not only are they just going to take any project like say a Kickstarter might or Indiegogo
um they have a list of like certain things that protect user rights so you know I have
it on here like curiosity and Independence and Association and longevity and transfer and discourse
and privacy and security and if you're from those worlds of product development like you should
take a look at that list of user rights and I think it's really interesting if uh besides talking to
the lobbyists like working within the organization and saying look this is how products should be
designed like we can still make a profit selling our product but if we follow these rules like
framework and like some of the projects that bunny Wang are working on and you know there's
all of these smaller projects but if if this type of mindset can go into real
company consumer design like that would be amazing and then it's sort of it's it's for the people right
and like I think they crowd supply did a really good job of sort of explaining these different
steps so even using that as a resource or like a starting point maybe I have no idea because I'm
not in that world but maybe that's something that is worth trying to you know start I was going to
have something to say on this I think yeah I mean and I fix it we're doing a lot of that we we do a
lot of you know consulting and work with companies there's a lot of that we're starting to see the
pendulum swing and so there's a lot of interest
how do I design repairable products how do I design safe replaceable batteries what does it look like
to set up a parts supply chain we're at the beginning of that we need a lot more so as you
are talking with your friends that work in engineering at these companies like this can
be done uh right we can design repairable long-lasting hardware we just have to decide
to do it we have to make the case to management and so that's what I spent a lot of my time doing
is making the case that either the sustainability folks or the security folks or the engineers want
helping them figure out how to make the case to management to actually shift business practices
well
sort of like coming back around to how it was in the 70s and 80s where you would buy something
yeah your schematic and your app you know Apple the first Apple two had schematics and you buy
prototype boards and it was the default and it was just the way everything was done uh at the
beginning of the electronic era we have lost our way now we have to argue our way back onto right
right narrow path yes and legislate our way back okay are there questions from the audience for
our panel oh great um we'll start there and then yeah a front row green shirt
uh I'm a father and I learned how to get curious by taking stuff apart my grandfather had like the
audio tubes uh television and he taught me how to tear stuff apart and I took that on to my kids
and they became curious about technology if I walk around at the schools I see
consumers so consumers are being created instead of creators and I think as a community we have
like we need to keep kids curious by taking stuff apart don't be afraid of technology because it
helps them think about certain issues but it's also uh like we're saving the planet by allowing
this to um yeah change as a community so if you can inspire
someone do like classes on school uh help inspire others that really helps yeah and those are the
next generation of kids that might turn into Engineers that then work in the companies and
have that mindset not the closed mindset but the open mindset so that's hugely important exactly
and there's like so many people required in the uh in the the industry can we do yeah third row
and then um just move back that'll be great
um hello um I'm hoping you can connect some dots here because it the the problems that right
trip air seems to face you listed was like end-user license agreements um Customs DRM
um exclusivity agreements and legislation I've seen so far only seems to tackle maybe one of those
um is there any like what legislative solutions are we looking at for especially like eolas
I'm sorry I want to make sure I understand the question is it so what legislative solutions are
we seeing to the various um legal impediments yeah the because the legislation I've seen so
far that you've been advocating for um only seems to say you know we need to make manuals available
and things like that I'm not sure how that really solves
some of the problems that we've had for so long especially with um like eolas where they I shouldn't
have to really agree to an eola to receive it and use it yeah so um there's a couple things
um in play so you're quite right that the state right to repair laws um they're great they don't
do everything there's way more to be done but it's a start um there is in fact oh go ahead sorry there
is um a long-standing um
bill that's been in Congress that was introduced by representative zoe Lofgren that would change
um section 1201 at least so that if you are circumventing if you're breaking the lock in
order to make a fair use to do something that's otherwise lawful then um then it will be lawful
and that would have sent that would be tremendous um unfortunately there's very very strong
opposition to that but um that would be tremendous we really need some solutions at the federal level
um unfortunately courts have over and over treated and user license agreements like regular negotiated
contracts and treated them as equally binding to regularly negotiate a contract and that's
ridiculous and um there's more and more folks who are talking about it but that's a thing that's
also going to have to it's going to take some action at the state level because contract law
is state law so so yeah so there's no I I I that's why I'm actually mostly hopeful that we get rid of
level one anyway in court rather than having to rely on Congress because courts are slow Congress
is slower yeah and I would call on all of you if there's something that bothers you like I'm just
a guy who decided I cared about repair and spent a while advocating for this right Lewis started a
YouTube channel uh we're just we're just normal people we're just like the rest of you so if you
if something bothers you if you want to take on the eula issue it's a major major issue uh we need
is there are not enough people in the public advocacy space working to counteract these highly
paid and to the question on the right to repair laws it's a little bit um it's not just about the
repair manuals they also say that you have to provide access to diagnostic software and they
also say that you need to provide tools to unlock digital locks for the purposes of doing repair so
it isn't just oh well you'll get the manual but you're still screwed so it's it's they're more
they're more granular than that yeah the state law is basically give or sell me the tool the federal
law that we're working on is make it legal for me to whittle my own tool yeah I don't know where the
mic guy is where's my guy I've got it here yeah there we go um really interesting that you
mentioned um Harley Davidson because my motorcycle is in the shop right now because I tried to tune
it and now they've refused to fix the motorcycle it's not even a warranty issue they won't even
allow me to pay for a new thing or fix it they said oh you broke it so we'll no longer fix it
how does how do I go
about working with Harley Davidson or whatever to say you know you this is not legal or you know
what are the laws that could protect me in the state of California don't go alone I think that's
exactly why yeah bring some muscle yeah I mean we need we need them to be sharing their diagnostic
software so at least you've got an even shot at what the dealership is going to do and that's
where like the Massachusetts uh existing right to repair law and then the updated one that's
currently being challenged in courts that will help does it apply that way yeah I mean I think that's
the way the motorcycles I don't I don't uh I think it I think it does we should I believe it does
yeah um but that that's the right the right strategy is at least to get you on an even
kill with the dealership so that you can maybe use their tooling I would mention from a security
perspective once we do have access to their tooling that's a whole nother attack service
we can investigate so that's gonna be a lot of fun so expect expect as right to repair starts
to become out there and companies are posting diagnostic software you may see someone I fix it
uh that's going to be interesting Bites to look at yes no more security through obscurity yes uh okay go ahead
foreign
just to recap the questions so you can all hear he said yeah we're a hardware vendor and uh the
product that we sell is regulated we have to have tamper proof mechanisms on the product in order to
sell it uh what's your Kind of take on that yeah I mean it's a it's a it's a story for me that we've
I mean, you know, if you're following FIPS 140, which basically is a checklist of things you need to do to be physically secure or be secure, which is anti-tamper mechanisms to prevent physical access, maybe, you know, encryption of data and things like that.
I don't know.
I mean, you know, from my perspective of being a hacker, when I see a product that's FIPS 140 compliant, I say, okay, at least they've maybe tried to take some steps, but I still am going to try to hack it.
Right.
Yeah, a lot of it's security by obscurity.
A lot of it is checklists of things.
I think, yeah, if you're like, because of those things, are you now preventing right-to-repair in a way that you would prefer to enable that, but you can't?
Like, I don't know.
Right-to-repair laws really don't deal with design at all.
All they're saying, if you're a hardware, if you're a security vendor, you've got an authorized repair provider who you send your gear to, and you provide them with tools and information to do those repairs on your behalf.
All repairs, there's nothing to do with how you design your product.
All it's saying is you.
You need to make those tools available to your own, to the customers themselves, and to independent repair, so that there can be a competitive market for that service.
And whether it's FIPS compliant or not, I think the right-to-repair laws are totally silent on that.
But if you've got an authorized repair system, network, they're saying you need to open that up.
I know Lewis and Kyle did good work advocating for the New York State right-to-repair law.
Last I checked, that passed the legislator and is waiting for HOCL signatures.
Is there anything else holding that up?
No.
Email Kathy HOCL.
Email the governor.
The governor, Kathy HOCL, it's sitting on her desk.
She just needs to sign it.
Indications are that she will, but I think requests, you know, like friendly suggestions or requests that she sign it would be welcome.
Yes.
But I can say we're actively working on it.
Repair.org is the right-to-repair coalition working on this.
Please join Repair.org.
We met with the governor's staff this week.
And we're continuing that dialogue.
So we're hopeful.
You say, well, why hasn't she done it yet?
New York passed 1,000 bills this year.
She has to sign all of them by hand.
So that takes some time.
I think we've got time maybe for one more question.
Yeah.
So hypothetically, if members of the audience were, let's say, involved with some consortiums of hospitals that were fighting against some particularly evil and litigious OEMs on right-to-repair,
how might they?
How might they get more collaborative with those of you up at the on the panel and work together on some of these issues?
Come up and talk to me after.
We're very interested.
We're working with hospitals.
We have medical-focused right-to-repair tests.
One thing, by the way, I want to mention, since the other panel that's happening right now is talking about medical.
But when COVID started, we started collaborating with EFF and we said, look, there's all these service manuals for hospital equipment that should be out there.
Biomeds are handy.
We're sending them around on hard drives and USB sticks to get the service manuals around.
Can we just get those on the Internet?
I talked to her, I was like, you know, do you think you guys can back us up if we stick our neck out a little bit on this?
And she said, yes.
And so we did it.
And so we launched the All-Night Fix-It.
We got 300 archivists and librarians that have been sent home during COVID to help us comb through.
And we got 25,000 service manuals, PDFs for everything from a ventilator to a CPAP machine to, you know, hospital equipment, vital sign monitors, you name it.
It's All-Night Fix-It.
It's All-NightFix-It.com.
It's all free.
It's all.
And so I would encourage, I hope that's a useful resource.
Also, if you're looking to do security research on these things, a service manual is a good place to start.
Yes.
So hopefully that helps.
But, yeah, we're working actively with hospitals around the country and we'd love to talk.
Do we have time for one more question or not?
Yes.
Over here.
Over here.
Yeah.
He's got his hand very high up.
So I'm going to.
Thank you all for coming.
I was just curious.
There's a lot of talk about right to repair and Louis Rossman, you're a hero of mine.
I was curious if you have any thoughts on focusing more on kind of removing these unelected bureaucrats like in customs, like kind of reducing their powers, focusing on that.
Having Congress act on that in particular, removing powers where they don't need to be.
I definitely wouldn't be opposed to it.
TSA while we're at it as well.
Why not?
Beautiful.
Okay.
Give a big hand to our panelists.
They did an amazing job.
And thanks all of you for coming and asking great questions.
Thank you.