Right to Repair
10Recent article by Ray Magliozzi (whom you might recognize as one of the Car Talk radio program brothers) on the “Right to Repair” for independent auto repair shops.
It is both informative and funny (as usual). I’m referencing it here as we quite often talk about repair/maintenance of electronics, autos, etc.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/car-talk-ray-magliozzi-right-to-repair-law/
There is a link for general RtR laws in various states, which I assume is somewhat up-to-date. (Apparently, Texas is not, on most things, yet, as their latest went to committee in 2021 and then went MIA, according to the link.)
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The current misleadership of Texas tends to define “behind the curve” except where they can leap ahead of everywhere else in being nasty to people who are the wrong color, gender, religion, political party, or income level.
@werehatrack Do you live in Texas? Are you going to vote for Beto?
One comment posted for the article:
It’s not just right to repair. Warner/Discovery is retroactively revoking post first-sale licensed media because they’re trying to claim a total tax write-off of the content.
To claim they have no future residual revenue, they are forcing Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and all “stores” to remove the titles. As in they will no longer be accessible in “your” library. Copyright law is fucked. The big example is the Batgirl movie that will now never see the light of day, lest WB/Discovery get audited and charged with tax fraud. So defrauding customers is ok, but not the feds.
So, to stiff taxpayers, WB/Discovery wants to claim they didn’t “sell” the content, that you are only renting it, but the government collected sales tax on your purchase when you did. Quite an odd understanding of the meanings of those terms, that is somehow also not fraudulent and misrepresentative given the interpretation they want to claim now.
So the right to “own” something has been corrupted and stolen along with your right-of-first-sale.
The term for what WB/Discovery is doing is tax evasion if not outright fraud. Any thoughts on if there is a link to the new CEO’s $22M pay package that gets sweeter if he gooses profitability by locking in a one-way ticket for these assets to be legally “destroyed” forever to get a one-time tax break?
That’s not even selling off the parts, it’s outright stealing from the common square, which copyrights merely give what was supposed to be a temporary monopoly in order to fund furthering the arts and sciences (and has been grotesquely extended to 100+ years by Disney and very, very profitable for WB/Discovery). At the end of which, the intellectual property would be returned to the public good. This short-circuits that, by destroying the IP after benefiting from the monopoly and screwing the public good out of the artistic work copyrights were granted for in the first place.
This means all of the DC franchises (Superman, Batman, etc) and WB studios are at risk from these corporate nihilists only looking to cash out for themselves in a one-and-done, “pull the rip cord and bail”, “screw everyone that isn’t me” career move.
This isn’t strip mining the assets, it is turning them into unregulated toxic waste dumps that can never be used again.
https://www.farm-equipment.com/articles/20002-deere-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-right-to-repair
I will point out that one of the most rabid opponents of the right to repair spends a lot of money in Texas, namely Elon .Musk. I would be incredibly shocked if he didn’t have several of the members of the Texas Senate in his pocket.