You know what scares us about big tech? Planned obsolescence.
You know what scares us about big tech? Planned obsolescence.
When devices are designed to become obsolete sooner than later, you know there is a problem. A problem that's getting scarier every day.
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Planned obsolescence isn't even in my top 10. The worst things about Big Tech are existential, like its use for mass espionage and murder by evil regimes.
Exactly. Planned obsolesce is an annoyance to my pocketbook. Violations of my privacy can completely screw me over for life.
We should absolutely solve both, but if I had to pick one, I'd go for privacy every time.
It's connected. When there's no planned obsolescence, one can stop buying electronics until companies or some specific company regains reason. When there is planned obsolescence, you can't easily start ignoring the vendor, usually. Your device quickly becomes both dangerous and kinda useless without support.
This requires sort of an Ulysses' pact from companies. Sun would do such things. Sun would also develop fundamentally important technologies for literally every level of the industry. Unfortunately Sun went down.
And the way many companies went down in late 90s and 00s, I can't blame others for trying to find some way to exist without such unfortunate events. One can't rely on Ulysses' pacts anyway. Those work to a limited extent when supported by other mechanisms.
It's really a case of philosophy being required to find the solution. Not conflicting interests, to which (even in theory, with dialectics on one side's extreme and fascism on another's) both left and right movements reduce reality.
Said philosophy is that property rights are intended to share either finite resources or unique resources, and information is not a finite resource, however it is a unique resource.
The "conflicting interests" point of view means that everything unique should be a property and this is how things are done well, that means that everything has an owner who feeds from it, and a crowd of angry apes who think that fighting IP and copyright is evil theft making hardworking people hungry.
The "philosophy" point of view means that only finite resources should have owners, because ownership is a way for those who need a resource to have it, nothing more. Ownership and markets are a distribution mechanism, where those applying more energy to get a resource get more of it. It's superficial for things which are not finite, and superficial means "bad".
However work to develop new things and creation are finite resources. But those can actually be commodified. Trade secrets are the way it was called for all of history.
Patents allow rapid modernization and scale, which is an advantage over trade secrets, but patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
But I think for a decade or so the Western world can exist without patents at all, before reintroducing them in that improved form. It's not hard to notice that in the current global economy IP and patents are one of the most powerful assets of the West, so it may seem a leap of faith. But it has to be done. Patents in such a situation are derived from human work, so the "designing" countries won't lose strength compared to the "manufacturing" countries. The power is not in the patents. It's roughly similar to the way decolonization in the XX century counterintuitively revitalized old empires when and where done softly and hurt them when and where done harshly.
This has almost nothing to do with privacy and misses the point behind planned obsolescence. The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
Patents aren't "practically indefinite," they're 20 years (15 for design patents). I don't think that's egregious, but I do think it's a little too long, especially since there's no requirement to actually produce the thing.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they're building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they're not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
That doesn't help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
Obstructing competition has impact on every agreed policy, first. Second, it obviously has direct impact in maximizing revenue.
but I do think it’s a little too long, especially since there’s no requirement to actually produce the thing.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they’re building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they’re not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
My preference would be just 5 years with no conditionals. Simpler things are harder to abuse.
That doesn’t help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
That's stupid, sorry. Like saying tanks are not related to air force. They are components of the same system.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
I don't see your point. I've seen DOS used in inventory systems in developed countries, and any patents related to DOS expired 25 years ago. Patents aren't why developing countries use old tech, in fact most don't enforce or even recognise US patents (or any IP law, for that matter).
What you seem to be talking about is copyright law, which is a completely different topic.
Simpler things are harder to abuse.
If patents are too simple, they'll be ineffective at actually solving valid business concerns and companies will just lobby for longer protections. Pharmaceuticals, for example, often need longer than 5 years to get a product to market, and creating a generic drug from a patent can take much less time and can piggyback off the studies the original company went through and get fast-tracked through the regulatory process. If they're able to reset the clock when they go to market, they may be okay with a shorter duration.
Any policy change needs to balance the very real concerns of all interested parties.
They are components of the same system.
Only in the very abstract sense of trying to sell more stuff.
But patents have nothing to do with the main areas of planned obsolescence people are annoyed at, like TVs, laptops/phones, software, etc. Nor do they have anything to do with privacy issues people are concerned about, like Microsoft Recall, data breaches, or data brokers. It's a completely separate system from any of those concerns.
I mean normal people for daily stuff still used DOS sometimes. As an idea of how long 20 years is. OK. 20 years ago people were renting VHS tapes. 20 years ago Revenge of the Sith came out.
It's not a different topic, it's about patents expiring fast enough to not allow an entrenched oligopoly, but not fast enough to make innovation not worth it.
5 years after market entry, OK.
Yes and no, balance of concerns leads to something like politics, with no principle at all, just power games. It's what we have now.
Reducing competitiveness is pretty directly connected to planned obsolescence. It's possible because of oligopoly and because of a few companies making the fashion of what one can use in year 2024 and what is from year 2004 and isn't normal.
Reducing competitiveness is pretty directly connected to planned obsolescence.
Not really. TVs, phones, laptops, appliances, etc are all really competitive markets, and all of them have issues with planned obsolescence. The reason for this has nothing to do with patents at all, but the manufacturer cutting corners to keep costs down, or in the case of phones and some laptops, blocking their manufacturers from selling parts.
That's what the right to repair movement is all about, and it has nothing to do with patents but schematics and contracts. They're intentionally making things harder to repair. They would rather their customers come to them for repairs (where they can upcharge), buy their protection plan (recurring revenue), or replace the device (chance at an additional sale) instead of repairing it themselves. None of that is related patents whatsoever.
5 years after market entry, OK.
Then we need rules on how long they can take to bring it to market. Hence 5 years, with an optional renewal if they need more time. One renewal, that's it, so a maximum time of 10 years if they use full 5 years to bring it to market.
Not really. TVs, phones, laptops, appliances, etc are all really competitive markets,
No they are not. It's a few large producers of components, mostly, with litigious interfaces, like USB, mostly, with Intel, AMD and some ARM CPUs, mostly, with drivers for Windows first, mostly.
That’s what the right to repair movement is all about, and it has nothing to do with patents but schematics and contracts. They’re intentionally making things harder to repair.
This means there's demand for things easier to repair, but nobody's making them. That's because of barriers in the form of patents and licenses. You are not going to dissuade me, LOL.
Then we need rules on how long they can take to bring it to market. Hence 5 years, with an optional renewal if they need more time. One renewal, that’s it, so a maximum time of 10 years if they use full 5 years to bring it to market.
Agreed.
a few large producers of components
Sure, CPUs and GPUs are pretty homogeneous, but that's also changing with Intel launching GPUs, Qualcomm entering laptop CPUs, Apple making their own silicon, and Nvidia potentially entering consumer CPUs (they're entering servers).
Making a new CPU, GPU, or storage device has a pretty high barrier to entry due to engineering costs (and yes, patents), but prices are pretty reasonable and planned obsolescence isn't really a thing.
I have never thrown out a CPU, GPU, or storage device because it broke too soon or got too slow, I threw it out because I wanted an upgrade. I have thrown out laptops because they became unusable due to terrible design (e.g. hinge got messed up on one, power connector broke on another, etc). So the ones with the most patents seem to be the ones that are the most reliable, whereas the combined product (laptop, appliance, etc) is the one that dies because they cheaped out on components. For example:
- washing machine - same relay died twice, and they went out of their way to make it hard to fix (epoxy on PCB, tiny plastic clips on casing, etc); I replaced the entire board for $100 instead of the one relay
- dishwasher - interface board busted, probably because of low quality caps or something; didn't bother diagnosing past "busted circuit board" because the repair people wouldn't touch it
- refrigerator compressor died twice (once under warranty)
If you go back 50 years, appliances lasted 20+ years, whereas now you're lucky to get 10. That has nothing to do with patents, it's just classic cheaping out on components.
The things that I have with tons of patents tend to last forever, it's everything around them that seem to fail and be incredibly hard to repair.
This means there’s demand for things easier to repair, but nobody’s making them. That’s because of barriers in the form of patents and licenses.
Not necessarily. The Fairphone exists and is pretty easy to repair, yet it's niche. Likewise with the Framework laptop. For washing machines (I just had to replace mine), durable options like Speed Queen exist, yet most seem to go for the cheaper, disposable option.
It has nothing to do with patents, people just prefer the cheaper or higher end option, and they're apparently not willing to pay a premium for repairability.
The right to repair movement is trying to expand repairability to all devices, not just those that cater to the repairability niche.
Planned obsolescence is a symptom of something which is, or aught to be, in your top 10 issues with big tech.
The biggest existential threat is still ecological destruction. Old growth forest are raised to the ground, the ocean is warming and acidifying as it absorbs CO2, and it's all to make computers and toasters that don't even last a decade.
planned obsolescence wastes precious resources and massively contributes to climate change and our enslavement through consumption. its absolutely in my top 10
Unless your planning on running your own infra for everything... I would argue planned obsolescence is a much greater and immediate threat.
Research is never long term. Imagine if the last 20yrs had been invested in increased ram and battery storage. Instead we have had a 20 halt on innovation in the residential side. Why big Phone wanted to stick with 4gb phone. And then 8gb so much so the reason they stopped was because it was becoming more expensive to make 8gb chips.
Unless you only pay cash, dont use Amazon to ship, google to research, Microsoft to compute... You are being tracked, the only difference now is the focus of the companies were for greed.
Planned obsolescence helps those things too, creating many more targets to support for open projects aiming for compatibility with proprietary hardware, or proprietary formats, or even proprietary software (for Wine), or de-facto proprietary Web.
That's because you're a proud consumer who doesn't realize how maximizing profit is the motivation for everything you've mentioned.
Do you think you're being insightful or something? That's not even true, states sometimes compel and coerce firms for that information even when it may harm the profit incentive through reputational damage.
Right. It can't be that you're a proud consumer, because then you'd have to acknowledge your own contribution to the problem and criticize a culture you're dependent on.
Can't have that.
Again, I have no clue what you're talking about. I'm not going to live in a hut in the woods and neither are you.