A class action lawsuit alleges that Amazon unfairly ‘bricked’ older Kindle devices by removing access to digital content and discontinuing software support.
The fundamental difference is that obsolete computing hardware used to be difficult for owners and third parties to toy with only due to its inherent complexity, not from malicious intent. This difficulty could be overcome, both in theory and in practice, and with time and effort and a sufficiently persistent community (often reflecting the scale of adoption of the device in question) the difficult parts quite frequently would get overcome eventually.
Especially since the DMCA, there’s been a huge increase in the efforts of companies to “secure” their products against “hacking” and tampering using sophisticated, often uncrackable encryption keys, reliance on remote always-online services which they provide for free (until they don’t, because it’s not like they thought about that during the product design and who could possibly expect them to support their products forever?!), and time-locked and sometimes even physically self-destructing components. These kind of designs now completely saturate the marketplace, and it’s also become illegal to even try to unlock them, thanks to the provisions of the DMCA and the lack of any workable exemption for right-to-repair or abandoned products no longer commercial viable.
Nobody expects a company to have to support their product forever. Of course that’s unreasonable. But it is reasonable to expect them not to design things that intentionally turn into e-waste the moment they stop supporting them. It is entirely reasonable to expect them to design an end-of-commercial-life strategy for the products they develop and sell. This is why copyrights that are allowed to expire become public domain instead of having all the books with expired copyrights burned. Because we, as a civilization, chose to have that happen, and we made it part of the copyright laws. Why do we allow electronics to remain proprietary and encrypted when they are no longer profitable? Why not require them to be opened to the public domain too? Would this not be in society’s best interests? It would not be in the interest of the companies interested in planned obsolescence, that’s for sure, but maybe it’s time to stop letting them decide. They have not been kind to us. Stop being kind to them.
This is the most correct take here in my opinion. Planned obsolescence is indeed bullshit.
At a bare minimum the devices need to be able to support third party services and software if the primary source is going to be remotely or artificially disabled.
Someone who purchases a device OWNS it, and should therefore be able to use it as they see fit.
They do. You can still load books onto them manually from a PC, you just can’t access the store from the device itself.
Planned obsolescence does suck, I’m with you on that. But these devices were supported for 14 years, and they do still remain usable even past this expiration date. If the goal is to fight against planned obsolescence, this just seems like the worst possible battle to pick for that fight.
But it is reasonable to expect them not to design things that intentionally turn into e-waste the moment they stop supporting them.
The Kindles still work. They still power on. They still have the books that were downloaded. You can still load new books manually.
They are not e-waste by any definition of the word. You just no longer have access to the Amazon store.
They have not been kind to us. Stop being kind to them.
I’m not being kind to them, I’m pointing out that the only thing that happened was owners lost access to an online store. Everything else about the device still works.
The lawsuit is straight up wrong on nearly every claim they make about the devices no longer working. They work just like they did before, just with no built-in store. It’s an ereader, and it still functions as an ereader.
I don’t have one, so I don’t know if the claims are true or not, it seems like you do and I’ll have to take your word for it. My comment is addressing the philosophy of how these devices are typically designed, I’m not in a position to argue about the merits of this specific instance.
The fundamental difference is that obsolete computing hardware used to be difficult for owners and third parties to toy with only due to its inherent complexity, not from malicious intent. This difficulty could be overcome, both in theory and in practice, and with time and effort and a sufficiently persistent community (often reflecting the scale of adoption of the device in question) the difficult parts quite frequently would get overcome eventually.
Especially since the DMCA, there’s been a huge increase in the efforts of companies to “secure” their products against “hacking” and tampering using sophisticated, often uncrackable encryption keys, reliance on remote always-online services which they provide for free (until they don’t, because it’s not like they thought about that during the product design and who could possibly expect them to support their products forever?!), and time-locked and sometimes even physically self-destructing components. These kind of designs now completely saturate the marketplace, and it’s also become illegal to even try to unlock them, thanks to the provisions of the DMCA and the lack of any workable exemption for right-to-repair or abandoned products no longer commercial viable.
Nobody expects a company to have to support their product forever. Of course that’s unreasonable. But it is reasonable to expect them not to design things that intentionally turn into e-waste the moment they stop supporting them. It is entirely reasonable to expect them to design an end-of-commercial-life strategy for the products they develop and sell. This is why copyrights that are allowed to expire become public domain instead of having all the books with expired copyrights burned. Because we, as a civilization, chose to have that happen, and we made it part of the copyright laws. Why do we allow electronics to remain proprietary and encrypted when they are no longer profitable? Why not require them to be opened to the public domain too? Would this not be in society’s best interests? It would not be in the interest of the companies interested in planned obsolescence, that’s for sure, but maybe it’s time to stop letting them decide. They have not been kind to us. Stop being kind to them.
This is the most correct take here in my opinion. Planned obsolescence is indeed bullshit. At a bare minimum the devices need to be able to support third party services and software if the primary source is going to be remotely or artificially disabled. Someone who purchases a device OWNS it, and should therefore be able to use it as they see fit.
They do. You can still load books onto them manually from a PC, you just can’t access the store from the device itself.
Planned obsolescence does suck, I’m with you on that. But these devices were supported for 14 years, and they do still remain usable even past this expiration date. If the goal is to fight against planned obsolescence, this just seems like the worst possible battle to pick for that fight.
The Kindles still work. They still power on. They still have the books that were downloaded. You can still load new books manually.
They are not e-waste by any definition of the word. You just no longer have access to the Amazon store.
I’m not being kind to them, I’m pointing out that the only thing that happened was owners lost access to an online store. Everything else about the device still works.
The lawsuit is straight up wrong on nearly every claim they make about the devices no longer working. They work just like they did before, just with no built-in store. It’s an ereader, and it still functions as an ereader.
I don’t have one, so I don’t know if the claims are true or not, it seems like you do and I’ll have to take your word for it. My comment is addressing the philosophy of how these devices are typically designed, I’m not in a position to argue about the merits of this specific instance.