Manufacturers and dealerships raised concerns that providing tools and information to farmers would allow equipment owners to illegally crank up the horsepower and bypass emissions controls — putting operator safety and the environment at risk.
No, none of the lockouts were actually intended to prevent farmers from rolling coal in their tractors. Also, I'm not sure why a farmer would want to roll coal. But since rolling coal is a thing that people occasionally do, it's a useful boogeyman.
Serialized parts don't prevent you from defeating emissions controls anyway - there's plenty of low-tech ways to tamper with sensors to do the same thing. Even the theft prevention[0] benefits are limited, because the chip with the serial codes on it can be desoldered and resoldered onto a new board.
[0] i.e. if someone were to chop-shop your phone or tractor. It happens.
Removing the emissions controls on diesel engines (EGR and DPF specifically) can actually give a significant boost to fuel economy. At the cost of higher emissions of particulates and nitrogen oxides. Diesel engines recirculate the exhaust gas for cooler combustion (though less thermodynamically efficient, this reduces nitrogen oxide formation). They also come with particulate filters on the exhaust, which both increase pumping losses and require extra fuel to periodically regenerate the filter (basically burning off the soot particles that were collected, which needs extra heat which takes some fuel).
There are reliability improvements to be had as well, reducing operating costs still further (the emissions equipment can get clogged up, especially if the engine isn't running perfectly).
So yeah, farmers (all commercial diesel users really) have a strong financial incentive to avoid or remove these emissions controls, provided they don't get caught of course.
A practice typically done by rednecks with their diesel pickup trucks, tweaking the ECU and fuel profiles run the engine overly rich so the exhaust billows out thick black clouds (thus, "rolling coal"), particularly when they rev the engine.
Disgusting. I just watched some videos and it seems to be mostly used as a soft attack on bicyclists, environmentalists, pedestrians, people on the left etc. Some “anti-environmentalists” were literally sticking their face right next to the exhaust while it was rolling coal to make a point lol. That’ll show them.
lots of vendors sell tractors across a line which all have the same engine, but whose horsepower is limited by the ECU according to the actual model that is purchased. pay for the low end model in a line, get lower horsepower. pay for the top of the line, get more horsepower, even though they are physically the same engine.
it allows for manufacturers to greatly simplify manufacturing requirements and lower costs, and it allows farmers to buy the tractor they need today and to grow into upgrades as they need them, without the downtime or expense of an engine swap if they need horsepower later.
manufacturers are afraid that the tools they would be required to provide could allow someone to "upgrade" their engine for free, but that's not what right to repair is about, and I would be surprised if a law required that upgrades like this be made possible by end users free of charge.
so it's a legit concern if you are a manufacturer of tractors and you compare what's being done in other areas of consumer electronics. oscilloscopes today are often sold in this same way: all models have the same potential for performance but are limited in software, so hackers bypass or trick the software to unlock the higher speeds when you only paid for the entry-level scope. In reality it is not much of a concern, since the percentage of customers who do this is extremely small.
the main problem for tractor manufacturers is that new regulations require them to spend money in order to be in compliance with those regulations. money that was not budgeted and which affects earnings reports and changes work priorities within a company. The desire to avoid regulations which require expenditure of any kind is what is drives the motivation of every company that resists right to repair efforts.
In general market incumbents, especially the larger ones, shouldn't resent new regulation. As long as it affects all their competitors equally, they won't lose market share and can pass on increased costs to customers. In this case, customers receive additional value (right to repair) so they should accept additional costs, if any.
I think the manufacturers' real concern has not been cost of compliance, but rather loss of service revenues which business model is arguably customer-hostile.
> I think the manufacturers' real concern has not been cost of compliance, but rather loss of service revenues which business model is arguably customer-hostile.
well, usually the services needed by the owner are provided by a dealer, and not the vehicle manufacturer, so I'm not sure that holds water. I don't think the manufacturers lose anything except a small amount of goodwill from a dealer who can no longer charge $100 every few years when a particular dealer tool would be needed to convince a tractor to resume operation. that's not a lot of loss for a dealer.
manufacturers do supply parts, but that wouldn't change if an end user installs the parts instead of a dealer. most farmers fix their own tractors using first-party parts already.
Performance tuning (horsepower) and bypassing emissions shouldn't be possible by the approved technicians anyway. From my experience, those capabilities are reserved for an engineering tool, not a diagnostics/repair tool. So, those don't seem like legit arguments to me.
One safety concern for untrained technicians is the possibility of activating motors, and other circuits during the repair process without ensuring those things are safe to operate in their repair/disassembled state. So, there is a
legit safety argument, but that's true for many tools that are sold at the local hardware store.
Fair enough, although not for most vehicles going forward -- they're encrypting all of the bus traffic and have made other security improvements (in response to the 2015 defcon Jeep hack that demonstrated how weak vehicle bus security is among most automakers).
"Exempts manufacturers or distributors of certain medical devices, motor vehicles, any power generation or storage equipment, or equipment for fueling or charging motor vehicles."
Wondering what type of farmer equipment count as "motor vehicles" here, and if tractors are counted or not.
> (Other) Motor vehicles are not the focus of the bill, but could be impacted by the bill, especially for things like touch screens in vehicles and electric vehicle chargers. The industry would appreciate an exemption to exclude motor vehicles and related devices from the scope of the bill
> (Other) There are concerns regarding the definition of digital electronic equipment. A clarifying amendment to exclude digital electronic equipment in vehicle charging stations would be appreciated. New York's right to repair law had similar language.
The list of entities testifying in the "(Other)" category (versus "(In support)") is thankfully visible in these docs you only need to Ctrl+F for "(Other)".
"We are worried this manufacturing bill might affect vehicle touch screen and electric charging technology. Lets exempt the entire auto industry, the single largest manufacturing sector in the country, that represents 3% of the US GDP."
Thankfully, most automakers do make diagnostic tools/parts/info available to everyone (due to Massachusetts' 2012 right to repair law). The automakers don't really mind because more users licensing that software is more revenue. If anyone cares in that industry, it's the dealers.
They're only required to do it in MA though. They do it everywhere because it's more revenue, so I think it's fair to say they don't mind. It's the dealers that mind.
And the contempt the politicians have for their voters who actually put it into law, which is more egregious imho. I don't necessarily blame an industry for trying to get things in bills that benefit their industry, but I do blame the politicians who actually make it a reality over the interests of their citizens and then a governor who signs it into law.
civics education, critical thinking, math, science, and humanities education all have an impact on how and if people understand and get involved in issues that affect the population and the world, politics, etc...
It's a lot easier to manipulate and misinformed people when the lack a basic education in these fields.
I wouldn't say the contempt for customers is conscious. It's more a single-minded focus on revenue maximization, leading to an obscene effort to defend against any percieved threats to that revenue maximization, that results in what looks like contempt... When you only care about one thing, nothing else matters.
> When you only care about one thing, nothing else matters.
Which counts as contempt in my book. Contempt means "The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn." Caring more about your revenue stream than your customers is regarding your customers as inferior to your revenue stream.
Totally, and in my experience it's above a certain level in the company, below that level the employees have pride and care about their customers because they are them and can relate to them, above a certain level they are not users of their own products, cant relate to regular people and then a different dynamic takes over.
This is potentially an advantage for the Colorado bill, which (I think?) specifically targets right-to-repair for farmers/farm equipment. When you only target one industry, that industry can't say "give us an exception, the bill will still be fine."
Are you saying that allowing farmers to repair their own equipment is pointless, or that allowing it will cause food prices to go up? Either way, you are saying that you either don't care about farmers or your only concern is whether things cost more for consumers.
We have introduced bills in 28 states so far this year. Some are ag, some are medical, some are consumer electronics focused. Making very good progress.
If you made a sweeping all encompassing "right to repair" bill you would then be targeted by every single group which opposes right to repair, if you target agriculture or medical areas you are likely to only primarily receice heavy opposition from a segment rather than a large swath of industries.
Narrow bills are easier to understand and explain. They do one thing and they do it right rather than trying to solve every problem.
A narrow bill has less of a target. If you have a large bill there might be one small element which some politician couldn't vote for for various reasons, reduce the scale and you reduce the target area.
Those are just a few ideas, not an expert in this but these seemed to make sense. Let me know what you think.
That's exactly it. It's about segmenting the opposition.
That's not exactly the best policymaking, of course. There's no fundamental difference between fixing a tractor and a smartphone.
Over time, we're hopeful the policies will converge for all devices. Last year we did electric wheelchairs in Colorado, this year the same legislators expanded it to tractors.
I was mildly interested in the article based on the title, because the right to repair is imho necessary in many areas of life. But I am most definitely not interested enough to do the trivial work to bypass the " This content is not available in your country/region." message.
If you can't figure out how to serve your content to users without extreme tracking (at least I assume that the reason for this message is the consumer protection found in the EU), then your content can't be that important.
Like another commenter mentioned, using archive.today bypasses most paywalls and blocks.
A trick I always use is to just append the url to archive.today[0] to get a page with no ads and bloat. You could also make a bookmarklet to make it a 1-click thing. Sometimes it might not be archived so you will have to click 'archive this url' to make one, but people are usually quick to archive articles that are posted here
You can provide them with your email and they will send you a newsletter. That counts as storing user data and would require them to have to deal with the GDPR behemoth. Compliance costs a lot of time and money. Or you could just block EU users, which are not going to be reading a lot of Buffalo local news. Categorizing it as just extreme tracking is disingenuous.
It's not that important for the EU. The summary is John Deere would put chips in their tractors that were aware if you replaced a part. If you replaced that part, the tractor would brick until you took it to the dealership to update the computer.
Can you please stop breaking the site guidelines? I don't want to ban you again and it looks like you've been doing a reasonable job of sticking to them (thank you!), but comments like this one, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35602686, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35043900 are the sort of flamebait/fulmination/snark that we're trying to avoid here. You can make your substantive points without that.
Do you ever ask yourself if the folks who report my comments just have a hard time with freedom of expression?
Do you ever reach out to the ones that report everything that isn't a mainstream opinion? I know they exist. It's the bread and butter of the culture here.
Look, I get it. YCombinator isn't a constitutionalist organization, or whatever. You are based in America, though. I hope you reflect on that. Often.
Let's get to the meat:
If you want to censor people (or your boss wants you to), you should just do it. Bullying folks into censoring themselves is no bueno, and I am more than happy to call this out as exactly that. It's hilariously ironic because I'm the kind of person who could absolutely help this community, but you are certain I need to be pushed out whenever we meet. How fun to push up that hill. Still, I try.
If sharing my thoughts, freely, on topic is "breaking the rules," feel free to call out the specific rule I am breaking. This "PlEaSe ReAd OuR GuIdElInEs" crap is pretty despicable and my time is worth a lot more than that. Your time is worth a lot more than that.
If you can't be specific: Please, don't bother. I haven't broken any site guidelines with this comment, or the last one.
It's a two way street. I'd be grateful if you started taking my perspective into account, but I guess that is a lot to ask, even though you have had so many opportunities.
I already referenced which rules you're breaking, though perhaps I didn't do so clearly enough. Here's the list in a more explicit form: you're breaking the rule against flamebait ("Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."), the rule against fulmination ("Please don't fulminate."), the rule against snark ("Don't be snarky."), and probably others (such as the rules against name-calling and ideological battle) as well.
If you want to make a case for yourself as a principled poster of dissident views, you need a better foundation to stand on than the GP comment and the other ones I linked to, which are just typical flamebait of the sort we're trying to avoid here. If you keep posting like that, we're going to have to ban you, not because we/I have anything against you or your views in the slightest, just because we're trying to have an internet forum that doesn't burn itself to a crisp. Scorched earth is uninteresting.
For the record, you don't reference any rules when you do your little schtick. It has clearly happened more than once for me, but I've seen it done to plenty of others. Don't present yourself as doing something that you clearly must be asked for. How ridangculous. My point is that I'm not re-reading guidelines if you cannot give me the courtesy of explaining exactly what parts of my comment broke what rules. Vagueness doesn't help your job in any way. At least you have me here to set a good example.
> I already referenced which rules you're breaking, though perhaps I didn't do so clearly enough. You're breaking the rule against flamebait ("Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."), the rule against fulmination ("Please don't fulminate."), the rule against snark ("Don't be snarky."), and probably others (such as the rule against name-calling) as well.
I believe those are all strict matters of subjectivity, I was not flame-baiting, fulminating, or being snarky. I also didn't directly call anyone names. I said the statement. Do you know something I don't about my thoughts on the matter...? Where's the name calling?
> If you want to make a case for yourself as a principled poster of dissident views, you need a better foundation to stand on than the GP comment and the other ones I linked to, which are just typical flamebait of the sort we're trying to avoid here.
If you want to be taken seriously as a moderator of this site, I'd start by realizing what a bad job you do when it comes to matters like this. Another opportunity to improve the site drastically, vanquished by you. I know my value, I'm happy to wait for someone like you to realize how much you're missing it.
Next time I'll just make a comment that backs up the ever-present echo chamber, instead of sharing how I really feel about the issue. We all know it's what you're asking for.
It's part of the social contract here that commenters are expected to be familiar with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make a good faith effort to stick to those rules. It's neither long nor hard to read. I don't think it's discourteous or too much to ask people to read it if they're going to post here, and it's so rare that anyone objects to the request that I have to assume the community agrees with me about that.
It's hard for me to understand why you're responding so combatively because, from my perspective, this is entirely routine, bog standard moderation. It's nothing personal! You're as welcome here as anyone else, as long as you stick to the rules. There's no reason at all why you can't make your substantive points within the guidelines, and no one's asking you to change your views.
Yes, there's some interpretation involved–that's inevitable with moderation—but I'm not interpreting the rules in any extreme way, nor any differently than I would with any other user, nor with any perverse agenda in mind. As I said, we're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't destroy itself. Flamebait leads to flamewar; flamewar, if unchecked, leads to conflagration, which leads to scorched earth and internet heat death. We've been consciously trying to stave off that outcome for over 15 years now (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html).
I've tried to respond to everything you said that I actually understood. Some of your critique (e.g. the "what a bad job you do" paragraph) is too unspecific to be answerable. If you want to clarify one or two specific points that you feel I didn't reply to, I'd be happy to take another crack at it.
You added that after I'd already posted my reply to that comment. I understand about editing comments - I do it all the time as well - but I don't think 'ignoring' is the right word for someone missing an after-the-fact addition.
Conflict is essential to human life, yes, but that doesn't mean everything that people do in conflicts is ok. Quite the contrary. Milner's point is that we need to figure out how to stay with and endure conflictual differences without resorting to the things that make conflict worse. In internet forum terms, that means not resorting to snark, flamebait, swipes, and the other things that the HN guidelines ask commenters not to do. Allowing the tension of differences without lashing out is, I think, the heart of tolerance, and is what gives a chance of finding solutions other than endless battle. Milner's point about that seems to me profound, original, and directly relevant to HN—that's why I put it in my About box.
I don't think that the people who flagged your GP comment did so because they have a problem with freedom of expression. I know the users who flagged it. I think they were simply, and rightly, reacting to the flamebait in the comment. It shouldn't be hard to understand why posts like "Y'all have no idea how fucked the US is and you're all cheering like it's not happening" get flagged here.
Btw, I did respond to this part of your argument already, when I said "If you want to make a case for yourself as a principled poster of dissident views, you need a better foundation to stand on than the GP comment and the other ones I linked to, which are just typical flamebait of the sort we're trying to avoid."
Have I answered your critique now? I'm not asking if you agree with my answer—I'm sure that is too much to hope for—but I'm curious to know if you at least feel like you got a response.
> I don't think that the people who flagged your GP comment did so because they have a problem with freedom of expression. I know the users who flagged it. I think they were simply, and rightly, reacting to the flamebait in the comment.
Gee, it's almost like instead of responding to me and challenging their own beliefs (or, ignoring it), they are flaming me through the reporting and moderation bots here at HN. Almost.
Is that really so hard for you to see...? How are those guidelines working out for you on that front?
I know you know the users who report comments. You give a lot of favoritism to subjective interpretation leading to a report from the established echo chamber, but you give little focus to the comments themselves when a commenter is happy to elaborate. It really couldn't be more backwards.
> It shouldn't be hard to understand why posts like "Y'all have no idea how fucked the US is and you're all cheering like it's not happening" get flagged here.
It shouldn't be hard to understand that there is no better way for me to call out an echo chamber that I see succinctly, relating to a topic I understand quite well from a few angles.
But hey, if it gets reported it must be breaking the rules, right?
You're a disgrace, my guy. Guess you can try again the next time you find one of my comments too spicy. I'm not a terrorist, stop treating me like one. I'm adding much needed perspective to a site filled with bots. Your subjective interpretation is always wholly inaccurate.
What are the odds that passing this bill will actually help the mostly Democratic lawmakers who pushed and passed this bill? My guess is the beneficiaries will still largely vote against them due to nebulous culture war issues.
There's a dark counterargument to this: that those seeking to raise the tide for everyone need to account for the maneuvers by those who wish to opportunistically deregulate and profit.
There's a fine line between elevating the opportunity and quality-of-life floor v. making everyone the same at the expense of individualism and all opportunity (i.e. in favor of "sameness") But basic quality of life improvements that require public funding are often lobbied against with arguments equating raising the floor with "sameness," which harms pretty much everyone.
I don't think that's the case, not at all. I do think it's easy to think you're doing the first when you're not, and I do think it's easy to make the first look like the second, particularly in scarcity-based circumstances, or by "counting the outcome" differently.
I'm interested in hearing why you think that's the case, tho.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that the second (call it "forced equalization") can't or doesn't happen - I'm arguing against it being similar enough to opportunity elevation (good word choice btw!) that there's merely a fine line between them.
> I'm interested in hearing why you think that's the case, tho.
It's a good question, and in hindsight I can see why it wouldn't be obvious.
Basically: because the two are part of an equality gradient where one end is effectively an opportunity lottery with the worst odds and the other end is "sameness", and where a society draws the line (manifesting as parties with their positions, which of course means there can be more than one line to dice up the gradient a bit) depends on a whole host of factors. Culture, experiences, etc.
Your points above largely support the Gradient argument; it's easy to assume teal is blue, or perhaps green, or to convince some people blue is green (comically, some stoplights come to mind). I'm merely sharing my formula for how the line manifests.
I'm guessing we're on the same page and are debating a nuance. Lol
Currently Colorado is solidly a blue state and Democratic lawmakers don't actually need help. I am in Titone's district (the sponser) and the right to repair was broadly supported.
What gets missed in this discussion is that John Deere and other large machine manufactures offset the purchase price of these machines with the expected cost of maintenance for the lifetime of the machine. This lets business owners (in this case farmers) obtain financing for machines that might in other situations be difficult to obtain. In other words, these large machine manufactures are taking on part of the cost to "finance" these machines because in the past other financial institutions have been reluctant to do so.
I'd argue that's a sign that John Deere is just out to maximize their profits at the expense of everyone else. Plenty of evidence out there to support that. Sure, any company's goal is to maximize profits to some degree, but instead of manipulating the market to extract additional money target a product to what the market can afford. If a market can't afford the product the problem isn't the market, it's the product. Instead Deere has has manipulated the market to extract money the market can't sustain.
overall, the economy is not "fair" by most measures.. older industries do not get new influx of dollars and talent.. people only want to pay so much for a commodity product.
... far from defending John Deere, instead realize that this is an example of a truly "political" problem.. the needs and wants of direct stakeholders are vastly one-sided, compared to the outputs over time for the rest of society.
If that's the business model manufacturers want to follow, surely it could be done more honestly by requiring a service contract in exchange for financing or a reduced initial price.
There is nothing in the JD tractors that cannot be accomplished with open source. Nothing.
Most recently I saw it as retrofit in a Workmaster 60. It had not only engine control, but lane tracking, soil sampling, and more. Al kinds of cameras, relays, and stuff. It was a Frankenstein's dream, but it worked.
The cost offset justification is horse lemons. Much of JD's smarts come from off the shelf code and material, including open source.
If they want to move product, they're going to have to do that anyway. The auto industry still subsidizes loans through their own lending operations even though we have Magnuson-Moss which allows people to go to non-manufacturer affiliated mechanics.
That makes sense. Perhaps go to the full SaaS model like Rolls-Royce did for jet engines with "Power by the hour" where you lease the engine on a per flight-hour basis with all maintenance included.
>> What gets missed in this discussion is that John Deere and other large machine manufacture[r]s offset the purchase price of these machines with the expected cost of maintenance for the lifetime of the machine. This lets business owners (in this case farmers) obtain financing for machines that might in other situations be difficult to obtain.
That would be fine and dandy if there were a *choice* to discount the price in exchange for the reduced degree of ownership. (And if they were decent folks, once equity had been fully paid off they would unlock everything).
The reality is nothing more than rent-seeking MBA bastards trying to improve their own bottom line.
It's dangerous when companies get into the financing business with their products and dictate the terms in user-hostile ways for which you have zero bargaining power. You wind up with problems like phones you can't transfer to another provider and cars that want to lock you out if you're late on a payment.
As consumers our best way to fight this bullshit is to just say NO, and stop buying products that are encumbered with such shenanigans.
It's one reason I never buy my phone from the same company that sells my service. I hold the unorthodox view they have no business being device resellers, and I wish they just stuck to selling me airtime and focused on being good at that (fast speeds, good coverage, network capacity, customer service, etc). Instead they load products up with bloatware, and over time poisoned the incentives of manufacturers to prioritize their interests over my own user experience. In any event I find better deals and truly unlocked units off eBay, usually from a region of the world where the model supports the ROM I prefer to use.
Unfortunately it's becoming harder in practice to locate alternative supply, and not everyone is in a position to make this principled choice. Some can't afford it, but most of us are ambivalent and just want to get a phone and get on with our lives.
A traditional financing outfit could care less about restricting what features you can use on your product or who you're allowed to pay to fix or upgrade it (as long as the repairs are competent, which is justifiable seeing as they are part-owners, and such conditions are all lifted once you buy them out). While I dislike government dictating relationships between businesses and consumers, I feel like there should be anti-compete laws to keep some degree of separation between corporations "product" and "financing" arms to avoid customer-harming conflicts of interest. Particularly when that corporation is the manufacturer. There's just too much temptation for them to degrade toward the direction I described above, and in practice not enough market diversity for consumers to fight back in other ways.
____
Edit: Quoted portion of your post so folks who can't see the text of deleted comments have some context.
I believe the point was they are offering the reduced price as-is. What they aren't offering is a higher priced variant where have you have the right to repair.
Right, but they're never going to sell the "you will own everything and we will be pissed" version of the tractor. Because the value to the consumer for being able to repair what they own is less than the control premium that companies are willing to pay in order to lock people into branded repair. Furthermore, providing you the actual repairability often requires re-engineering the product to support it. Like, I don't think most people would pay just to have, say, Apple get rid of the iPhone's Face ID lock and nothing else. They want an actually repairable phone.
A similar problem happens with advertising. Theoretically I should be able to pay for first-party ad block from every site and social platform I visit. In practice the value that a larger ad inventory commands is always greater than the small fractions of people who would pay X/mo for an ad-free version of that service, minus however much it costs to maintain the ad-free option. Why serve a niche that cuts into your bottom line?
The few exceptions to the above that I can think of largely prove the rule:
* Framework and Fairphone are able to market repairable phones and laptops. In this case, they aren't actually charging a repairability premium over an existing product, they're just selling into higher-end markets. Repairability is built into both the product and the pricing in ways that aren't separable - you wouldn't be able to sell a cheaper Framework that isn't repairable.
* YouTube sells ad-free access, but this is mainly because online video ad revenue has cratered badly. Advertising is a moat that keeps YouTube out of profitability, not in it.
* Twitter tries to sell ad-free, except it's "less ads", and mostly exists because Elon desperately needs to justify how much money he spent on buying the crack factory he was addicted to.
Whether or not repairability commands a premium or having everything locked down comes with a discount is immaterial. Consumers are not in a position to actually realize said discount or pay said premium. Because it's not a matter of consumer choice. It's a matter of control. We (the MBAs) put shit in the product you were going to buy anyway, and it isn't immediately causing you to run to the hills, so we win.
> Edit: Quoted portion of your post so folks who can't see the text of deleted comments have some context.
I'm confused; I didn't delete anything, were you just assuming I would delete my comment? Also, your comment has this weird vibe; like you are trying to argue with me. However, I wasn't stating an opinion on the issue, merely explaining why propriety hardware and software is used by large machine manufactures.
Your comment shows up in light grey (it didn't when I first replied) and I thought that meant it was deleted.
Not intending to argue, or attack *you*. My beef is with the manufacturers who are doing this, and to some extent the culture of consumer apathy that accepts it (perhaps I exhibited a "lecturing" undercurrent that lent that vibe). I don't dispute your point, I just think it's important it isn't accepted as an excuse or justification for what's been going on.
There are additional videos linked in that video's description for those wanting additional context as to what this bill is all about.