While I philosophically agree, I struggle to reconcile it with some other practicalities. I (mostly) design and build radio systems, and as the manufacturer it is our job to ensure that it is a well behaved radio system - transmits in the frequency bands it's meant to, at the power it's meant to, without leaking and interfering with other things. For a consumer product, where much of the radio implementation is in some form of software, how do I ensure that the system continues to meet the rules?
You could argue that any changes to the software are then the fault of the user, which is a reasonable point of view. But what if someone comes up with a mod that makes your wifi better by breaking transmit power rules (at the expense of others). Lots of people might use it, and then there are resulting widespread interference problems. Difficult to identify culprits, possibly too many to prosecute etc.
But what if someone comes up with a mod that makes your wifi better by breaking transmit power rules (at the expense of others). Lots of people might use it, and then there are resulting widespread interference problems.
This already exists in multiple forms. It's incredibly easy to import adapters and antennas that give you an order of magnitude more power than you're legally allowed to use. I used one of those setups in high school to run uTorrent over the AP of the McDonald's half a mile away.
Regular folks don't care enough to break the rules.
It wasn't a big problem in the days before manufacturers had the technical capability to prevent tinkering so why would you expect it to be a big problem now?
Because much more is in software than it used to be.
In the past, most of the key aspects of the radio were pretty fixed in the hardware. Whereas now, more and more of the radio is in software (and/or FPGA), or at least configurable from software. Tinkering in that case requires a "per person" level of skill. Whereas tinkering with software requires one person to be able to tinker, and then lots of people can use the result.
You basically already have a Constitution-esque "right to root", as changing the software on hardware you own is not illegal. What we're actually dealing with is technical measures that can effectively prevent us from doing so. There are a few legal hooks that augment the natural landscape (DMCA, contract terms, etc), but remove those and the problem would remain.
So unfortunately, what we're really looking for is some positive government regulations that would make companies have to publish some of their documentation and source code. That's much harder to create and draft, although for a simple first stab I would look at requiring that source code be available to make a work eligible for copyright protection.
I acknowledged the DMCA. The DMCA and other legal restrictions are indeed problems. Another one is likely emissions requirements, which at the very least discourage tractor owners from replacing the computers wholesale.
But even if these legal restrictions were to vanish tomorrow, we'd still be stuck with a similar landscape - most manufacturer control comes from technical restrictions combined with a high rate of churn so even if someone invests the time to figure something out, it quickly becomes yesterday's model. Fundamentally, understanding is more difficult than creation.
The calculus could be different on tractors, which are meant to last a real long time. Except the topic here too is focused on getting companies to positively supply things to help, rather than removing laws that hinder (FTA: "The agreement creates a mechanism to address farmers’ concerns and give them access to resources needed to repair their own equipment, such as diagnostic and repair codes, manuals and product guides.")
So my ultimate point is that you need to move past thinking that a Constitutional "right to repair" law would address these problems. Such a thing would be as ineffectual as the Constitutional "freedom of speech" has been in addressing the social media oligopoly.
Only if the DRM protects a copyrighted work, and even then only if the "protection" goes beyond protecting the software from being executed/used. (Chamberlain v. Skylink)
The DMCA doesn't really care about what you do after. The "DRM" has to directly protect a copyrighted work. By your logic, a CFAA violation is also a DMCA violation.
