@dangillmor If anyone with a @garmin watch is pissed off about #Garmin retroactively revoking owners' #RightToOwn in favour of #enshittification, or if anyone else is in the market for a new smart watch, ask the #UNAWatch company and its personnel what technical and legal means they will use to guarantee they can never follow Google #Fitbit and Garmin into the same anti-consensual ¹ business model.

A technical guarantee is a hardware-based means to flash the firmware which the firmware itself cannot prevent using, paired with complete published open-access documentation of the hardware for independent developers. A legal guarantee means a permanent and irrevocable commitment to a full refund if the company ever engages in coercive tied selling, as by making use of any watch feature dependent on an online service the feature can function without, on a paid or non-#E2EE online service (save only if the owner opts into sharing data, and then making that data available to those with whom the owner elects to share), or an an online service the owner cannot replace, at the owner's sole discretion, with self-hosting or a competing service of their choice.

¹ The standard word "non-consensual" means the person didn't voluntarily say "yes"; I use "anti-consensual" here to mean the person said "no"—or the perpetrator knew beforehand the person would say "no" if given a chance—and the perpetrator did it anyway. It's bad enough not to ask; companies enshittifying already-purchased goods are instead acting in knowing and direct defiance of owners' refusal. The business model Garmin is adopting, following Fitbit, is actively contemptuous of consent ².

² Burying supposed "consent" in a EULA doesn't ethically count: if the owner cannot effectively refuse the change, or if continued full use of the original functionality—or anything else for which consent isn't strictly necessary (in the GDPR sense)—is conditioned on supposed "consent," then it isn't freely given, and so isn't valid consent.

@mlanger Find an engineer who can competently and definitively answer two questions:
1. Does the device provide the owner a means to replace its firmware that the firmware cannot prevent using?
2. Does that means allow installing firmware that is not digitally signed by the manufacturer or an entity it authorizes?

Consider it axiomatic that every #IoT device which doesn’t at least fulfill both above criteria is or will be coercively bound to a subscription service, unless the manufacturer first abandons support for it and thus renders it useless.

@jack_daniel If I had the money and the connections, I’d love to make a business out of stripping out and replacing computerized automotive electronics with open hardware replacements. Realistically, I think home appliances are probably an easier start, given what resources exist in my area, but perhaps elsewhere someone who already does EV conversions can retrofit #RightToOwn electronics replacements as part of the process.

Given the Trump regime will keep driving up prices of every passenger vehicle but the swasticar until the populace compels Congress to take back the tariff power, the retrofit market is likely to grow, as Right to Own and #RightToRepair are intrinsically linked.

@ai6yr @pluralistic
In other news, though, your line that "if you design a system that permits abuse, you should expect abuse" reminds me of a personal maxim I've long considered axiomatic: "All power that can be abused will be abused."

Both relate to the inevitability of predators coming to dominate unaccountable power structures, hence the necessity to design social systems such that accountability increases more than proportionately to power, so the only routes to power are toxic and repulsive to the predator. Both require decent people in power to do all they can to deny themselves and their successors to capacity to do what they themselves are sure they'd never do, because otherwise, someone else will do so even if they don't. The failure to do so is the fall of the US into fascism.

But back to printers: the failure to design the printer with an owner-controlled hardware-based firmware flashing mechanism, itself not controllable by the firmware, guarantees manufacturer-issued malware eventually becoming the new firmware, as it now has.

@waldoj Attn: @frameworkcomputer

Know any investors willing to fund a #RightToRepair and #RightToOwn supporting printer company?

Maybe ask that guy sponsoring some projects that Louis Rossmann sometimes mentions on YouTube.

@Paulatics @pluralistic It's day 3, and we still haven't done anything which harms US oligarchs more than the Canadian or US public, let alone which benefits either at the oligarch's expense. Not a day should go by, so long as the sanctions are in place, that Canada (in coordination with as many of the Commonwealth and EU and other major trade partners are willing, or on our own if necessary) fails to enact another policy taking billions in recurring revenue away from Elon Musk and his ilk.

Tomorrow if not today, scrap DRM protection (either altogether, or for anti-competitive uses abusing copyright law for things which aren't really about copyright). The next day, enact comprehensive #rightToRepair and #rightToOwn laws. The next day, fund jail-breaking projects or open-source competitors to major US corporations' web applications and other software: particularly, sponsor Canadian, Commonwealth, EU, or other willing partner countries' citizens (and non-American residents') labour on those projects. The next day, fund whichever of the preceding to we didn't fund the previous day. The next day, lay out a short-term plan for beginning to adopt non-US tech projects in place of US-made products and services. Each of the following days, support the African countries and many developing nations in the UN Tax Convention, and enact one of the Tax Justice Network's policies, in cooperation with partner countries, so taxes evaded by US oligarchs and their corporations can be calculated and taxed elsewhere.

Withing a week, announce development and training partnerships with Japanese or South Korean or EU or Commonwealth allies for a new reusable rocket system, to compete with SpaceX and Boeing. Within another week, announce development and training partnerships for a new fifth-generation fighter to compete with the F-22 and F-35.

Do not let another day go by, while the sanctions are in effect, that Elon Musk and all Trump's other oligarchs do not have at least the first and second derivatives of their net worth decline as a consequence.

To that end, Justin and Pierre must park their personal differences, self-interest, and political tribalism, and put the Canada first: Canada before Justin, Canada before Pierre, Canada before any party. Pierre must agree to forestall an election, so long as Parliament devotes all its time to counteracting the US trade war, and Justin must agree to recall Parliament, so they can all stop wasting Canadians' time and money and letting US oligarchs out-manoeuvre our government.

(More on the first of these, from @cbcnews here and elsewhere: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-14-day-6/clip/16123612-a-radical-plan-fight-u.s.-tariffs-build-export)

Do. The. People's. Work.

@NF6X Let's all contribute to the #cat: the Consumer Action Taskforce.
#rightToRepair #rightToOwn
https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Mission_statement