<body><div>You hear these stories every so often. And you wonder to yourself, “Why make it so hard to fix something?”Follow me.Whenever I have a problem with one of my cameras – I might need my Nikon Df sensor cleaned, or one of the parts may need a refurbishing – I’m supposed to ship it to Nikon’s official repair shop, where it could sit on a shelf for weeks months, and I’d pay a premium price for some certified Nikon tech to work on it. OR… I could take it to my camera guy Alan at CameraWorks in Waterford, wait a week, pay him a fair price, and he’d clean the sensor and fine-tune the machine to proper specs.Now replace the words “Nikon” and “camera” with “John Deere” and “tractor”, or “McDonald’s” and “McFlurry machine,” or “Apple” and “iPhone”, and you’ll understand where I’m going. These products are constructed with several digital locks and fail-safes to prevent anyone short of a certified repair person to pay a license to John Deere / Apple / McDonald’s and work on your broken product. Yeah, you can see where I’m going on this.Imagine that you’re plowing the back 40, trying to get those last acres of product from harvest to the processing plant, and something on your tractor won’t work. And you now have to wait for the certified John Deere tractor repairman to show up at your farm, you pay him a fortune, and he cracks through the John Deere-installed digital locks just to even diagnose your tractor’s problem. And you’re paying premium prices for it.And you think to yourself, “why can’t I fix this? Why can’t I fix my own tractor / iPhone / McFlurry machine? Why do I have to wait for a specific repairman to fix it for me?”Well … guess what. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually prohibits you and me from bypassing those digital locks to repair these items. But starting October 28th, the DMCA has allowed an exemption for certain food producing machines – including soft-serve ice cream machines. .There’s also plans in the works to apply these exemptions to bypass the digital locks and barriers on John Deere tractors, as well as similar plans to provide iPhone users with more options than hiring the scummy guy in the beaten-down bungalow to take apart your phone and hope he can put it back together properly. The whole situation is called “Right to Repair,” and more information on that, especially for John Deere tractors, is listed here.Think about what this can offer. You could have a whole new business tailored around digital and technological repair. You don’t have to wait for the specific McDonald’s rep to visit your store and diagnose your McFlurry machine’s problems. You could hire a third party to get your machine up and running … and get those McFlurry treats out the door and money in your pocket.Yeah, I want to see more of this. I want more options for the consumer.And trust me on this – I don’t know how to take apart my cameras, and I’m glad I have someone like Alan at CameraWorks who does know how. And if Alan can do that service for my cameras, I know there’s some savvy tech wizards out there who can do the same for a McFlurry machine.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Let’s crack open that McFlurry machine and make it work…

You hear these stories every so often. And you wonder to yourself, “Why make it so hard to fix something?”. Whenever I have a problem with one of my cameras – I might need my Nikon Df sensor cleaned, or one of the parts may need a refurbishing – I’m supposed to ship it to Nikon’s official repair shop, where it could sit on a shelf for weeks months, and I’d pay a premium price for some certified Nikon tech to work on it. OR… I could take it to my camera guy Alan at CameraWorks in Waterford, wait a week, pay him a fair price, and he’d clean the sensor and fine-tune the machine to proper specs.