alt Hacker NewsI understand having a locked-down version of mass-produced tech that is for the general consumer. However, I also firmly believe that anyone who wants to should be able to bypass that. Make it void the warranty, don't allow customer support, whatever you want. But make it a free option to have complete control. If I buy a piece of hardware, I should own it.
(I say this as I am currently charging a cheap doorbell camera I bought, so that I can start dumping data from it and reverse engineer its protocol, solely so that I can lock it down to my local network...We needed something at the time, or I would have bought something more expensive that had an open protocol...)
> Make it void the warranty, don't allow customer support, whatever you want.
That would be a regression in terms of consumer rights, in my opinion. I don’t see why the EU shouldn’t legislate such that the right to control owned hardware becomes fundamental.