The Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, or CIPPIC, is described as “Canada‘s first and only public interest technology law clinic” and is operated out of University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law

Peter Nowak is also covering this at his substack.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 days ago

    warranties on those devices can be invalidated due to no longer being within the provider’s control.

    I don’t know if it’s different in the rest of the world. And I don’t know if it’s changed in the 7 years since I last worked in the industry, but in Canada, you cannot invalidate a hardware warranty based on the software that’s installed. If your phone’s speaker dies, it’s a hardware issue and the warranty is impelled to cover it.

    • rekabis@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 days ago

      in Canada, you cannot invalidate a hardware warranty based on the software that’s installed.

      Software can most certainly drive hardware beyond its specs, resulting in physical damage.

      Just try and tune a brand-new vehicle with third-party software, and then try to get warranty work done on a related part that broke. The manufacturer can and will successfully deny that warranty based on how that tune had the capability to drive the part beyond spec, thereby directly causing the failure… my BiL works at a dealership and has seen it happen dozens of times. Even skipping software updates can run the risk of voiding your vehicle’s warranty these days, when said updates are meant to correct software that doesn’t control the hardware correctly.

      Phones are no different. If your custom OS has the ability to drive a speaker to volumes that are beyond its spec, that invalidates the warranty even if you never drove the volume that high. Manufacturers don’t have to prove that you actually did (and how can they, when it’s no longer their software that’s in control?), only that the custom software made it possible to do so. It’s up to you to then prove that you never did, and good luck with that.