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How is pirating software and repairing a device you have purchased comparable?


evidently under this theory the important thing is what the company wants.

on edit: /not supporting viewpoint, just identifying it.


Because, legally, they are pretty similar - both are a breach of EULA, both are not an expected use. I would wager that in the not too distant future, legislation and social attitudes will view repairing damaged electronics as theft. Right to repair will ironically likely be the mechanism through which this happens - mfgs are using it to create closed ecosystems with no participants - see apples programme for independent repair shops getting “genuine” parts - it’s so onerous that unless something has changed, recently, they have literally not one taker, meaning every indy repair shop is now theoretically breaking the law. They just have to tighten the noose a little more, and it’s job done.


First, piracy is not a breach of EULA, it's copyright infringement, which are entirely different beasts. Second, breaching the EULA of a hardware product might be breaking the law in the US, but in the EU, hardware products cannot be bound by contracts. You buy a good, not a service, so no EULA can apply. I think even in the US, it depends on the state you're in...

So, no, legally, they have almost nothing in common.


It's not a breach of EULA if you never agreed to the EULA.


Implied acceptance is sufficient for prosecution - there’s tort on this - and many EULAs define using the product as implicit acceptance of the terms.


If you pirated it, you were never offered the EULA. There's no implied acceptance there. Otherwise you'd have a license and they'd be violating it to break the program!




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