We wouldn’t even be having a discussion like this in a functioning democracy. But instead we’re discussing whether the big corporate bribery machine will get in the way of completely reasonable legislation.
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You're not going to convince Congress critters to do something that can legitimately be argued to hurt businesses. So you tweak things to create a minmax situation where the businesses can not be said to be injured and we still gain access to abandoned hardware and are able to repurpose it.
The key is to go in with carefully charged words. Abandoned hardware is a good one. So is recycling electronics to extend their usefulness. How can companies argue they're being hurt by competition from abandoned hardware that is just e-waste unless it is allowed to be recycled?
By pointing out that the products they are currently selling could be replaced by the reanimated spirits of the products they sold last year. Labor performed without a transfer of money to go along with it is not counted in the GDP or taxed, in modern mercantilism it is better for $100 to circulate in a day to produce a little value than for $1 to circulate in a week to produce much more value.
They can say that, but it makes them look like assholes. So it's not effective for them to do that.
Unfortunately, there a lot of assholes that only act like assholes behind closed doors with other assholes that tolerate them being assholes because they spend money out the asshole.
/s
But actually my point is that public PR team can't say that but Tim Cook giving Ted Cruz a quiet phone call can totally say that (off the record), probably followed up with "this would keep us from affording that new Texas factory/office/thing we were about to build with this money we make"
An example of this would be marijuana legislation and the idea that marijuana is a "gateway drug." This is a somewhat sensible view that a political party can latch onto and push without losing too much popular support.
I have to wonder if "new firmware on old devices" has a public-facing view that won't crater a politician's popularity. I'm sure there has to be one, but I don't know what it would be.
The lack of any large important group that cares about this enough to try and smear a politician against it is enough. No one outside of nerds cares because no one knows to care. Compare it to abortion or guns, lots of regular people care or could be corralled into caring.
If a politician is quizzed about their stance on end of life firmware, they can just say "I want to not end the life... of babies! The other guys want to abort your children" and then the whole topic is lost and they deflected successfully.
If the manufacturer is selling at a loss, with the intention of making that money back through software, and that subsidy is removed, the majority of customers will see this as a loss.
The people who bought and got value from systems that otherwise wouldn't have been developed?
It's hard to rely on the argument that 'the market decides the price of goods' if you would like to restrict what companies are allowed to offer for purchase.