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Why We Must Fight For the Right To Repair Our Electronics (ieee.org)
Kyle Wiens and Gay Gordon-Byrne explain via IEEE Spectrum how people in the United States can preserve their right to repair electronics, and why people must fight for the right in the first place. Here's an excerpt from their report: So how can people in the United States preserve their right to repair electronics? The answer is now apparent: through right-to-repair legislation enacted at the state level. Popular support on this issue has been clear since 2012, when 86 percent of the voters in Massachusetts endorsed a ballot initiative that would "[require] motor vehicle manufacturers to allow vehicle owners and independent repair facilities in Massachusetts to have access to the same vehicle diagnostic and repair information made available to the manufacturers' Massachusetts dealers and authorized repair facilities." Carmakers howled in protest, but after the law passed, they decided not to fight independent repair. Indeed, in January 2014 they entered into a national memorandum of understanding [PDF], voluntarily extending the terms of the Massachusetts law to the entire country. The commercial vehicle industry followed suit in October 2015. Now we need right-to-repair legislation for other kinds of equipment, too, particularly electronic equipment, which is the focus of "digital right to repair" initiatives in many states.
Similar to the Massachusetts legislation for automobiles, these digital-right-to-repair proposals would require manufacturers to provide access to service documentation, tools, firmware, and diagnostic programs. They also would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair facilities at reasonable prices. The bills introduced this year in a dozen states have some variations. The ones in Kansas and Wyoming, for example, are limited to farm equipment. The one most likely to be adopted soon is in Massachusetts, which seeks to outlaw the monopoly on repair parts and information within the state. If it passes, electronics manufacturers will probably change their practices nationwide. Consumers would then have more choices when something breaks. The next time your smartphone screen cracks, your microwave oven gets busted, or your TV dies, you may be able to get it fixed quickly, affordably, and fairly. And you, not the manufacturer, would decide where your equipment is repaired: at home, with the manufacturer, or at a local repair shop that you trust.
Similar to the Massachusetts legislation for automobiles, these digital-right-to-repair proposals would require manufacturers to provide access to service documentation, tools, firmware, and diagnostic programs. They also would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair facilities at reasonable prices. The bills introduced this year in a dozen states have some variations. The ones in Kansas and Wyoming, for example, are limited to farm equipment. The one most likely to be adopted soon is in Massachusetts, which seeks to outlaw the monopoly on repair parts and information within the state. If it passes, electronics manufacturers will probably change their practices nationwide. Consumers would then have more choices when something breaks. The next time your smartphone screen cracks, your microwave oven gets busted, or your TV dies, you may be able to get it fixed quickly, affordably, and fairly. And you, not the manufacturer, would decide where your equipment is repaired: at home, with the manufacturer, or at a local repair shop that you trust.
I bought it. Itâ(TM)s mine thatâ(TM)s the end of it. We shouldnâ(TM)t need new protections. How about 500 years of common law on property? Isnâ(TM)t that enough?
If more people have access to the right tools and parts, more people can offer the service of repairing, thus increasing competition, enabling people with the skills and knowledge to do so to open a business and earn a living.
Not allowing it would create monopolies that can dictate which and how many places offer the service, much like in a planned economy. That reeks of Communism!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have a 9 year old LCD TV that has failing capacitors in the power supply. It takes multiple tries to power on, where it turns itself off and on and shows weird things on the screen. I know exactly what the problem is and I spent a dollar or two and got the caps I need, although I don't want to actually do the work until after the World Series is over just in case I do something stupid and break it.
But I'm sure Samsung would much rather have me go out and spend $500 on a brand new 'smart' TV that I don't want.
>> Why We Must Fight For the Right To Repair Our Electronics
In my day, we fought, for the right, to Parrrrrrrrt A!
Once autonomous vehicles become the norm, liability and legislation will work to prohibit owning the vehicle, due to the fear that consumers won't maintain the vehicles properly (software or hardware), putting others at high risk on the road. Car ownership will become obsolete.
Electronics ownership is already becoming obsolete due to the general risk and liability of insecurity. Manufacturers won't offer more than 2-3 years to cover the hardware, and security updates usually stop by then as well. We already essentially lease smartphones these days, placating to some form of forced upgrade every other year due to anything from a lack of support to irreplaceable failing batteries that inevitably mandate replacement. Desktops were something you could actually turn a proverbial wrench on, but no one buys desktops anymore. Repairing portable electronics? Are you kidding me? Wafer-thin designs and sealed chassis aren't easy for anyone to try and work on these days. Often times, it's not even worth the effort.
SaaS models are consuming our digital lives. We don't own DVDs or CDs anymore; we perpetually rent the ability to stream content. Same goes for many larger software suites that you now pay a monthly fee to simply maintain a usage license.
It's not the Right to Repair we need to be fighting for. It's fighting to preserve the Right to Ownership and get the fuck away from everything in your life being consumed at the "bargain" rate of only $9.99 per month.
It has been illustrated countless times through the years given unchecked power companies behave in ways contrary to any form of common good. A free market can not exist without regulations.
When I heard about farmers whose tractors (John Deere) stopped working because they repaired it with a non-OEM part and the tractors telematics shut down because it didn't recognize the new part (non-electronic part BTW). I knew a shit-storm was coming. Then when I saw how John Deere responded to the outcry I knew it would be a protracted battle to get companies to do the right thing.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
...that we even need a law to pass for something like this, but here we are.
People might not realize this, but repair shops will be there, doesn't matter if these laws pass or not. They have been playing very important roles for sometime now, like finding out design flaws, being a major part in class action lawsuits for problems that manufacturers fails to admit, and pointing out major issues that big brands keep trying to hide from consumers.
Then, of course - as pointed out in the article - serving as competition to the overly inflated offerings of extended repair and other forms of ripping clients off from manufacturers.
I fixed a couple of my own smartphones, a washer/dryer machine and a vacuum cleaner myself... official options, when they were even available, were all priced too high to justify the fix (being a better option to just buy a new one) for most of those. Then there are grievances of authorized/official repair places taking ridiculous ammounts of time to fix some of them. You end up a victim of the worst monopoly practices.
I just came to the realization that it was worth investing in tools and time to learn just a little bit of how these electronics work, it ends up saving a whole lot of money and time. It's also great to educate yourself better on how these things actually work.
For the LG washer dryer in particular I'd need to either somehow take it to the shop, probably needing to pay for transport and all the hassle that it means, pay for probably a month worth of dry cleaners if it even got fixed, and then pay for the service which would certainly be priced waaay over what it really cost.
All it took was buying the faulty part myself and install it pretty easily. Fixed in a week, and only because I had to wait for the part to arrive. Total time spent actually fixing it? An hour at most. It'd be far more work just to take the damn thing down 16 floors, let alone all the rest.
It's important for the law to pass though because it forces manufacturers to provide schematic and parts for it to be done. Right now, we have to rely on shady sources and grey market pieces.
And then there's the entire eWaste discussion. One piece of electronic that you fix instead of buying a new one is one less device that will end up in a warehouse somewhere to be shipped to some foreign country with no human rights with people living in the middle of trash and pollutants.
The single argument that I always see thrown around against the right to repair is always about intellectual property and whatnot. If you ever hear it, it's bullshit. Restricting access to schematics and parts are not enough to stop competition from stealing tech if they want to, because it's extremely easy these days to just disassemble and copy the design if anyone wants to. There's no secret sauce in consumer electronics these days anymore. In fact, most manufacturers uses very common parts that are often not even made by the main brand anymore... it needs to be done that way because of mass production.
The deterrent for stealing intellectual property has always been lawsuits for violation. Yes, electronics these days are way more complex than the time in the past when electronic makers even included schematics with the product out of the box, but even if complexity has increased, methods of production are more or less the same. Smartphones in particular uses a whole bunch of components that are not proprietary and freely available in the market, and the parts that are proprietary you won't be able to reproduce with simple schematics anyways.
So definitely agreed. Right to repair is ultimately better in several fronts for consumers in general, and it's also a way to prevent brands and manufacturers to stop exploiting costumers.
In this video Louis Rossman explains some of the ways Apple uses to make their products hard to repair for NO good reason apart from their own profit. He tells of his colleagues (independent repair shops) having their posts deleted when all they were saying is that such and such CAN be in fact repaired. Apple will not repair most damages even if it involves the user losing his/her data, and even if they are perfectly repairable.
Moreover, Rossman explains how Apple uses dirty tricks to terminate the warranty even when the user did nothing unauthorized.
Just watch it and be angry. Be very fucking angry.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Volvo sells its DiCE and VIDA diagnostic suite to anyone who wants to buy it. There are no subscription charges unless you want to download new firmware for the car, in which case you can buy a 3-day subscription for cheap.
The VIDA software is free and the DiCE adapter is a few hundred bucks, and gives you complete manufacturer view of every on-board system in the car. You can modify a surprising number of parameters in the car, perform self-tests, diagnostics, and so on.
I don't know why all manufacturers don't do this.
There's a subtle distinction here that's often lost - I see it muddled together a few places in TFA and also in the comments -- between the right to repair a device and the right to demand (?) redesign of a device in a way that makes repair easier.
The former seems quite reasonable, and the auto manufacturers got it done so that dispels the feasibility complaints, even for technology-stuffed modern cars. But I don't see MA (or anyone else) going so far as to say that car manufacturers should be required ex-ante to change the way cars are designed, built and assembled.
For electronic devices, however, there seem like there are real engineering tradeoffs between repairability and legitimate design goals such as parts cost, assembly cost, weight and size. Replacing all the glue holding a tablet together with screws might improve repairability while adding $0.14 to the cost and a few grams to the weight. A removable battery might be the same cost but add 3mm to the thickness. In some cases, it might be heuristically worth it, but I struggle in vain for any intellectually sound way to make those things commensurable.
And as an engineer, I surely shudder in fear of someone with no domain expertise in a problem that I spent years solving second-guessing my tradeoffs. Especially since they have no accountability to produce a workable design that can be actually shipped on time. At the same time, I recognize that the engineers with domain expertise are hardly neutral deciders of what tradeoffs are legitimate and which design elements serve no purpose other than to impede repairs.
So there I have it -- I don't see a scientific way to judge whether it's worth it and my choices for who to ask is either someone impartial with no idea of the specifics or someone that knows but has no incentive to impartiality.
[ Actually, the latter is kind of a pervasive problem. You can have folks with a ton of experience, or you can have folks that are neutral with no preconceived biases. But you can rarely have the same person with both. ]
This is not about the right to repair our electronics. We already have the right to do whatever we want with stuff we own, including trashing it, burning it, running over it with a car, and - yes if you want to - fixing it or modifying it.
This is about the hypothetical "right" of manufacturers to mess around with and disable stuff they made after they've sold it to you. Because you're not using your equipment the way they want you to. Saying this is about our right to repair implies that manufacturers have this right to meddle with stuff they don't own, when they clearly don't.
Some things would make more sense than others. For example, phones can be quite expensive. Sure, the things are fairly complex, but the VAST majority of potential repairs all come down to simply diagnosed problems. Worn out battery, cracked screen, damaged USB port or headphone jack. You don't need much in the way of tools to diagnose those.
What we really need is a right to repairability (but that would be harder to define and enforce). It shouldn't be a big deal to swap out a cellphone screen.