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A 17-Year-Old Has Become Michigan's Leading Right To Repair Advocate (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Surya Raghavendran of Ann Arbor, Michigan isn't your average 17-year-old. Not only does the high school senior run a small business repairing iPhones when he's not in class, but he's raising awareness about people's right to fix their own devices without paying companies like Apple exorbitant fees. "People should be able to choose where they want to get their devices repaired," Raghavendran told me over the phone. "Right to repair will decrease the amount of e-waste and people will retain their devices much longer with suitable repair networks." Raghavendran is doing more than just talking about right to repair, he's become one of the leading advocates for a right to repair law in the state by pushing his lawmakers to introduce legislation that would protect a consumer's right to repair.
Raghavendran started researching the laws around repairing electronics, and he joined up with Environment Michigan -- an environmental activist group -- and started going to Lansing, the state capitol, to ask politicians what they were doing to protect people's right to repair their own devices. Raghavendran sent an email to state senator Rebekah Warren who called him in for a meeting and told him to start a petition. Since July, he's been asking for stories from the public about why the right to repair is important. The right to repair fight is happening all across the country at the local level and Raghavendran's petition has drawn support from people like like Nathan Proctor, the Director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at US PIRG. Repair.org, a group pushing for right to repair laws all over the country, has draft legislation it wants to get in front of Michigan's state legislature. Proctor has been working with Raghavendran, Environment Michigan, and Michigan legislators to draft right to repair legislation. Proctor wants to pass a right to repair bill that is similar to the one passed in Massachusetts that forced automotive companies to share diagnostic information with third party repair shops. The law passed in 2012 "set a precedent and the industry rolled out the changes nationally," reports Motherboard.
Raghavendran started researching the laws around repairing electronics, and he joined up with Environment Michigan -- an environmental activist group -- and started going to Lansing, the state capitol, to ask politicians what they were doing to protect people's right to repair their own devices. Raghavendran sent an email to state senator Rebekah Warren who called him in for a meeting and told him to start a petition. Since July, he's been asking for stories from the public about why the right to repair is important. The right to repair fight is happening all across the country at the local level and Raghavendran's petition has drawn support from people like like Nathan Proctor, the Director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at US PIRG. Repair.org, a group pushing for right to repair laws all over the country, has draft legislation it wants to get in front of Michigan's state legislature. Proctor has been working with Raghavendran, Environment Michigan, and Michigan legislators to draft right to repair legislation. Proctor wants to pass a right to repair bill that is similar to the one passed in Massachusetts that forced automotive companies to share diagnostic information with third party repair shops. The law passed in 2012 "set a precedent and the industry rolled out the changes nationally," reports Motherboard.
This is a great story and that young man is going to do great things. At 17 sounds like he has his act together and is handling business. Thank you for sharing this.
Yeah, there will always be things that are not repairable. And sure, densely integrated electronics in maximally portable devices are a good candidate. I don't really care if a cellphone is like 3-4 parts... screen, PCB, battery, case. Or that if my earbug headphones break that they have no serviceable parts at all. I can deal with that.
But its a bigger problem than just cellphones; stuff like farm tractors, major appliances, hvac stuff, industrial robots/machinery... where the manufacturers are holding you hostage.
There are market forces and physical realities about cellphones that make repairing them legitimately impractical. The same is not true for this other stuff.
There is a monster difference between iPhones and situations like John Deere tractors (their owners real victims in the right to repair wars)
iPhones are only hard to repair by virtue of the fact that to get them so small and meet their design goals, yeah, they're hard to repair, and the reason 3rd party components are cheaper is because yeah, they are cheaper, meaning not made to the same specifications and backwards engineered, so they may fail down the road because of incompatibility with software upgrades.
But all that being said, Apple doesn't actually stop you from repairing your own phone and all this guy is trying to do is force Apple to make his job easier. I.e., he may be a small business but ultimately this is just another case of one business complaining about the doings of another business.
John Deere tractors on the other hand are not "hard to repair", they are ILLEGAL to repair because John Deere has used insane licensing to make them so. That's where real right to repair laws need to come into force.