Announcement: Right to Repair Legislation has arrived

The Right to Repair movement has been around for quite awhile now, and is gaining a whole lot of traction. For years, farm equipment manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, and even many technology companies have been working against their customers by way of ensuring there aren't any cost effective or realistic ways for consumers to fix the technology they buy. Often we must look to after-market manufacturers for parts we should be able to buy from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) because the parts we need are either in short supply, or cost much more than the alternatives. Whether by soldering parts onto motherboards in laptops, sealing phones shut with no way to replace batteries/memory, or locking down (read close-sourcing) software on vehicles and farm equipment to ensure that if any issues arise, customers are left with no reasonable ways to fix their technology and equipment that they purchased with their hard earned money. That's right - the things we buy, the things we own are only repairable by authorized shops or the companies that make them at an often insane cost to us. So do we really own these things. We bought them, we use them for leisure or to earn a living every day, but do we really own them? Once the item breaks, it often costs as much (or nearly as much) to repair as buying a new device, so people do the easy thing and throw away completely usable, valuable technology (precious metals included) and opt for the new shiny thing. This contributes to throw away culture, heaps of e-waste, and is terrible for our planet.

Companies like System76 (as mentioned in our first Framework post) have been fighting for the right to repair for quite a while now, and with companies like Framework beginning to build out repairable technology - this bill comes in at a great time.

On June 17th, the "Fair Repair Act" was introduced which aims to "...require OEMs to make diagnostic and repair information ,parts, and tools available to third-party repairers and owners in a timely manner and on fair and reasonable terms." The idea is that the technology and equipment we buy, we should be able to repair - and to do so we need to have a reasonable expectation of affordability and accessibility of hardware/software. This bill will also allow the FTC to penalize anyone who violates these provisions by way of payment of damages, reformation of contracts, and refund of money or

What we can take away from this, if it passes, is that big companies will no longer be dictating how we use the things we own or whether we can reasonably expect to fix our own property. For consumers, this is a double-win. We will have the means to fix our own devices, and for those who don't want to learn how - prices for third-party shops will likely be reduced because OEM parts costs should be reduced. It's also a win for small repair businesses because they won't have to spend an arm and a leg on OEM parts or utilize after-market (and possibly poorly made or less quality) parts.

Update 8/2/2021: The FTC has voted unanimously to enforce the Right to Repair and federal antitrust laws.