Right-to-Repair Laws Gain Political Momentum Across America (cnbc.com) 26
"California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington have all passed comprehensive right-to-repair regulations," reports CNBC, "covering everything from consumer electronics and farm equipment to wheelchairs and automobiles."
And the consumer movement "continues to gain political momentum" across America... As of this year, advocates are tracking 57 right-to-repair bills across 22 states. In Maine, the state senate just advanced a bill that would bring the right to repair to electronics in the state. Texas's new right-to-repair law kicks in on Sept. 1 and covers phones, laptops, and tablets, but excludes medical and farm equipment, and game consoles.... [U.S.] Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are unlikely political bedfellows but have joined together to sponsor the REPAIR Act... The REPAIR Act would require automakers to give vehicle owners, independent repair shops, and aftermarket manufacturers secure access to vehicle repair and maintenance data, preventing manufacturers from funneling consumers into their own exclusive and more expensive dealership repair networks... Hawley criticized big corporations in his arguments in favor of right-to-repair legislation.
"Big corporations have a history of gatekeeping basic information that belongs to car owners, effectively forcing consumers to pay a fixed price whenever their car is in the shop," Hawley told CNBC. "The bipartisan REPAIR Act would end corporations' control over diagnostics and service information and give consumers the right to repair their own equipment at a price most feasible for them." The largest small business lobby in the U.S., the NFIB, says 89% of its members support right-to-repair legislation, making it a top legislative priority for 2026.
And the consumer movement "continues to gain political momentum" across America... As of this year, advocates are tracking 57 right-to-repair bills across 22 states. In Maine, the state senate just advanced a bill that would bring the right to repair to electronics in the state. Texas's new right-to-repair law kicks in on Sept. 1 and covers phones, laptops, and tablets, but excludes medical and farm equipment, and game consoles.... [U.S.] Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are unlikely political bedfellows but have joined together to sponsor the REPAIR Act... The REPAIR Act would require automakers to give vehicle owners, independent repair shops, and aftermarket manufacturers secure access to vehicle repair and maintenance data, preventing manufacturers from funneling consumers into their own exclusive and more expensive dealership repair networks... Hawley criticized big corporations in his arguments in favor of right-to-repair legislation.
"Big corporations have a history of gatekeeping basic information that belongs to car owners, effectively forcing consumers to pay a fixed price whenever their car is in the shop," Hawley told CNBC. "The bipartisan REPAIR Act would end corporations' control over diagnostics and service information and give consumers the right to repair their own equipment at a price most feasible for them." The largest small business lobby in the U.S., the NFIB, says 89% of its members support right-to-repair legislation, making it a top legislative priority for 2026.
Beware also "proponents" co-opting shifting tides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Beware also "proponents" co-opting shifting tid (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not the only motivation, but the various interests promoting limits on 3D printing all have similar goals.
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But they might wreck it..... (Score:2)
Re:But they might wreck it..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: But they might wreck it..... (Score:2, Troll)
And we even have the Magnuson Moss act which protected our right to warranty services even after third party repairs, including our own.
lol (Score:2)
Mod this down too, troll. I got karma to burn.
If you bought, you should be able to repair it (Score:2)
Different states (Score:3)
Re:Different states (Score:4, Interesting)
In theory I am not opposed to this, but 50 states stitching their own cobweb of laws together on this is going to be impossible to navigate. Only the lawyers will win.
This should be part of the UCC.
You're right, in that only the lawyers win now. However, this may be the only viable path to getting such in place federally.
I happen to disagree strongly with the Texas version, which excludes medical equipment, farm, and game consoles. It's blatantly obvious what is keeping those locked down, and it's not safety (game console excluded, but you can mod your car at home?). And what happens when my implanted medical device suddenly loses all support due to tariff reactions or a foreign company going belly up etc. etc..? Codifying that now will give it a foothold that will be hard to break.
HOWEVER, since that's a state law, other states will hopefully have different requirements. If others include farm equipment in right to repair (which, IMO, is one of the biggest and most obvious targets for such action), it would be increasingly difficult for John Deere to maintain their lockdown in neighboring states. That helps push the industry towards more universal rules that may not be as heavily laden with exceptions.
A cobweb of laws may encourage companies to find the common denominator and meet that level in all states. For example, some states have strict laws about how quickly employees must be paid after their payroll cycle ends. This forces large companies to meet those deadlines for employees in those states. In doing so, the company processes all align to get paychecks out the door faster. Another example - employee lunch break rules. Many states require that employees be offered 30min unpaid lunch, and if an employee takes less than that (let's say they only take 20min), then the employer must pay for that time (because that's just a break, not a lunch). That encourages company policies that benefit those across all states, because it's too much damned worked to do them state-by-state, let alone the risk of edge cases where an employee lives in one state and works in another state just across the state line, or those working from home in other states. Cobwebs can be good :-)
Kills start ups and adds to waste (Score:3)
Look around small towns in rust belt USA. 100 years ago they used to be filled with small companies that could make a wide variety of fairly complicated things. They could make them and ship and sell them all over the world. If you look at the founders of these companies, the founders often were not that old.
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... I have no idea when a part will become obsolete. When it does, I rework my design to use a newer part. Adding a right to repair for many things will require me to make my device more robust and to store replacement parts. Since I don't know what parts might be needed I'm likely going to store way to many parts. ...
I doubt I'm entirely right about this, but...
While there many versions of these bills, AFAICT they're not saying the parent company must keep enough spare parts around for N years of service; That's just how companies are getting around the rules. John Deere settled a large right-to-repair case by agreeing to provide digital tools, software, and diagnostic access for 10 years. But if they hadn't been proactively locking users out of doing such work, it wouldn't have been an issue. There are no such repair
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Only badly written right to repair. A good right to repair law should block you from contracting a special variant only sold to you, or require you to stockpile spares, but shouldn't require you to stockpile a commodity part. Of course, small businesses are unlikely to be ordering custom chips with pins swapped around compared to the commodity part like Apple does. More likely a small business' design will not feature anything not available from DigiKey or Mouser.
If you decide you no longer wish to support
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Such as Samsung gluing the battery to the display so the cost of replacing the battery is not economically viable, since now you pay for both the battery and the screen when the screen was already working, and you just needed the battery to be replaced.
Digital locks should also not be allowed since they're only the
Apple had some of the worst arguments (Score:2)
Their "but but security" arguments were atrociously insulting to intelligence. The vast majority of even government and corporate employees will never face an issue where there is a justification for "protecting them" from someone disassembling an iPhone and sneaking compromised components into the device. Those that have to worry about that have entire corporate and government security departments focused on actively providing countermeasures to ensure the employee doesn't create an opening into the infras
The counter arguments here are really weak (Score:2)
As Cory Doctorow's been writing and fighting for this for 20 years - he's clearly explained that IT'S A RACKET that they stuffed into the DCMA. The laws are coming, until that part of the DCMA is repealed. I mean, you *bought* and *own* something, but you can't repair it because if violates anti-circumvention in the copyright laws? Tell me again who owns it?
And I note that Texas exempted farm implements, so farmers *still* would not have the right to fix their own tractors.
Sort of (Score:2)
Case in point - Colorado. They passed one of the better right to repair laws not terribly long ago. Just recently Cisco and IBM dumped $600k into lobbying in that state, and all of a sudden that law now has an exemption carved out for "critical infrastructure." Which sounds nice on the surface, but it allows the manufacturer to define which devices are critical infrastructure. They can point to any
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Indeed, the most recent right to repair law in California is close to useless.
Last year I purchased a premium dual wall oven from LG. A very small plastic cover on the door hinge was damaged. I asked LG support to ship me a replacement part, which they promised to send but never did. After a lot of back and forth they offered to send a technician but that I would pay for the tech and the part unless I could prove they were at fault. I only wanted a plastic piece the size of a lego, which they do not provide
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The crazy thing about that exemption is that critical infrastructure has the highest need to be independantly repairable. You need it back up and running yesterday, there's no time to play salesman games where they try to get you to buy a forklift upgrade instead of repair.
The lobbying is IBM and Cisco declaring openly that they intend to profit from holding critical infrastructure hostage.
Right to Repair! (Score:2)
Buy = right to do what you want with it. (Score:3)
If I buy something, that means I can do what I want with it, not just what the people that sold it want me to do with it.
That includes ripping it apart and that includes putting it back together - with or without the same parts.