Fixes: The ‘right to repair’ your phone or your car
The Federal Trade Commission wants to make it easier to repair your devices, said Lauren Goode in Wired.com. The agency voted unanimously last week to aggressively enforce consumers’ “right to repair,” taking a strong position in what has become a “remarkably bipartisan push.” Proponents of the movement argue that “consumers should have access to the tools, documentation, and software required to fix the products they own,” whether an Apple iPhone, a Tesla car, or a John Deere tractor. Manufacturers counter that letting users tinker with their products “makes them less secure and could expose consumers to safety risks.” The FTC brushed aside those arguments, vowing to “investigate repair restrictions as potential violations of antitrust laws” and enforce a 1975 law that bars companies from voiding a warranty if their product is fixed or altered.
We’re a “country that lionizes self-reliance,” said Adam Minter in Bloomberg.com. It’s antithetical to our identity having big businesses dictate that only “dealerships, with specialized software, can diagnose problems.” Why should farmers have their tractors immobilized until a John Deere dealer “clears an error code” in the software? Basic repairs such as “replacing a shattered screen or a depleted battery” now require specialized tools only available at authorized shops that charge a fortune, said
Brian Chen in The New York Times. It’s no wonder that when products fail, “most people are inclined to buy new rather than fix their old ones.”
The “right to repair” still needs to be more clearly defined, said Mike Wuerthele in AppleInsider.com. Items like “thermal sensors, screens, case parts, buttons, keyboards, and batteries” should be available to third-party shops. But “data-stealing threats are more common than ever,” and asking corporations to allow a “full door-opening” on their tech is risky. Some of the groups pushing to expand the right to repair “want everything blown wide open, with schematics, repair parts, and more available to anybody who asks.”
Getting blueprints and opening delicate electronic circuitry isn’t “what people are fighting for” here, said Rob Stumpf in The Drive.com. The reality is that manufacturers are demanding exorbitant amounts for ordinary mechanical repairs. Take the story of the Tesla Model 3 owner who “struck some road debris,” causing a coolant leak. Tesla told him he’d need to pay $16,000 to replace the car’s battery pack. Another garage fixed the problem for $700. But the owner isn’t out of the woods; Tesla could still “permanently disable his access to its Supercharger network” if it discovers any unsupported repairs.