Ars Technica: California, the home to many of tech's biggest companies and the nation's most populous state, is pushing ahead with a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics and appliances. After unanimous votes in the state Assembly and Senate, the bill passed yesterday is expected to move through a concurrence vote and be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
5 comments:
Right to Repair laws are something I have never heard of, but now that I know about them I completely support the idea. The biggest issue with personal technology is how quickly it changes, and how important it is to keep up with those changes. Having the ability to repair devices yourself avoids two possible, more expensive outcomes: 1) you don’t have to pay a professional to repair it and 2) you don’t have to ditch your old device and buy a completely new (and likely far more expensive) device. I certainly believe and am not surprised that Apple has been a long-time opposer of such bills considering how often they release new products, and how quickly the old products become obsolete. When motorized wheelchairs were mentioned I realized that this law is not only for protection of consumer rights, but can have a large impact on people that depend on technology to maintain quality of life.
The right to repair has become a contentious issue in recent years- put simply, it is the right the consumer has to be able to replace or repair their devices without the needed assistance of the company that produces them. Companies like iFixit, which make tools and provide guides to repairing old devices, see this story as a huge win. I think that the right to repair should extend to 10 years at least, and should include not only needed upgrades, but also performance improvements requiring new parts to be backwards compatible with old phones. If my phone’s battery is failing, I shouldn’t have to replace the whole phone! That's extremely damaging to the environment and my wallet. Companies like ETC in the theater world are doing ok with the right to repair, providing people with backward compatible components, like a LED retrofit for conventional fixtures, which doesn’t require someone to purchase a whole new fixture to simply upgrade their old model. In conclusion, I think this new law is a step in the right direction, but it may be too little too late if we’re going to save both our pocketbooks and the planet.
I’ve lived in California for a long time, but I’ve never heard about this right to repair bill at all, but after reading this article, I feel like this is something really needed and missing in the industry right now. It’s really helpful when only one part of your device is not working, or losing its use, but you don’t want to replace the entire thing and spent that much money. For example, my phone’s battery is not in a good condition anymore, but I haven’t been using it for that long, but since I didn’t get apple care it would take a lot of money, and I’m just not down to do that. Furthermore, it’s really hard to get rid of electronics, and you have to find specific places to get rid or recycle electronics, so replacing a single part is really useful, especially with the bill requiring 7 years of parts, I could have bought my phone 5 years ago, but still can replace a part.
vRight to repair is an issue I personally feel very strongly about. I have been repairing and making things with my dad since I was little, it wasn’t until a few years ago however when trying to fix a phone screen that we realized how much of an issue this was. First of all, getting into the phone would have taken about $20 in parts alone on the cheap end and still would’ve taken a while. After that you actually need to be able to find a third party seller of the part because there’s no way they’d sell their own for any less than the phone itself costs. And after all that and putting it back together. Even if you did everything absolutely perfectly. The phone might just not work anyway because it realized you opened it and the company put in a failsafe to brick the phone if it’s ever opened. It’s really good to see somewhere starting to put right to repair laws in place especially California with all the companies it houses.
This is interesting. The phrase “right to repair laws” is a term I have never heard before, but I feel like it’s a concept I’ve just been aware of without knowing the term. When I was about ten or so, my dad was replacing the hard drive in the family computer and I was “helping” (standing around with a screwdriver), and that was my first exposure to Apple’s goofy little star screw (that I am sure has an official name I cannot remember). With the existence of Apple’s special screw shape, it becomes especially surprising that this legislation received backing from Apple. I also think it’s really interesting how specific this new bill is. I suppose California has a thing for getting incredibly specific with some of these things (looking at you, Prop 65), but mandates that not only manufacturers provide repair parts, tools, manuals, and software for devices sold after July 1, 2021, extending to products costing between $50 and $99.99 for three years and over $100 for seven years, but also municipalities have some enforcement power, is pretty impressively detailed. While admittedly I do not know a ton about the subject, based on what I read in this article, I think it’s beneficial to have these sorts of consumer protection laws. I would also say that I think encouraging (or at least allowing) people to repair their devices may help prevent some unnecessary consumption.
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