from the fix-your-own-shit dept
While U.S. consumer protection is generally an historic hot mess right now, the “right to repair” movement — making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you own — continues to make steady inroads thanks to widespread, bipartisan annoyance at giant companies trying to monopolize repair in creative and obnoxious ways.
Washington State just became the eighth state to pass a new law theoretically making it easier and cheaper to repair the technology you own. Now, barring a veto from Governor Abbott, Texas is poised to be the ninth state to do so after the State’s new right to repair law (HB2963) passed a vote in a the Texas state Senate last week 31-0. That comes after the House passed the legislation 126-0.
Again, this movement continues to make inroads because anti-consumer repair monopolies annoy everybody. Unlike many consumer reform efforts, companies haven’t had much success (yet) scaring the public away from “right to repair” reforms, despite a lot of scary (and false) claims about how such laws pose a risk to consumer security and privacy or aid sexual predators.
Texas’s new law requires manufacturers to make spare parts, manuals and repair tools available to consumers and independent shops. Consumer groups and “right to repair” advocates are unsurprisingly excited:
“When you can’t fix something, you either have to buy a new one or do without. It drives up waste and costs. People are tired of throwing away things they prefer to fix, and clearly this is a message that has gotten through to lawmakers,” said Nathan Proctor, PIRG’s Senior Right to Repair Campaign Director. “Congratulations to Rep. Capriglione for his excellent work standing up for the rights of product owners, and the small repair shops all across Texas. This is a Texas-sized win.”
This is definite progress, and I hate to be a buzzkill, but it’s worth reiterating that of the 8 states that have passed right to repair reforms so far, not a single one has actually enforced them in any meaningful way. This despite no shortage of bad corporate actors working overtime to kill independent repair shops, make manuals and parts hard to find, use obnoxious DRM, or claim that repairing your own stuff violates warranty.
Many states are facing unprecedented legal and financial challenges thanks to new Trump-triggered legal fights across everything from environmental law to healthcare. As a result most states aren’t going to be keen to launch costly new legal battles against deep-pocketed corporations.
Republican states like Texas, in particular, aren’t likely to say…start picking meaningful new fights with Apple or Sony. That runs in pretty stark contrast to the central Republican mission to effectively demolish whatever’s left of regulatory independence, consumer protection, and corporate oversight. They like to pick fights with “big tech,” but only in a bid to bully them into doing nothing about racist propaganda.
At some point at least a portion of the activism calories spent passing these right to repair laws needs to be redirected to yelling at states to actually enforce them, if the overall movement itself is to have any actual meaning and the laws are seen as anything more than populist set dressing.
Filed Under: antitrust, consumers, hardware, monopoly, right to repair, software, texas, tinker
