The right-to-repair movement is growing as wins stack up
Laws protecting consumers’ ability to seek out independent repairs for their appliances are spreading across the United States.
11 years ago I bought a GE Fridge, spent 4 grand on it, and all I want is to just be able to fix it myself.
4 grand, and a whole lot of viable parts but it's designed to crap out over time. I've 3d printed an evaporator fan shroud, condenser mounting bracket, and sourced replacement parts for the compressor and defrost cycle diode.
All in all I've probably saved $1,500 in the services a repair tech would charge but in all reality, I'd have been told about 4 years ago to trash it and buy a new fridge.
To me it's weird to even think of repairing stuff you buy as a "right" - that's a given. The issue is the nonexistent "right" of a seller to restrict what a customer does with a product after buying it. That's as ridiculous as a shoe company trying to dictate where you can or can't walk. It's a no-brainer, and should never have to be argued in court or anywhere else.
When written out like this, it seems simple as - but the most simple version really isn't what's at stake. Companies make and trademark specialized tools for their goods, to prevent third parties from providing repairs. Warrantys are written to keep a company from being liable for repair/replacement if a customer attempts to repair a product themselves.
Pretty much every case in the right to repair movement is a challenge to a legally acceptable means of market capture, that just happens to create a stupendously shitty consumer environment.
Market capture is unethical in almost all cases. Unlike humans, if a 'for profit' business model can't adapt and survive in a market, then it doesn't need to be put on life support indefinately.
It's like people learned all the wrong lessons from the big beginners of this crud show....(Thanks a lot MS and A**le)
This is a major reason of why we can't have nice stuff.
I was just thinking about this the other day after removing the fifteenth torx screw from the bottom of my Shark vacuum's roller head. They hid screws under the pipe hatch and the two tiny friction mounted front wheels. Vacuums are triple the price and rollers are no longer removable from the outside.
45 minutes to fix what is essentially a five minute problem. They'd rather you throw it away and buy the whole head unit from the site. They even have bars blocking you from cutting hair from the roller without opening it.
Shit like this is why I still use an iPod 5th gen. No internet. No tracking apps. Just you and your hard copied music on a device that can be opened, repaired, and modded.
Wow. I must have an older Shark; mine comes off with three coin-turnable plastic bolts. Collectible! (I have two!)
My partner just did the SAME operation on our Shork vacuum cleaner due to steadily declining performance. The ultimate diagnosis is the brush head has lost its brushes. They don't sell a replacement, but they do sell an entire power head replacement for $99. Fuck these guys, we'll never buy a Shark again.
Definitely do not buy Shark products. They used to be good, but maintaining any of their stuff now feels like it was intentionally designed to rip you off.
I have their old vacuum cleaner that I’ve repaired five times and I’m never getting rid of it.
For Canadian Right to Repair advocates: CanRepair is a brand new advocacy group started by R2R advocates from all over the country. The first Annual General Meeting is on March 25. Sign up to be a member and go to the AGM!
Just had my brother in law show me a concept phone where you just put in block modules for the things you want and need in a phone. Want more battery? Take off your camera block module and plug in more battery block modules.
Obviously the concept as presented is near impossible to achieve. I told him that and said we can get close. I showed him framework laptops that are trying to achieve the very thing he wanted (to a certain extent). He said that if they could make that a phone he would switch from his apple ecosystem in a heart beat. The ability to swap for a bigger speaker on the fly for get togethers and parties was tantalizing (big music guy).
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don't actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is "simple".
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
Nobody actually wants a walled garden, they just get entrapped in them ("it's just where my friends/music/content creators are")
They then become convinced that they want it, and its reinforced by the walled gardeners (looking at you, iMessage videos and bubbles)
I know a person who built their own PC (Windows, but still) from scratch for the first time as an adult. Had the money and the opportunity to buy a prebuilt rig in two clicks, but instead researched the market, ordered parts and tools, exchanged a part that didn't fit the case, learned how to assemble it all by hand, and exclaimed that it was a great experience and would do it all over again.
And yet at every opportunity still buys an iphone despite the cost because it's "simple" and they "don't want to learn" something new. That's not the actual reason - that's just stockholm syndrome.
No, they really just don't want to learn. I promise people would rather be okay with their current situation (even if its shitty) as long as they don't have to learn. Because a lot of people decided that once they were done with high school/college, that there was no need to learn anymore. And now its hard for them to learn
If they do choose to learn, its because they want to. But if they don't want to learn, they simply wont. It really is simple.
RIP Phonebloks
Is this a fairphone?
No it was this concept that never came to be. It's not possible/practical.
I'm feverishly imagining smart phones with old school slider keyboards
I remember when Motorola was working on that concept like 10ish years ago, and then they got bought and sold and the project was nerfed into uselessness.
Am I the only one that finds it weird that Louis Rossman is not even mentioned in those articles about right to repair?
I mean, he said that he didn't care at all if his name was mentioned or not and that he would be happy if the movement got traction "by itself", without him being involved.
But I still think it's weird that he is not even mentioned when they are giving examples of pro-repair groups/shops etc. Idk...
But it wasn’t until 2022 that the right-to-repair battle reached wide public consciousness when consumers questioned why McFlurry machines were always broken at their local McDonald’s. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it illegal to bypass certain proprietary systems like the one that Taylor Company, the McFlurry manufacturer, used to fix the equipment.
After a repair startup filed a lawsuit challenging Taylor’s restrictive repair policies, which only allowed its repair people to fix machines, the U.S. Copyright Office announced new exceptions to the copyright law to allow third-party McFlurry repairs. Kit Walsh, a director at the nonprofit rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, welcomed the change.
Of course it had to be about maccas. America is so weird 😂
It's kind of stranger than you might think. People were galvanized in support for the "little guy" franchise owners being exploited by the big corporation. Still no movement on the minimum wage that some of those little guy franchise owners pay though.
the fact that this is and has ever even been an issue is wild.
I know this is a little OT, but I repaired a dead Karcher pressure washer this weekend... a little effort and I'm much more likely to purchase / recommend them in the future.
If the manufacturer's grip is too tight, I'm going elsewhere - and I'll be more loyal to them
Kärcher is awsome, all of their products I have are solid and dealing with the company is ridiculously easy. They always have parts on-hand and repairs are usually a handful of steps. Easy recommendation
I think it's insane the rules for anything computer-related or computer-adjacent
"Oh if you make anything using our software, legally it's ours."
Could you imagine if the same logic applied if you removed the "Magic Technology is Magic" aspect?
"Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it's ours actually."
The laws around ownership and IP are also ridiculous.
I can lend this DVD to my aunt but if I do the same with the the movie file then I'm a criminal
I'm becoming more and more convinced that their ultimate goal is for everything to be rented, nothing owned.
They are the feudal lords and we the peasants merely get the privilege of leasing shit from them. This phone? Not mine, it can be locked remotely at the whim of my lord Google. What I see on this phone? Also determined by my lord's mercy.
When he saw a child drinking from their hand, he threw away his designer brand single use bottle.
Own nothing and be happy. Reject their bullshit products.
“Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it’s ours actually.”
The problem with companies like for example Adobe over let's say DeWalt is that they actually have a pretty strong grip on it's target market.
If there was only one company that made tools to build houses i'm sure eventually they'd try to pull the same crap if they could get away with it.
You can totally see the same kind of walled garden thinking in things like battery platforms for powertools. Most people buy into a brand and never go elsewhere but there's litterally zero technical purpose behind this other then toolmakers going through lengths making their batteries only fit their tools.
Just got a framework laptop and I’m really happy
Me too. It's worth it.
I’m glad. I hate the fact that TV’s are so cheap now that fixing them literally isn’t worth it. Same with a lot of laptops and tablets and stuff. I’d much rather have a chunkier phone than one I won’t ever be able to fix.
I think that the worst part is the ones that make repairable tech are so much smaller than you are paying top end prices for rather middle of the road performance. This is not true of them all of course but it is hard to look at the fairphone 5 and think it is worth it over a cheap secondhand/refurbished flagship from the previous generation.
It all depends on what you value.
If you want the fastest phone for the lowest price, then you're buying into those shady business practices and something akin to slave labor. (Not to sound judgey, I've bought my share of iPhones and galaxies too)
But if you want a phone that won't contribute to a landfill as soon, was made by people paid a fair wage, where any hardware failure doesn't make you start over with a new phone. Then try something like a fairphone. Specs aside, you're paying for a different set of features.
In the last few years I've fixed about a dozen TVs, they can definitely suck to fix at times (especially the really new ones) but in general the fixes have been simple. And all of them were snagged out of the dumpster at my apartment complex.
And that's just the TVs I've fixed. I like to fix things.
In terms of phones they're a nightmare though. I'm keeping an eye on HMD phones and Fairphone though as both of them are a LOT easier to fix than other brands.
In the event of my current phone breaking I'd love to get either one of those brands.
Btw, is it still a thing that sensitive electrolyt condensators are placed too close to the power supply? The old plasma of my parents still runs, i once placed a piece of cardboard inbetween (i'm aware of the issue with the altered airflow of cooling).
This is one of the handful of things me (a leftist) and my rural Trump supporting family both heavily agree upon. It's nice to find some common ground in such a divided America.
Trump/Musk (especially Musk) could totally come out against this if it gains traction.
I guarantee, your family's tune would change
I think we got lucky on it that John Deere and Car companies have been trying to ruin repairability long before it was cool.
And "right to repair" is a nice simple slogan, even the most rural person in America can hear that and will probably go "Fuck yeah I should have the right to repair my car!"
Local & state level is where a lot of the progress will live on in the near future. Call your local legislators & vote in every local election - they are way more frequent across the country than you may realize