Oregon’s governor signs right-to-repair law that bans “parts pairing”

Fuck yeah, and fuck any company that does that shit

Some products — like devices powered by combustion engines, medical equipment, farming equipment, HVAC equipment, video game consoles, and energy storage systems — are excluded from Oregon’s rules entirely.

It's interesting to me that Game Consoles get an exception... Not sure whats up there, other than straight up bribery lobbying.

HVAC makes sense when you consider environmental concerns (some refrigerants are really terrible pollutants).

Medical equipment, particularly equipment in public health care should be held to high standards. Authorized, properly trained repair; peoples lives depend on it.

Energy storage when attached to public infrastructure (you back-feeding the grid) can be a saftey concern for workers and the supply/load needs to be balanced to prevent damaging that infrastructure and other private equipment attached to it. Not sure preventing repair is the right move here; you can still buy and install new without oversight. Perhaps it's again a saftey concern (for the person performing repair).

Vehicles, farming or otherwise, I'm on the fence about; there's an argument to be made for public saftey/roadworthness, but I'm not sure that's enough of an argument to prevent home-repair. Again seems more to do with lobbying than anything else.

It's funny that this article doesn't mention the one company that pretty much single handedly created the need for this legislation in the first place.

this just in.....Apple to stop selling devices in Oregon.

From the article, parts pairing is “a practice manufacturers use to prevent replacement components from working unless the company’s software approves them.”

I wonder if this will apply to generic printer cartridges

won't companies respond by just saying "not for sale in Oregon? "

Cutouts for farm equipment. I guess John deer got ahold of the legislature

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has now signed one of the strongest US right-to-repair bills into law after it passed the state legislature several weeks ago by an almost 3-to-1 margin.

Oregon’s SB 1596 will take effect next year, and, like similar laws introduced in Minnesota and California, it requires device manufacturers to allow consumers and independent electronics businesses to purchase the necessary parts and equipment required to make their own device repairs.

Oregon’s rules, however, are the first to ban “parts pairing” — a practice manufacturers use to prevent replacement components from working unless the company’s software approves them.

According to iFixit, “The exemption list is a map of the strongest anti-repair lobbies, and also of the next frontier of the movement.” However, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens also said in the statement, “By applying to most products made after 2015, this law will open up repair for the things Oregonians need to get fixed right now.

Another similarity between Oregon’s and California’s right-to-repair laws is that both push manufacturers to make any documentation, tools, parts, and software required to fix their devices available to consumers and repair shops without overcharging for them.

But while California’s law requires this support to be available for seven years after production for devices over $100, Oregon hasn’t mandated any such duration.

The original article contains 400 words, the summary contains 217 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Oregon W

Now we need to do this California to seal the deal.

I have no issue with security devices requiring some sort of approval (which should be made available to self service), but devices like the screen, camera, battery, buttons, memory/storage, ports, speakers, etc, should be allowed whether or not they are factory.

Couldn't states go after companies under the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act instead of writing new state legislation.

We need to modify the DMCA to truly address this

Is this actually good news? What can a single state do? Shouldn't this be federal?

I can't wait to get back to Oregon

Be careful what you wish for though. Electronics, and software in particular, rapidly drop in reliability as the parts stray from tightly restricted boundaries and become open to anyone. "Hey, this app crashes on my phone now." Repairing a phone too wouldn't be cheap either, you'd have to have someone soldering and resoldering a very fine circuit board. I think most people would just replace it.

“We need to cut down the insane cycle of churning through personal electronics”

Translation: We need to slow down the pace of innovation!