Right to Repair

Right to Repair is a social, legal, and political concept that says an individual or corporation should be able to fix (or repair) a piece of equipment they have purchased. Or, put more simply, the Right to Repair movement holds that if a person purchases something, they should be able to repair it themselves or take it to a technician of their choice.

Example of repairing a smartphone.

Put into practice, Right to Repair requires owners of a piece of equipment to receive access to repair manuals or schematics, special tools, necessary software, and parts (either original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or after-market). It often pushes back against the use of "digital locks" or computer chips that can lock down components when it detects either unauthorized repairs or unauthorized (often after-market) parts. And the Right to Repair movement seeks to reverse design decisions that make equipment less- or non-repairable, increasing the waste generated by equipment and pushing back on designs that are seen to lead to planned obsolescence.

While much of Right to Repair focuses on independent repair shops, consumers, and OEMs—as these tend to have the most advocates calling for a Right to Repair—an often forgotten segment that can benefit from a Right to Repair includes any business. Whether it is fixing a networking problem, a computer issue, or machinery on a factory line, having to rely on OEMs for repairs can increase downtime for businesses and create losses. Alternatively, having a Right to Repair allows those businesses to either maintain an independent repair shop in its business or have a strong relationship with repair technicians, allowing them to get whatever system is in need of repair as soon as possible, reducing downtime and reducing the amount of lost money.

The question of what it means to have a "right to repair" is, understandably, at the heart of the Right to Repair movement. Generally, it refers to the belief that a person (or corporation) that purchases equipment should have the right to do with that equipment as they wish; or, put another way, that once purchased, the device is completely owned by the individual.

This means, if an individual purchases a computer and wishes to replace components or install a different operating system, they should be able to do so. However, many manufacturers, for one reason or another, do not allow this. This can be based on compatibility or components not capable of running specific software and other such complexities, but also exhibits a general drift toward a greater inability to repair devices.

Example of components glued together.

Regardless of intent, there are various ways devices have been made less repairable. For example, various products are manufactured in such a way that opening them up to repair them destroys the device, others have no third-party options for parts, others use proprietary screws, or they may decline to publish repair documentation, or glue parts together, all of which reduce repairability.

While much of this type of activity has previously occurred in the realm of consumer electronics, the activity has extended to other sectors, including home appliances, automotive products, medical equipment, and agricultural equipment, to name a few, where the irrepairability creates further concerns. As well, many find that as equipment and devices are less repairable, they create more waste. And for those interested in increasing sustainability and reducing waste, the ability to repair devices is imperative.

A Framework laptop, built to be modular and repairable rather than thrown out.

On the other side, there has been evidence (as in the case of Framework or Fairphone) that when a company decides it wants to make something repairable, it can. And often, those devices do not look or behave in any way differently to their harder-to-repair cousins. Right to Repair, in that case, would attempt to establish legislation and frameworks that establish repairability practices throughout industries to allow users to make informed decisions about their purchases and to do with the devices or equipment as they wish once they purchase it.

In any discussion of the Right to Repair, there has to be a discussion of the barriers to repair. Some of these barriers are classed as intentional—where the intent is less on the inability of a consumer to repair a device and more focused on the consumer repairing the device with the OEM or else pushing the consumer to purchase a new device. Other factors that lead to an inability to repair have less intention behind them but could be considered to be pushed by market forces. For example, if consumers want slimmer laptops (which tend to be less repairable), then companies will design slimmer laptops. That said, there are common barriers, some of which could be described as anti-repair strategies, which limit the ability to repair devices.

One barrier to repair that does not play a part in the design of the product or the repairability of the product but comes down to the fear or apathy on the part of the owner in regard to repair. This could be a fear of not doing it correctly or not trusting independent repair shops. And when paired with advertising and social pressure (to have the newest, shiniest, and "best" device), this can lead individuals to choose to purchase a new device over repairing a previous device. Especially as some lead individuals to believe that new is always better than a repaired device.

Another common barrier to repair will be the advice of an OEM. Often manufacturers have discouraged if not outright prohibited independent repair. Done in part through penalties for copyright infringement or voiding warranties in the case of independent repair, manufacturers have increasing powers to deny consumers the power to repair their own devices, and consumers or businesses do not want extra difficulties or the headaches of voiding a warranty and often go by the manufacturer's recommendations.

The Right to Repair movement is growing, wide-reaching, and arguably touches on everyone who has a part in the development or purchase of the products and machinery included under the Right to Repair banner. This stretches from customers and independent repair shops to manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple, and John Deere. Right to Repair is often seen as a battle between customers and manufacturers, where manufacturers want customers to buy more of their products rather than repair them, and where customers want to maintain and repair their products rather than be forced to purchase new ones.

For consumers, the Right to Repair works to give power back to the consumer. At its most basic, as explored above, it is about giving the consumer power over their device and the choice to do with their device as they choose—be that to repair it themselves, decide to repair it with an OEM preferred technician or independent technician, or to replace it. However, without Right to Repair laws or legislation, consumers are facing increasingly restricted choices, where an owner who may prefer to fix an item themselves or with their preferred repair technician may be faced with a situation where only the OEM or the OEM's preferred technician can repair a device. Further, in the case of some devices, an OEM may decide the device is "obsolete" and stop carrying parts necessary for its upkeep in stock, leaving an owner in a situation where they may no longer be capable of keeping their device or machine.

Example of independent repair in the automotive industry.

Independent repair shops and repair technicians arguably have the most to gain under Right to Repair laws, as they would be given access to the tools, software, and customers to build a business. This is in part why independent repair shops and technicians tend to be the most vocal supporters of Right to Repair. Repair shops and technicians want to have access to the tools, parts, and software necessary to fix people's devices and equipment both for their business needs and to give consumers greater choice in what they do with their devices or where they can get their devices or equipment repaired. Independent repair shops and technicians tend to be those that lobby the most for Right to Repair legislation, both on their behalf and on the behalf of consumers; and they tend to be the most likely to organize advocacy groups for the Right to Repair.

Example of tools offered in Apple's self-repair program.

On the other hand, the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have the most to lose. Many manufacturers view parts, guides, schematics, and software as proprietary and intellectual property and believe this information should be protected, similar to other company or trade secrets. One of the most famous examples of this was Apple's creation of a proprietary screw head that prevented users from opening their devices without specialized equipment. However, this claim is not supported by companies in the same industry, as in the above Apple example, other companies selling similar products, such as Dell, often release guides for the products they sell, as well as essential tools and parts, to allow users and independent repair shops to repair those devices. OEMs tend to be the groups that lobby against Right to Repair and Right to Repair legislation.

Example of the large amount of e-waste filing landfills.

One thing often brought up in favor of Right to Repair is the potential for reducing the impact of electronics and heavy machinery on the environment. Right to Repair promises, in many ways, to reduce the amount of devices and equipment thrown out, which reduces the amount of new devices and equipment are built each year, in turn reducing the amount of natural resources extracted and processed to manufacture those devices and equipment, and reducing the amount of those products filling a landfill.

For some, beyond increasing the sustainability of electronic devices and agricultural equipment, Right to Repair also promises to increase the circularity in that part of the economy, allowing devices that have been tossed aside to be repaired into a serviceable shape and sold in a secondary market, similar to the way the automotive industry operates between new and used cars.

Generally, Right to Repair is seen as a legal and political—as much as a social—movement because it pushes for legislation and legal frameworks whereby the purchasers of equipment are protected in the pursuit of the necessary materials, tools, and preferred technicians to repair their equipment; and to hold the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) accountable in the case where they block these attempts on the purchasers or integrate by-design some elements that can be considered anti-repair and anti-consumer. Many Right to Repair advocacy associations therefore focus on promoting legal frameworks from which Right to Repair can be adopted. These are generally framed as the following:

• Make information available—Right to Repair advocates want everyone to have reasonable access to manuals, schematics, and software updates, and software licenses should not limit support options and what is included in a sale should be clear at the time of sale.
• Make parts and tools available—Right to Repair advocates push for access to the parts and tools necessary to service equipment, including diagnostic tools, for third-party repair technicians and individuals who own a given device.
• Allow unlocking—A device that is locked down by software or so-called "digital locks" should be able to be unlocked by an owner at their discretion and thereby legalize adapting or modifying a device, even so far as allowing the person who purchased the device to install custom software.
• Accommodate repair in the design—Devices should be designed in a way that makes repair not only possible but also, in some cases, accessible, rather than having devices designed to be un-repairable.

Generally, the first two points are the backbone of the majority of Right to Repair legislative proposals. However, where software is concerned tends to be where the legislative actions get more difficult. Depending on the jurisdiction, software licensing can be protected by copyright law—although the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act already has an exclusion allowing users to "jailbreak" or unlock their devices. Even in the case where a "jailbreak" exemption might exist, that does not mean that it will actually be made possible by the manufacturer, especially as it tends to be against a manufacturer's interest to allow users to jailbreak a device rather than use their proprietary software and rely on their software updates.

For example, the Copyright Act of Canada passed in 2011 protects "technological protection mechanisms" or "digital locks," which were generally intended to be used as a copyright control mechanism for physical media, such as digital audio tapes or CDs at the turn of the millennium. However, the wording of this act—and similar acts—gave device manufacturers a loophole through which they could use similar protection technologies in other systems and computerized devices to lock down these devices regardless of whether any infringement or unauthorized copying have taken place.

This has, further, given device manufacturers an unprecedented amount of power in deciding the terms and costs of diagnosing and completing repairs in computerized devices, as they often require proprietary software to get past these digital locks and related protections. And, as more and more products and connected devices include embedded computer systems, the more wide-reaching the power gets, moving to include home appliances, agricultural equipment, electric vehicles, medical equipment, and personal computers, to name a few.

Some legislative focus has taken aim at these protected software protection mechanisms and seeks to make it lawful to circumvent or bypass these protections where the purpose of doing so is to diagnose or repair the product. For example, in Canada, where the Copyright Act makes these digital locks so problematic, a proposed Bill C-244 announced in the 2023 budget would seek to carve out this exemption in the Copyright Act to give repair advocates and independent repair technicians the latitude to complete repairs without fear of civil and criminal penalties for unauthorized circumvention and to further require device manufacturer's to offer users and independent repair technicians the software necessary to lawfully bypass these locks.

Example of a Fairphone cellphone which is designed to be repaired.

Besides the software difficulty, another major roadblock the Right to Repair movement faces is the core idea of repairability. While some companies—especially in the consumer electronics space—have produced redesigned devices (such as Framework laptops or Fairphone cellphones) intended to be user-repairable and thereby reduce the need to repurchase a new device, the majority of companies continue to pursue design in their devices with reduce repairability. Legislating with repairability in mind is incredibly tricky, as repairability can be defined in various ways depending on a given technician's skill or the modules in use.

Example of Apple's SoC with more components on a single chip.

For example, Apple devices use a system on a chip (SoC) processor in which the compute processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), and random access memory (RAM) are all contained on a single chip, which is embedded in a device's motherboard. In this example, if any part of the SoC fails, the entire motherboard of a device has to be replaced. Whereas, in a traditional processor, the CPU, GPU, and RAM are all different modules, which, when one or another fail, can potentially be repaired (in many cases, despite these being disparate devices, they remain embedded in a motherboard). However, in the Apple example, the SoC has shown advantages over the traditional, disparate, arrangements.

Scoring examples from France's repairability index.

In the above example, legislating a Right to Repair approach might lead to legislating against a given approach to designing hardware and stiffling creativity and development overall. However, that challenge does not mean a device cannot pursue different approaches while keeping repairability in mind. Another way to tackle the design problem is exemplified by France's repairability index, which assigns repairability scores in hopes of shifting buyer behavior. In this case, any company that wishes to sell a product in France submits its product to be scored on the index. These types of indexes are seen as a possible compromise that has the benefit of pushing the market towards repairability by giving consumers transparency and choice and can extend beyond consumer products into professional and corporate equipment.

Referred to as planned obsolescence, or the designing of products to ensure the product goes rapidly out of date (or breaks) to push consumers to purchase a new product rather than repair or maintain their previous product. This can be furthered by the use of warranties, licenses, and other contracts to prevent consumers and third-party repair technicians from repairing devices. These practices tend to be considered anti-consumer, and many advocates for Right to Repair have sought ways to shift manufacturers from planned obsolescence to ensure products are more durable. Legally speaking, however, proving "planned obsolescence" in an attempt to legislate against it is incredibly difficult, and this tends to shift the focus toward the promotion of designing for repairability and for longevity.

As concerns mount over the increasing amount of e-waste generated each year, and concerns about the availability of rare earth minerals necessary for the manufacturing of electronics increase, a Right to Repair has also been proposed as a chance to increase sustainability and reduce waste. Right to Repair allows users to maintain a device and keep it in use for years longer than they would be able to otherwise. Rather than allowing a cracked screen, dying battery, broken condenser, or failed sensor means a device has to be replaced, those devices could be repaired and maintained and kept out of the waste cycle for a few years longer.

In some cases, Right to Repair could increase circularity in the economy, offering greater opportunity for reducing e-waste, as appliances or consumer devices could be recycled for parts—as is often done in the automotive industry—in order to keep older devices or appliances on the market rather than encouraging the replacement of these parts.

Often devices, especially appliances, agricultural machinery, or automotives, may be recommended to be replaced due to changing standards for emissions, energy use, or use cases. In these cases, a Right to Repair could include the ability or right for individuals or independent repair technicians to retrofit a device (where possible) to allow users to keep their devices rather than having to replace them. The Right to Repair is seen, by many, as a pathway to reduce the amount of devices that end up in a landfill.

While there has been a lot of consideration of the legal and legislative frameworks that Right to Repair advocates would like to see adopted, some work has been done in order to get laws passed. The laws passed currently can be categorized as parts, tools, and documentation access laws; repairability labeling laws; copyright laws; and product design laws.

Arguably, one of the first modern Right to Repair laws passed was the 2012 Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act in Massachusetts, which guaranteed car owners' rights to have their vehicles serviced at a shop of their choice. Following this law, vehicle manufacturers signed a memorandum of understanding in 2014, following negotiations with repair advocates, which secured the right for all vehicle owners in the United States to access parts, tools, and documentation for their vehicles.

This 2014 memorandum of understanding was similar to the 2009 CASIS (Canadian Automotive Service Information Standard) agreement, signed by all automakers in Canada, which was a memorandum of understanding to guarantee the aftermarket certain rights and access to information and tools from OEMs. However, in 2017, the AIA (Automotive Industries Association of Canada) investigated the effectiveness of the CASIS agreement and found significant gaps in information aftermarket businesses had access to. Suggesting that a memorandum of understanding, as beneficial as it may be, does not have the necessary teeth when compared to a Right to Repair law carrying financial or criminal punishments for violations.

Since then, proposed Right to Repair laws have also been signed on the state level before movement on the federal level has occurred. For example, New York state passed a Right to Repair law in 2022, which compelled manufacturers doing business in the state to make repair parts, tools, and documentation (including schematics) available to the public. However, last-minute carve-outs in the bill did not require OEMs to sell individual components rather than assemblies of parts (a practice which increases the cost for repair shops and individuals, while also potentially increasing the amount of waste parts) and also failed to require OEMs to provide "passwords, security codes, or materials" to bypass security features, as is sometimes required to save a locked but otherwise fine functioning device. This led to Right to Repair advocates calling the bill functionally useless.

In April of 2023, Colorado also passed a Right to Repair law, called the Consumer Repair Bill of Rights Act, which focused on the Right to Repair for farmers, requiring manufacturers to provide the resources to allow farmers to repair their equipment themselves. This includes providing information with fair and reasonable terms and costs, including documentation, parts, embedded software, embedded software for agricultural equipment, firmware, or tools. In May 2023, Minnesota passed a Right to Repair law, named the Digital Fair Repair Act, which required manufacturers to make documentation, parts, and tools for diagnosis, maintenance, or repair available to independent repair providers and product owners on fair and reasonable terms.

And in October 2023, California signed into law a Right to Repair law that required consumer electronics manufacturers to make repair tools and parts widely available to device owners and third-party repair businesses. The bill also included a time horizon for which parts, tools, software, and documentation had to be provided for three years for products priced under $99 and seven years for products priced at or above $100.

Similar to the above state-level laws in the United States, Australia, in 2022, passed a Motor Vehicle Information Scheme (MVIS) under which OEMs are required to make service and repair information available to independent shops at a price that does not exceed fair market value. This is similar to the memorandum of understandings signed in 2014 in the United States and the CASIS agreement from 2009, in that the law expects to increase convenience and choice for automotive owners, while maintaining protections for OEMs to keep proprietary parts and tools secure.

Repairability labeling laws are focused on rating the repairability of an electronic or other device (automobile, farm machinery) to help inform consumers at the time of or before purchase and to encourage consumers to purchase products that offer greater repairability. The hallmark of this type of law was passed in 2021 by France. The French repairability index initially covered five major families of appliances: side-loaded washing machines, smartphones, televisions, laptops, and electric lawnmowers. By 2022, the repairability index expanded to top-loading washing machines, dishwashers, pressure washers, and vacuum cleaners.

A study by Samsung from 2021 found that the vast majority of French consumers at that early date had heard of the index and were using it to purchase more repairable products. Similar attempts have been made, including an electronic products labeling law introduced in Washington State in 2022 that failed to pass. These laws have been compared to EnergyStar ratings, which work to inform consumers of the lifetime energy cost, but instead let customers know how feasible repair of a device would be. The French index uses an out-of-ten scale in which a rating closer to 10 indicates a greater repairability.

France's Repairability Index also works to push toward a circular economy, where an index of repairability is expected to be joined by an index of durability to nudge consumers and manufacturers towards creating longer-life products and countering planned obsolescence. Further, the index is intended to reduce the number of new products being built and increase the number of devices that exist in the market for longer.

Many anti-repair strategies have, as explored above, been made possible in part due to the over-extension of copyright law. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 made it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures, which means as more and more devices have processors and software, the more those devices can be locked down while OEMs are not required to make the software necessary to bypass or reset those digital locks. There have been repair exemptions granted to some copyright laws, but those exemptions do not cover the software tools required in many cases.

Further, as noted above, the 2011 Canadian Copyright Act has similar protections for software locks in its wording. In 2021, a Member of Parliament, Bryan May, proposed an amendment to the Copyright Act that would exempt repairs from the original Copyright Act and argued that blocking repair was outside the intended scope of the original act. However, this was struck down. In 2023, a similar proposal has been made to amend the Copyright Act to ensure users can receive the necessary software tools to repair while intellectual property is protected. The amendment could be presented as a model for amending the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

A product design law is any law passed to require more-repairable designs. Similar to the European Union's law mandating a one-size-fits-all charging port for all smartphones to reduce e-waste, any product design law would be focused on increasingly and mandating repairability in design. Similarly, the European Union is working to regulate batteries in electronic device design. The EU Batteries regulation, proposed in 2020, would make it mandatory that batteries are removable in devices (rather than being glued down as is often the case) or easily replaceable. This proposed legislation includes a recommendation for an electronic system to make lifecycle and repair information available to be developed.

These kinds of design laws are not new, though designing for repairability in some sectors is novel. This type of legislation exists across industries to ensure work environments are safe for workers and others, mandating specific characteristics of a plant or work environment to ensure those workers are safe. And in the automotive industry, there has been similar legislation. For example, in the Canadian province of Quebec, a proposed law (Bill 29) would require car manufacturers wishing to sell vehicles in the province to design those vehicles in a way that any repair shop could fix them, including requiring that car owners and mechanics are provided with the data necessary to diagnose issues.

Quebec's Bill 29 also seeks to eliminate the practice of planned obsolescence. This is through the language of the bill, which in words bans the practice of planned obsolescence (without describing what can be considered the characteristics of planned obsolescence, or a lifetime a given device should be expected to last) and works to give consumers the right to repair their products. The bill also works to promote durability, repairability, and maintenance of the goods covered by the bill, including automotive products, consumer electronics, and consumer appliances.

The implementation of product design laws may also come in motivated less by a Right to Repair and instead motivated more by a desire to reduce e-waste and keep devices in line with environmental legislation and the moving targets of carbon emissions. In such a case, a law to increase the repairability of devices sold would see motivation coming from a desire to keep devices in an owner's hand for longer before that owner tosses the device aside and could even go toward creating a secondary, used market either in the same legislative jurisdictions or in other jurisdictions.

The Right to Repair as a movement has focused on several prominent sectors that have different levels of overlap. These sectors of focus include the agricultural industry, the automotive industry, the healthcare industry, consumer appliances, and consumer electronics. For one reason or another, these sectors have seen increases in the barriers to repair and therefore drawn an increase in focus on a Right to Repair for the owners and independent repair technicians.

Increasingly, the large-scale heavy machinery used on farms and in agricultural settings have increasingly become integrated with computer systems, including sensor arrays to help the machines stay in working condition and to keep users aware of these systems. Generally, these types of machines have been repaired on a farm, with many farms having well-equipped machine shops for just that purpose. Or else, independent repair shops could help repair equipment as needed. With the inclusion of more electronic and computer systems in the equipment, these repairs have been largely stopped, as most of these systems add technological protection measures (TPMs) or "digital locks" that protect the OEMs intellectual property but lock the farmers out of repairing their machine.

Individuals working to repair a tractor.

In some cases, based on the jurisdiction's copyright law, the TPMs make it not only difficult (or impossible) to fix a machine, they make it illegal. This has led to increasing frustration on the part of farmers, who often repair their machines mid-harvest, but with the newer machines equipped with TPMs and other electronic locks, farmers cannot fix these themselves and instead have to wait for an authorized (by the OEM) repair technician to repair the machine. Especially in the agricultural industry, this can make life difficult and cause farmers to miss a harvest. For example, for a farmer whose machine goes down in the middle of a harvest, relying on an authorized technician can mean waiting days before a machine gets fixed and losing a harvest.

Similarly, a modern dairy farm runs with a lot of robotics and electronics, including sensors reading the IDs of the cows and maintaining the machines' performance, as they have to be kept functioning to keep the cows milked. Any technical failure or fault reduces the production, and if farmers cannot maintain that equipment themselves—either because it is illegal or because the farmers are denied access to the necessary software or tools to understand and fix the problem. Similarly, for farmers that grow crops within greenhouses, such as mushroom facilities, there are a lot of different kinds of equipment to maintain optimal conditions for growing. Again, this equipment, when requiring repairs, often needs a dealer-authorized repair technician rather than allowing the grower to repair the equipment themself or find their own independent repair technician.

Farmers are buying older farm equipment as they are more repairable.

The reliance on dealer-authorized technicians has led to complaints from growers and farmers that these technicians are not always available as needed, and often they are already busy, leaving the farmers and growers losing time, productivity, and crops. This has led some farmers and growers to go to different lengths to get their operations back up as quickly as possible, including turning to software hackers to break the TPMs and digital locks to allow the machines to either continue to operate or to allow the farmers or their preferred independent repair technician to repair the machinery. Similarly, many farmers and growers are seeking to purchase machinery that is older and without these computer systems.

Further, advocates for Right to Repair have noted that the concerns around farmers and growers being able to fix their equipment as needed is not just about choice, but at a certain point it becomes critical for food security. One can imagine a scenario, as has been put forth by advocates, where enough farmers and growers see their equipment slow to fix, which impacts an operation's productivity and harvest.

In March 2023, some movement was made towards securing a Right to Repair for farmers with a memorandum of understanding between the American Farm Bureau Federation (an advocacy group for the agriculture industry) and John Deere. John Deere has been a focus of a lot of Right to Repair consternation in the agricultural industry, in part because they have been the most aggressive in the integration of technology in their equipment and remain one of the more popular providers of equipment for farmers. The memorandum of understanding included protections for John Deere's intellectual property while including a commitment to ensure farmers and independent repair facilities have access to the tools and software to repair those machines.

The memorandum of understanding reached between farmers and growers and John Deere is often positioned as a model for taking on other industry giants. The memorandum was reached, and pressure was applied to John Deere, through a repeatable process. This was a process of finding the necessary facts and those affected by a lack of repair options, before getting those facts and anecdotes out to the public to create a public pressure campaign. Once public support is found, that support can be taken to the halls of power where, especially once finding a sympathetic representative, it can be used to lobby for change to increase repairability.

The fight for repairability in the automotive industry is one of the oldest fights in Right to Repair. As noted above, there have been various memorandums of understanding (MOU) signed in various jurisdictions between automakers and those jurisdictions, but these MOUs often fail to have the necessary punitive structures of laws and, in some cases, fail to extend beyond those jurisdictions. Further, OEMs have found ways around repairability, even under the terms of these MOUs, such as telematics data that has been excluded from previous laws (such as the 2012 Massachusetts Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair law passed in 2012, which requires OEMs to provide documents and information to allow anyone to repair their vehicles).

A lot of repairability concerns with consumer vehicles is over the access to data and software.

The telematics data and other software have been embedded in more parts of a car. This gives the manufacturer more data about the vehicle and more ways to block repairability through software locks. This debate in the automotive industry goes back to the 1980s when the OBD-2 port (which gives out codes based on sensors information and potential failures) was going to be closed until a push to standardize the port and standardize its use for everyone won. This has allowed independent repair technicians and individuals to pull those codes and understand what needs to be repaired in their vehicles. The new software threatens to push all of that back, as Right to Repair groups continue to push for greater automotive repairability.

Further, OEMs have suggested that making these software systems and telematics available for independent repair technicians is a major security or cybersecurity risk. The advocates for Right to Repair have noted, in response, that from their perspective this is more about controlling vehicle data (as OEMs have suggested this data is personal data while Right to Repair advocates have said it is merely mechanical data) and note that the telematics networks should be open to repair advocates while the cars should not be connected to a single network. This latter warning comes as Right to Repair advocates worry that they create a single point of failure, highlighted by the OEMs concerns that offering the data and access to the network could bring the entire connected network down.

While not necessarily the sector that jumps out when speaking about Right to Repair, hospitals and healthcare facilities are relying on ever-more computerized devices to care for their patients, the more concerns around the ability to keep these machines operational have pushed into the Right to Repair sphere. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the concern has been around hospitals and healthcare centers capable of getting their equipment repaired as quickly as possible. However, in this sector, as many other sectors, the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) has refused to provide the information or parts necessary to allow independent technicians or repair shops to make these repairs.

Example of repairing medical equipment.

This has led to an increasing call for Right to Repar in the healthcare industry, where those medical devices could be repaired as needed either by independent technicians or even by hospital-employed technicians. This sector, similar to the agriculture sector, comes with greater concerns as an inability to repair a device as needed, and instead being required to wait on the OEMs technician to arrive in a healthcare facility, places lives at risk as either as patients have to wait for tests or as patients rely on these machines to keep them alive.

Some OEMs already offer hospitals and independent service organizations (ISOs) the necessary parts and schematics, but it is not all of them, with cooperation an exception rather than the norm. Many hospitals already engage in a repair schema that involves some in-house technicians, complemented by OEM service contracts, and on-demand labor, as well as service arrangements with ISOs. But with increasing OEM control, those service arrangements and the ability to increase medical devices as needed is put in greater risk. This has led to a push for a Medical Device Repair Act, which can cover equipment owners, lessees, and service providers, allowing equipment to continue working.

However, OEMs and others have pushed back on the Right to Repair in healthcare, noting the high requirements necessary to ensure that repaired medical equipment works as expected as they put lives at risk when they do not work properly (or at all). This has led many to suggest that none but the service technicians approved by the OEMs should repair these devices, especially as they have the training, knowledge, and expertise to properly repair the devices.

In the end, the argument hinges on patient care. The concerns remain that not having a Right to Repair delays the ability and timing of repair and puts patient health at risk; while having the repairs done improperly puts patient health at risk. This has led some to suggest a middle ground: the pertinent agencies can set up a regulatory pathway for oversight of third-party repair organizations to ensure technicians are properly trained to meet regulatory standards upheld by OEMs and their technicians.

Generally, these can constitute two different categories or be lumped together. Those who separate the categories point to the relative complexity of consumer electronics (especially given their ever-shrinking size) compared to the relative simplicity of appliances. However, as appliances see more and more of their systems get computerized and connected to local networks (such as fridges with computer screens and Bluetooth-connected washers and dryers), the more they can be locked down using the same rules and laws that protect those digital locks in other consumer devices. This is pushing the standard refrigerator closer to the category of a smartphone or laptop, especially when the refrigerator is built with a screen and the capability of ordering groceries.

The consumer electronics sector of Right to Repair is perhaps the most talked about and most straightforward. Consumers purchase a device and want the choice to do with the device as they wish—including going where they wish to see that device repaired. Meanwhile, for appliances, this tends to be new territory. Most appliances have been viewed as devices that are built to last, offering five- to ten-year warranties, and capable of lasting before they end up in a landfill for at least twice as long as their warranty. And appliances have been regularly capable of being repaired by independent service organizations (ISOs).

However, as these appliances are increasingly connected and included with computer devices, the more difficult it becomes for ISOs to provide the fixes necessary to keep those appliances working, in the same manner as with consumer devices. This has led to an increase in the rate of replacement of appliances, as the fixes become more expensive either because they require difficult-to-acquire parts or proprietary software to unlock the digital locks, or they begin to take longer to repair as they wait for those parts or the approved repair technician (especially in the case where an OEM or shop offers a new unit faster than a repair to an existing unit).

These same difficulties have been facing consumer electronics for longer, and have long been a focus of the twenty-first century Right to Repair movement. However, unlike electronic devices, where there is a desire on the part of many consumers to replace those devices with the latest and "greatest," no one gets overly excited about replacing appliances, and being able to maintain and retain an appliance is often preferable to purchasing a new appliance. The calls for Right to Repair have increased as this industry has steadily marched towards greater OEM control. While, at the same time, recent polls into the public feelings around the Right to Repair show the public wants access to the necessaries to repair their device, especially when framed as a potential to reduce waste and limit climate change.

The increased calls for a Right to Repair have led to some of the larger OEMs in the consumer device and appliance sector to launch repair programs. For example, in November 2021, Apple announced a self-service repair program, which officially launched in April of 2022. This self-service repair program sells users the parts and lends the necessary tools necessary to do the repairs. The borrowing charge for the tools is a minimal up-front charge but includes a hold on the person's credit card in the instance the tools are not returned.

In 2022, Samsung similarly launched a self-repair program in partnership with iFixit to provide purchasers of their phones to do simple repairs, similar to the Apple self-repair program. The service, offered through the iFixit website, offers the necessary parts and tools for a similar cost (although the tools do not have to be returned). The program opened with limited parts for common fixes, with an expectation that it would be opened to further fixes.

Despite the programs offering a positive step in the right direction (according to Right to Repair advocates), the programs are limited and continue to offer OEMs control over the supply of repair parts, schematics, and tools. And for advocates for Right to Repair, these repair programs, while positive, are not enough, and continue to push for legislation that enshrines a consumer's right to do with their devices, including fix them as they and where they would provide, and ensure independent repair technicians and shops have the necessary schematics, parts, tools, and software to repair devices for their customers.

Despite the interest in a right to repair, some point to potential challenges or concerns that the movement creates. While it has become more challenging for consumers to repair their own devices, manufacturers have pointed to the increasing complexity, as well as privacy, safety, and copyright concerns, which have made them more difficult.

Less generally, the challenges and concerns around Right to Repair depend on the product or type of product in question and the price of that product. While owners of higher-cost products—especially those like vehicles, farm equipment, medical equipment, consumer appliances, smartphones, or laptops—tend to want a chance to repair those products rather than purchase a new, equally expensive product; for those low-cost products, repairs can be positioned (and have been positioned) as being as expensive as purchasing a new product. And, in the case of low-cost products, manufacturers can go a step further and flood the market to further reduce the appeal of repair and motivate consumers to purchase a new product—which may work better and arrive sooner—than to repair a product, which may take time and still cost to be repaired.

The argument against a Right to Repair for safety has already, in part, been seen above in the discussion on the effect of Right to Repair in the healthcare industry. Another aspect of it is that repairing these devices, from smartphones to tractors, by the owner rather than a properly trained technician can result in those people getting injured in the repair. Electronics tend to have a lot of intricate components, which can be difficult to navigate and can be easily damaged if mishandled. In the case of batteries, these can be combustible, and the wrong move can cause them to combust, leaving the owner repairing their device with potential injury and without a device any longer.

For other OEMs, the argument may simply be that technology is getting smaller every year, and in getting smaller is getting more intricate, and, in some cases, getting integrated even further. In this case, many of those components are paired using software to ensure their compatibility. But at times, these software locks do not allow a user to repair or replace such a broken module. Often, these smaller components also require specialized hardware not readily available to everyone, and in some cases, require the necessary tools to be licensed to use. For example, the most notable example is Apple using proprietary pentalobe screws in iPhones to reduce the ability for repair shops to open the devices unless they have gone through a certification offered by Apple.

Technology is also a competitive environment, and as manufacturers work to make products slimmer and more efficient, they have argued that requiring a Right to Repair would reduce the ability of companies and manufacturers to compete. Further, manufacturers point to the controls Right to Repair laws would put in place that would standardize design, omit features that require digitization, and prioritize ease of repair over other features consumers want, such as water resistance or damage resistance. This would reduce competition - especially if, as manufacturers warn, all devices would have similar or same designs and feature sets in the name of repairability, including increased manufacturing costs to keep them in compliance.

Similar to competition, many manufacturers point to consumers and consumer choice for a reason to not make devices more repairable. As demands for certain features and certain capabilities of devices grow, OEMs want to meet that demand, even when the designs are not repairable or do not suggest repairability. Similarly, OEMs work to release products that are the best products they can, to avoid releasing a product inferior to their rivals'; but the suggestion is that if those devices are more repairable the incentive for manufacturers to develop high-quality products is reduced.

Similarly, the manufacturers point to the economies of scale where there are enough incentives for manufacturers to take the risk on the costs of research and development. But, in the case where devices are more repairable, and staying on the market for longer, the OEMs suggest that there will be less of an advantage to innovation as they will see no benefit to innovating.

The idea of "right to repair" and the corresponding Right to Repair movement began, arguably, as consumer devices have become more difficult to repair. Going back to the 1960s, consumer appliances and electronics entered the market, and consumers were given complete rights over those devices. Users were given manuals and schematics, and parts were made available and what was done with the device, whether it be customization or repairs, whatever happened to the device was up to the user. However, throughout the twentieth century, consumer attitudes began to sour as devices began to be more difficult to take apart or repair, in a trend that is often labeled as "planned obsolescence."

The movement for Right to Repair did not happen overnight. Rather, it evolved as a response to the frustration many experienced when attempting to repair or tinker with their electronics. Going back to the twentieth century, many appliances could be fixed by an owner when malfunctioning. They did not need proprietary tools, they did not necessarily need specialized knowledge (and what they did need would be in an owner's manual and schematic), and the parts were readily available. An owner could keep their devices working while in many places the spirit of DIY repairs thrived, with many basking in the satisfaction of breathing life into a cherished gadget.

One such example came in 1956, when IBM was found to be a monopoly, and the U.S. Department of Justice hung a threat over their heads called the IBM Consent Decree. After the Consent Decree expired in 1996, BM was allowed to reestablish a repair monopoly, and the rest of the industry began to follow suit, to the point that the Repair Association group estimates that by 2023, 90 percent of manufacturers have monopolies on repairs on their items.

As technology advanced, the repairs began to get more complicated, and the DIY spirit began to fade. Devices began to be more complex, as they were designed to be less accessible, guarded by proprietary screws, and with cryptic error codes. An owner repairing their own device became an uphill battle, with the prospect of voided warranty stickers warning the owner to turn back.

This is where the Right to Repair movement begins to emerge as an organic frustration and call for devices that re-engage the DIY spirit. Around 2009, organizations like the Fixit Clinic and Repair Cafe sprouted, offering repair events across the United States, while online forums and chatrooms were filled with DIYers discussing how to fix devices, resolve problems, and work around error codes or other locks; and to accompany those forums, more videos began to be published online walking viewers through how to fix different devices.

As more independent technicians and repair shops spoke up about the difficulty of repairing electronic devices brought to them for repair, the early movements in favor of Right to Repair came in the automotive industry as manufacturers signed memorandums of understanding with given jurisdictions to ensure independent repair technicians and shops and vehicle owners have the necessary information, parts, and tools accessible to allow them to repair as they want.

In 2016, John Deere began to come under scrutiny when the manufacturing company began following trends of using software locks and increasing computation and software to manage a tractor, but at the same time reducing the ability for users to repair their own vehicles. Further, John Deere locked down the repair resources—including schematics, instructions, parts, and tools—causing more consternation as it left farmers and growers without a choice: when the equipment needed a repair, regardless of the time of day or the sensitivity of a given operation, the farmer was required to go to the manufacturer.

This led to a greater push for Right to Repair legislation, coming from more sectors of society. In 2012, prior to this increased pressure, Massachusetts approved a Right to Repair Initiative, which demanded car makers provide independent shops with the same diagnostic and repair information and tools as needed. It would take until 2023 before customers of John Deere would secure the Right to Repair for their tractors, after the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation.

In 2022, New York passed a wider-ranging Right to Repair bill, which would be aimed at correcting the imbalance in power of repairability in consumer electronics. While some were concerned about some of the exemptions in the new law, it also offered a potential roadmap for other legislative development and showed that the Right to Repair movement was gaining ground not only in the public conscience but also with politicians.

As more bills have been passed, including those in Minnesota, California, Quebec, and in the European Union, aimed to reduce the irrepairability of devices and break repair monopolies, the Right to Repair movement has also gained interest from those concerned about the environmental impact of technology, especially technology products that make it to a landfill when a simple fix could continue have them working for longer and keep the product out of the waste cycle. And as more products, especially "smart" products, include more computers and technological protection measures (TPMs), the issues faced by Right to Repair continue to evolve.

These TPMs offer one of the latest concerns faced by the Right to Repair movement. TPMs tend to be protected under copyright laws, and despite some calling the TPM use potential misuse, there are no exemptions or other laws to better limit where and when a TPM can be used. In modern technology, a lot of TPMs are being used to restrict repair in some places and can be used to circumvent even some of the new Right to Repair legislation. However, more legislation in various districts has been tabled to tackle these TPMs.