Mass. Begins Enforcing New ‘Right To Repair’ Law After Automakers Lied It Would Aid Sexual Predators
from the fix-your-own-shit dept
In late 2020, Massachusetts lawmakers (with overwhelming public support) passed an expansion of the state’s “right to repair” law. The original law was the first in the nation to be passed in 2013. The update dramatically improved it, requiring that all new vehicles be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform that allows owners and third-party repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device.
The goal: reduce repair monopolies, and make it cheaper and easier to get your vehicle repaired (with the added bonus of less environmental harm).
Mass. automakers immediately got to work trying to scare the press, public, and legislators away from the improvements by running ads claiming that the updated legislation would be a boon to sexual predators. They also filed suit under the banner of the inaccurately named Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which stalled the bill from taking effect.
And while that lawsuit still hasn’t been resolved, Massachusetts Attorney general Andrea Campbell has started issuing warnings that the state will finally begin enforcing the bill whether giant car manufacturers like it or not:
“The people of Massachusetts deserve the benefit of the law they approved more than two years ago,” Campbell said. “Consumers and independent repair shops deserve to know whether they will receive access to vehicle repair data in the manner provided by the law. Auto manufacturers and dealers need to understand their obligations under the law and take action to achieve compliance.”
Automakers aren’t alone in their efforts to try and demonize popular, bipartisan reforms. Giants like Apple and John Deere have also spent years trying to defend their profitable repair monopolies by claiming that making access to less expensive options will result in an absolute parade of security and privacy problems for consumers. A bipartisan 2021 FTC study found the complaints to be empty, self-serving bluster.
Filed Under: andrea campbell, auto mechanics, environmental waste, massachusetts, right to repair
Comments on “Mass. Begins Enforcing New ‘Right To Repair’ Law After Automakers Lied It Would Aid Sexual Predators”
Well, companies can’t directly attack a law by saying it will hurt their profits and save customers money, so the pick a scare story, with a good chance that a lot of people will not realize that it is just that a scare story, and not a real problem.
Couple of your links are borked.
Enforcing how?
I don’t see anything here about enforcement having started. The Attorney General announced that they planned to enforce it starting June 1, 2023, which is indeed in the past. But I don’t see any description of actions that deserve to be called “enforcement”, there’s a lawsuit that seeks to prevent enforcement, and I see nothing about penalties being issued or the required repair information being provided. Am I missing something?
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Automakers (and thus dealerships) are required to now supply the telematics notice.
Whether the state requires buyers to complain to the AG, or whether the buyers have to take legal action on their own dime, I do not know. You’d have to check the law to see what (if any) penalties were put in for failing to supply notice (or failing to supply the data on demand).
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According to the older Techdirt story, that’s been the case since 2022, and just hasn’t been enforced. So what’s changed? As far as I can tell, just that the AG is saying they’re going to enforce it. Which in my view hasn’t happened until that information is in the hands of car-owners and independent repair shops.
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Enforcement doesn’t begin with compliance. Commencing enforcement means notifying companies they are in breach, developing a case, and finally court action. Legally forcing the Delivery the data streams is the endgame of enforcement, not step one.
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That makes a bit of sense, but the notification could’ve been sent long ago, at which point the AG could’ve started building a case. It’s not like it’s a secret the companies are out of compliance; they pretty much admitted it when they sued the state to avoid complying.
The underlying problem is that there are enough poorly educated people, i.e., not capable of thinking for themselves, that the “but think of the children” nonsense actually influences a vocal minority. There’s an enormous amount of money being continually spent to keep these people inflamed and fearful, and that magnifies the problem…and the ability of various organizations to continually stir the pot.
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I resigned from a charity that actively sought funds for lending it’s name to the charlatan “grass roots” vaporware organizations.
The thing that really torqued me up was how cheap they’d sell out. Frequently $200 or so. I mean, I could understand (and still not approve) if it were $200,000, but really? A trip around “GO” in Monopoly? That’s a cheap date.
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A cheap date still have some standards who they’ll engage with.
Missed their chance to kill it
They missed their chance to say it would aid CHILD sexual predators.
One thing that might help Right to Repair at the federal level is a change to the DMCA. Right now a lot of companies get away with repair monopolies because all the info needed for repair is hidden behind encryption – ostensibly to protect the copyrighted software. If the DMCA is amended so that cracking encryption isn’t a separate violation of the law, but only raises copyright infringement to willful copyright infringement or as an aggravating factor in cases where willful infringement is proven by other factors, that would reduce the risk for the people who reverse-engineer computer-controlled devices.
OTOH, an FTC executive ruling for right to repair may be easier to obtain than any kind of contentious bill in this congress.
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Fixed that for you.
If a corporation, or especially an organization of corporations resist a law, that’s one way to know it is definitely important and must be enforced.
Let’s see…telemetrics didn’t used to be a problem, but now: “Oh my safety, my children’s safety, my cat’s safety”. Why not just have clear glass walls on public bathrooms because “Safety” (drown prevention and all).
It’s all about control, and modern tech is running straight towards prophecy.
Revelation 13:16,17 (Biblegateway.com)
It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
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Soooo…
My IP Address?
the only people bigger than the idiots who believed this shit claim are the ones who tried to use it as a way of keeping total control of a product they sell!!
This the same law? If so, looks like the federal government is ordering automakers NOT to comply with the law.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-tells-automakers-not-comply-with-massachusetts-vehicle-data-law-2023-06-13/