New York’s Watered Down ‘Right To Repair’ Bill Goes Live
from the fix-your-own-shit dept
In late 2022, the state of New York finally passed new right to repair legislation after years of activist pressure. The bill, which went live this week, gives New York consumers the right to fix their electronic devices themselves or have them more easily repaired by an independent repair shop, instead of being forced to only obtain repairs through costly manufacturer repair programs.
In short, the bill requires that some manufacturers of some products provide consumers and indie repair shops access to the tools, parts, and manuals needed to repair some consumer tech products. Estimates by consumer groups are that it should save NY consumers somewhere in the ballpark of around $300 per year:
“For many years [repair shops have] been trying to cobble together all of those elements, but big manufacturers have clamped down on access to tools and parts,” Chuck Bell, a program director at Consumer Reports, said on WNYC’s “Morning Edition.” “They’ve made it really hard for consumers to do even simple repairs such as replacing a cracked screen, a battery or a hard drive.”
Here’s the catch: relentless lobbying by numerous tech companies and manufacturers resulted in New York Governor Kathy Hochul aggressively watering down the law before it finally passed. As a result, it doesn’t actually cover many of the sectors where annoying repair monopolization efforts are the worst, including cars, medical devices, agricultural hardware, E-bikes, home alarm systems, or power tools.
The law also only covers any tech product sold in New York on or after July 1, 2023. Additional restrictions, added by industry and Hochul at the last second, force consumers to buy entire “repair assemblages” instead of individual parts. Hochul didn’t really bother to give a useful explanation as to why she lobotomized the law in such a fashion, but the action generally speaks for itself.
Still, any progress is notable for a movement that continues to see widespread, bipartisan public support. All told, Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, Minnesota, Maine and California have all passed some flavor of right to repair legislation, and the momentum shows no sign of slowing down, even if industry has had some notable success ensuring these laws aren’t quite living up to their full potential.
Filed Under: consumer rights, independent repair shops, kathy hochul, new york, new york state, right to repair
Comments on “New York’s Watered Down ‘Right To Repair’ Bill Goes Live”
Wait… so this essentially covers manufacturers of smartphones being forced to let third parties buy and install pre-assembled repair kits?
Sure do wish we had someone lobbying on behalf of the consumer. We had some impact, although not a lot, before the Citizens United decision because elected officials relied on us for campaign funding. Now we have none, and our government is for sale to the highest bidder. Future historians will point to Citizens United as the point where the United States lost its way.
Re:
Citizens United.
Tell me: Am I permitted to make and air an advertisement denouncing [insert politician name here]? Am I allowed to do so with as much of my own money as I want to?
No? Why not?
Yes? Okay… Am I allowed to partner with someone else, who provides … oh, expertise, a studio, acting ability, funding for any of those? Are there any limits on how much money THEY can spend, working with me?
No? Why? What are those limits?
Yes? Okay… Let’s add one more person at a time. Tell me when it becomes illegal, or “wrong to allow”.
Doesn’t become illegal/wrong? Then… what difference does it make, if this group of people has a corporation title?
You’ve got a whole bunch of exit ramps there, but they’ve got First Amendment warning signs on each of them, warning that you may be violating the constitution by taking that ramp.
But please, by all means: enlighten me.
Re: Re:
Advertising is speech, yet commercial speech can still be curtailed in any number of ways. There’s no reason that political speech can’t also be limited in some ways, and – more to the point – that money couldn’t be considered speech. The (obvious) problem with this latter point is that more money = more speech, creating the perverse system we live in today, where a massively wealthy person or corporation can spend a billion dollars to make a billion + $1.
Real-life humans have needs outside of making money, and therefore are limited in the resources we might spend in order to get the things we need (for example, if I want clean water to drink, I’m very limited in what I can spend to bribe my local politician to ensure that my water is clean).
Corporations, whose existence hinges only on making money, have no such limitations. Again, if a given law will make them a billion and one dollars, they can easily spend a billion dollars to make it so. The converse is also true: If a given law would allow me to drink clean water but would cost a polluter a billion dollars, they can easily outspend me in order to prevent that law from passing.
None of this is all that hard to understand unless you’ve chosen to not understand it. It’s SCOTUS once again telling us that the rights of the corporation or wealthy individual are more important than the rights of the average individual.
But in the end, you’re pretending that 100% of speech is identical. The laws regulating commercial speech tells me that you’re entirely wrong, either based on your own ignorance, your status as a very wealthy person, or because you’re a fucking bootlicker.
When?
When our politicians rely on Corps to get money.
Insted of the money THEY AGREED to when taking that job.
Something IS wrong, and Somewhere along the line of checks and balance, there are MORE checks coming, then BALANCE.
The real funny part of this, is that ITS CHEAPER to have the small repair locations to FIX things.
UNLESS, there is a kick back to the main Product maker.
The Concerns that Have is that OTHERS may take the parts and MAKE their own Equal or better devices.
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All it takes is one state to have a fully functional law, and then someone will happily become a middleman to provide things like individual parts and manuals to states which choose not to allow full access to “Right to Repair”.