Companies Are Simply Ignoring Many New State ‘Right To Repair’ Laws
from the fix-your-own-shit dept
Last March Oregon became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states are considering such bills in 2024.
While the popular reforms are a nice example of U.S. consumer rights headed in the right direction, many of the bills (like New York’s) were watered down almost to the point of uselessness to appease larger tech companies. And in many states, companies simply aren’t complying because enforcement has been largely absent.
A recent report by PIRG examined 21 different mainstream tech devices subject to New York’s recently passed electronics Right to Repair law, then graded them “based on the quality and accessibility of repair manuals, spare parts, and other critical repair materials.” Most fared poorly in terms of easy access to parts and manuals, and New York’s done zero enforcement of its own law so far:
“The New York Right to Repair Bill has had mixed success. It has gone a long way in pushing companies towards greater repair standards, but it has been surpassed by newer repair bills in other states like the recent passage in Oregon. In order for this bill to remain useful for the people of New York, it should be updated to bring it in line with newer repair standards, as well as provide greater enforcement to move companies towards full compliance in the future.“
NY’s lax enforcement is not particularly surprising, given that NY Governor Kathy Hochul went out of her way to make her state’s law as loophole-filled as possible.
In California, the state legislature recently passed SB-244, the Right to Repair Act, which only just took effect last July. The bill requires that appliance and electronics companies make repair manuals, parts, and tools widely available to consumers, repair shops, and service dealers. But companies in California also seem in no particular rush to come into compliance with the new state law:
“Even though the law’s been in effect for nearly two months now, a couple repair shop owners tell KSBY some manufacturers are not following it…[local independent repair shop owner Eric] Vanderlip told KSBY he reached out to Bose and Polk Audio for schematic diagrams and manuals for certain products, but neither would provide them.
KSBY then reached out to both companies and has not heard back.”
Cool.
Laws are, of course, only worth something if they’re meaningfully enforced, and so far there have not been many indications that major companies are rushing to comply with these new consumer right to repair protections, or that state officials are in any particular rush to make them. Granted many of these laws are new, and it’s going to take a few shots over the bows of major offenders to spark compliance.
The problem is many of these bills already carved out many of the more problematic industries and hardware, including agricultural hardware and medical gear manufacturers. It’s been amazing to see the progress activists have made with these reforms, but it would be a shame if such reforms with widespread bipartisan support wound up being predominantly performative.
Filed Under: california, consumers, drm, hardware, manuals, new york, reform, right to repair, state law, tools
Companies: bose, polk audio
Comments on “Companies Are Simply Ignoring Many New State ‘Right To Repair’ Laws”
some laws are consumer enforced
Non-compliance just begs for a class-action lawsuit.
Isn’t it funny that corporate crime is the least enforced and least meaningful
You can’t exactly arrest a company and put them in jail.
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Of course we could. The actions of a corporation are directed by and done by people after all.
We just make the choice to have corporations act as a legal shield for the rich.
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Not in jail, but out of the state.
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Hopefully with a grace window so the merchant, who didn’t piss off the state, can get rid of goods they already bought.
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“You can’t exactly arrest a company and put them in jail.”
Maybe we should require said corporation/company to have a representative resident within the country so that we could put that person in prison whenever we decide we do not like what said corporation/company is doing and or saying.
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No, that’d just be scapegoating.
Many companies selling into the USA have American subsidiaries, and are thus already subject to American law; employees of such a subsidiary with the necessary right-to-repair data could, in principle, be compelled to provide it.
Beside that, we’ve still got access to tariffs, import bans, and the like; products that are non-compliant with US law can be blocked (or, more realistically, pushed to the black market; but, really, who’s buying black-market headphones and such?).
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Sorry – it was a weak attempt at humor relative to another story about elmo and brazil.
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Decent points, but pretty sure that is a comment on the “hostage laws” enacted by some countries, which most recently at td have come up with respect to Brazil v Space Karen.
Re: maybe
how to jail a corporation
It is obviously impossible to physically restrain a corporation in the same way as a natural person.
However, if we regard the body of the natural person as a proxy for the self of that individual then the intended effect of imprisonment is the removal of capabilities, movement, association etc.
It should be possible to come up with a similar set of proxies and restrictions on the body corporate.
It should be noted that in general the body of the imprisoned remains inviolate (at least in recent times) so we should initially focus on the boundaries of the corporation.
A possible proxy could be shares of the company – in this case imprisonment would be freezing of all transfers for the period of imprisonment; this would include forfeit of all dividends. You could argue that this unjustly damages the shareholders but there are 2 responses to that;
Choosing to buy involves choosing to take on the responsibility for the company’s actions,
it is accepted that imprisonment of natural persons may adversely affect other people, for example imprisoning a wage earner will affect other family members.
It used to be people were concerned the TV was listening to them. Now they’re concerned when the stereo isn’t.
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And here I’ve been eyeing the microwave for its nefarious activities.
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Microwaves are easily overlooked on account of their size.
Companies Are Simply Ignoring Laws
and have been for some time
When the penalty is a speeding ticket why would they comply?
They will continue to gouge their victims until the laws force them to be fair, and since they have bought most of Congress thanks to Citizens United and the new SCOTUS ruling of bribes aren’t really bribes, does anyone think this will get better?
Companies calling governmental bluffs
A law never enforced is one that effectively doesn’t exist.
When it comes to companies at least it doesn’t matter what’s on the law books, merely what parts are actually enforced and much more importantly whether breaking the law is more profitable than following it.
I wish
That I/a consumer could walk into a Business and ask for my device to be repaired by the company that built it.
AND if denied, have a police officer arrest the manager/boss.
ON THE SPOT.
But I know how this got started, and how Stores LOVE IT. But the Quality of the products is in the DIRT and price are going UP, for NO REASON.
There is an LG part used by many company on refrigerators. Life expectancy? 2 years and 60% failure rate. And no other part will FIT.
Re: Apple?
Apple will gladly do that for you. They’ll charge you more than the device is worth, but they’ll fix it.
Microsoft’s new “repairable” surface’s were repairable at first until “they’re fixable!” reviews came in.
NOW they’re filled with glue, they’ve attached delicate wires from the processor to the CASE…so opening the device destroys the CPU etc etc.
False premise
The core talking points behind the so called ‘right to repair’ movement are for the most part false. Not for all sectors, but definitely in the mobility and home appliance space.
The range of convenient repair options for customers has never been greater nor has the ubiquity of repair locations.
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Seriously! People can just pay a lot of money to get their device repaired by an authorized dealer or just buy a new one and toss the other one in a landfill. Nobody wants or needs to repair something themselves. They especially don’t need to open it up and see how it works, how they might want to modify it, see how they might want to disable privacy-violating features or tweak the software. After all, just because they bought it doesn’t mean they own it! Now pardon me, I’m going to throw this computer away after typing this comment. I just buy a new one after every few hours on the internet because it’s so convenient and affordable.