California to introduce The Right to Repair Act forcing companies to allow consumers to repair tech (and non tech) products

[AlTech]

California will become the 18th state to pass the new 2018 Right To Repair Act.

 

The act allows customers and consumers to have devices repaired by 3rd parties easily. Whether 3rd parties repairing devices continues to void warranty is another matter entirely.

 

This act builds upon the strong foundation which is in California's civil code which states that replacement parts for devices must be made available for 7 years after a product's release.

 

Apple and Microsoft have been strongly opposing this kind of regulation in many states.  This particular bill was endorsed by iFixit and some other small companies. 

 

 

Quote

"The Right to Repair Act will provide consumers with the freedom to have their electronic products and appliances fixed by a repair shop or service provider of their choice, a practice that was taken for granted a generation ago but is now becoming increasingly rare in a world of planned obsolescence," Eggman said

 

Quote

In addition to California, 17 other states have already introduced similar Right to Repair legislation, including Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia. 

Several states began introducing Right to Repair legislation early last year, and the Right to Repair movement has continued on since then, spurred by Apple's iPhone throttling controversy. 

Since last year, Apple has been lobbying against Right to Repair bills in various states, as have several other technology companies. In Nebraska, for example, Apple saidapproving Right to Repair would turn the state into a "mecca for bad actors" making it "easy for hackers to relocate to Nebraska." Other arguments from tech companies and appliance manufacturers have suggested Right to Repair bills would compromise device security and safety. 

Right to Repair bills are heavily endorsed by repair outlets like iFixit, independent repair shops, and consumer advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 

In California specifically, the Right to Repair bill is particularly interesting because as Motherboard points out, there are strong repairability laws already in place. California Civil Code Section 1793.03 states that companies must offer parts for repair for at least seven years after a product is released, which is why on Apple's vintage and obsolete products list, it lists California as the sole state where consumers can continue to get repairs on vintage products. 

 

So yeah, cool. Hopefully the other US states pass a similar bill to allow consumers to repair devices. And I seriously doubt that this will cause a mecca of hackers like Apple claims.

 

Source:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/07/california-right-to-repair-bill/

[DocSwag]

Awesome! Question though, can companies still sell repair parts for ridiculously expensive prices though?

[MadOverclocker]

Just now, DocSwag said:

Awesome! Question though, can companies still sell repair parts for ridiculously expensive prices though?

I think that they still can overprice but company repairs MIGHT go lower.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

Awesome! Question though, can companies still sell repair parts for ridiculously expensive prices though?

Yes sadly although it does help California has strong regulation forcing companies to sell parts a while after they come out.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, MadOverclocker said:

I think that they still can overprice but company repairs MIGHT go lower.

In many states, companies like Apple were lobbying for consumers to not be allowed to have products repaired at 3rd party repair shops.

[suicidalfranco]

iPhone spare battery for 500$ coming soon

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Awesome! Question though, can companies still sell repair parts for ridiculously expensive prices though?

Yes but now they'll have competition and they won't have  the law on their side when trying to undermine said competition.

 

This won't stop a bunch of fools paying Apple $200 to repair their $500 phone.

[MadOverclocker]

2 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

In many states, companies like Apple were lobbying for consumers to not be allowed to have products repaired at 3rd party repair shops.

Well that's a dickmove, tbh not something new in apple.

[MadOverclocker]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

This won't stop a bunch of fools paying Apple $200 to repair their $500 phone.

Sadly, it will not. But smarter people will go the Repair themselves.

[MadOverclocker]

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

In many states, companies like Apple were lobbying for consumers to not be allowed to have products repaired at 3rd party repair shops.

Let me guess, Sony was there too right?

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, MadOverclocker said:

Let me guess, Sony was there too right?

I don't think so. It was mainly just Microsoft and Apple.

[DrMacintosh]

7 years seems pretty excessive. And I personally am not the biggest fan of telling companies what they can and cannot do to a certain extent. 

 

Being able to fix your devices was never the problem, the problem was that third party shops want an easy way to stay in business so the bill got lobbied and spun to make it seem like this was really a consumer protection issue. 

 

While it technically is a consumer protection issue, it was never going to be illegal to service something you own, because you know, it’s your property. 

 

Its great that the bill is being introduced and it’s probably a good thing, but just know it wasn’t started by average joes. It was started by people like Louis Rossmann (who is a great guy) wanting to protect their livelyhood from companies that don’t want their parts floating around everywhere. 

 

I would not put it past these companies to inflate the value of their parts if the bill does pass as to keep shops from abusing it.

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

7 years seems pretty excessive. And I personally am not the biggest fan of telling companies what they can and cannot do to a certain extent. 

 

Being able to fix your devices was never the problem, the problem was that third party shops want an easy way to stay in business so the bill got lobbied and spun to make it seem like this was really a consumer protection issue. 

 

While it technically is a consumer protection issue, it was never going to be illegal to service something you own, because you know, it’s your property. 

 

Its great that the bill bill is being introduced and it’s probably a good thing, but just know it wasn’t started by average joes. It was started by people like Louis Rossmann (who is a great guy) wanting to protect their livelyhood from companies that don’t want their parts floating around everywhere. 

 

I would not put it past these companies to inflate the value of their parts if the bill does pass as to keep shops from abusing it.

Yes that evil Louis Rossmann is a very powerful lobbyist capable of outbidding fucking Apple and Microsoft apparently.

[BluJay614]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Yes that evil Louis Rossmann is a very powerful lobbyist capable of outbidding fucking Apple and Microsoft apparently.

Do you genuinely think he was remotely close to the only one? Besides, I know while he was all for it, I'm doubtful he would go so far as to actually lobby for it.

[Misanthrope]

4 minutes ago, BluJay614 said:

Do you genuinely think he was remotely close to the only one? Besides, I know while he was all for it, I'm doubtful he would go so far as to actually lobby for it.

I genuinely think even 10,000 small repair shop owners would have next to no political pull against the 2 most powerful tech companies in the world including the biggest company in the world full stop if their case was without inherit merit.

 

Sorry to brake it to you but people actually believe in consumer rights and not being left at the behest of companies intentionally trying to plan their devices to become obsolete quickly.

[AresKrieger]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

that replacement parts for devices must be made available for 7 years after a product's release.

 

This is the only part of this I take issue with as in many cases it is not possible as parts go into end of life status which means your vendor for said part is no longer producing them, also what qualifies as an appliance and am I held liable if their "fixed" item kills them.

 

(now I'm not saying the 7 years is inherently bad but it would be better is it had exemptions due to availability limitations)

[MikeSK]

I would like to speculate the following:
Apple's business plan is to create and maintain an ecosystem with locked in customers.  To defend their profit ecosystem, they rigorously generate recorded IP and attempt to sue competition out of existence.  Due to their success, they are considered a monopoly.

Microsoft wants to push everybody away from their released self maintained software and services to their virtualized software and service.  With this achieved, they can maintain a constant revenue stream without having to deliver new and beneficial services to customers to make a profit.   This can be facilitated by removing support for past products and charging high support fees for them.

 

Note:  The following could be considered philosophy, but may be considered a solution to this topic in general.  Proposal:   If you could greatly curtail the definition of IP, all above may be remedied by the market.  The one who gets the sale wins.  The one who sits on their intellect starves.  Individuals, small businesses and groups can be very flexible and work with other like minded to replace the large corporations and thus distribute opportunity and wealth to those that put in the effort.  We also have issues with an economy primary based on capitalization and the courts without regard to the people it affects.

[MikeSK]

13 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

While it technically is a consumer protection issue, it was never going to be illegal to service something you own, because you know, it’s your property. 

When I have read the terms of use, it has implied that even though I have purchased the item, I am only entitled to use the item as they have specified in the contract of sale.  So, if you purchased a hammer from them, you could only drive in the nails they exclusively sell.

[GDRRiley]

Nice work my state. Now wheres net neutrally. lets get both these done this week. 

[Terryv]

Some here have a very narrow view of what this ruling represents.

 

It's not just about parts availability, but also about documentation and tools made available on how to fix and prevents artificial lockouts with hardware DRM.

 

Just ask some farmers about repairs on their tractors (John Deere in particular).

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Terryv said:

Just ask some farmers about repairs on their tractors (John Deere in particular).

Absolutely, if anyone thinks it is fair a farmer should have to pay (literally in some cases) $1000's to take their tractor in for the replacement of a $50 sensor then they have no idea how bad it is that right to repair is not a thing.

[Mira Yurizaki]

There was an act passed in 1975 called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. There's a clause in there that prohibits companies from forcing consumers to go with only "approved" repairing services or suppliers (they call it "tying")

 

So I'm trying to figure out why this is a thing when it appears to be already a thing on the Federal level.

[Terryv]

6 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

There was an act passed in 1975 called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. There's a clause in there that prohibits companies from forcing consumers to go with only "approved" repairing services or suppliers (they call it "tying")

 

So I'm trying to figure out why this is a thing when it appears to be already a thing on the Federal level.

John Deere, for example. Have the only tools in existence to diagnose your equipment failures. They also have hardware DRM in place, even if you did know what the failure is, you need to be able to "activate it" so that it actually works at all.

 

You can have said tractor serviced anywhere you want, but they won't be able to.

 

Right to repair forces them to provide others the tools and information to do said repairs.

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Terryv said:

John Deere, for example. Have the only tools in existence to diagnose your equipment failures. They also have hardware DRM in place, even if you did know what the failure is, you need to be able to "activate it" so that it actually works at all.

 

You can have said tractor serviced anywhere you want, but they won't be able to.

So why does it need to be a separate thing? If it's preventing me from using any other service than the one the manufacturer is forcing me to use, it's tying.

 

That's like making a new law specifying that a certain type of killing is illegal when it could've just fallen under one of the three degrees of murder.

[Terryv]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

So why does it need to be a separate thing? If it's preventing me from using any other service than the one the manufacturer is forcing me to use, it's tying.

 

That's like making a new law specifying that a certain type of killing is illegal when it could've just fallen under one of the three degrees of murder.

The Magnuson moss act only prevents them from denying you warranty for taking your things to a 3rd party for repairs.