This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here within this Climate Desk cooperation.
For the past several decades, as state legislators across the country have held hearings to consider “right-to-repair” bills which would make it easier for consumers to mend their electronics , lobbyists representing manufacturers have revealed up to replicate the same disagreements over and above: Letting people mend their own material is too dangerous. It generates cybersecurity risks. It infringes on intellectual property. It won’t help reduce electronic waste.
However while it remains to be seen if these arguments will win over some of the dozen state legislatures now contemplating a right-to-repair bill, one definitive body isn’t purchasing them at all: the Federal Trade Commission.
Last week, the FTC published that a long-anticipated report to Congress examining the fix restrictions facing consumers, along with a summary of arguments for and against those limitations. Its judgment was crude: There’s “Negative evidence” to encourage manufacturers’ justifications for limiting fix, while the answers fix advocates have suggested are “well endorsed ” with their testimonials. Advocates state that forcing companies such as Apple and Tesla to release components, manuals, and diagnostic data needed for fix will make mending broken devices faster and less expensive. Finally, this can encourage us to keep our stuff instead of replacing it, resulting in less environmental harm and electronic waste.
With the release of this title, the FTC has signaled that it plans to step up its attempts to enforce legislation aimed at preventing producers from restricting repair. But the symbolic nature of this report may be more important than whatever punitive actions that the agency chooses following.
The right to fix movement–which promotes the idea that everyone should to be able to fix the devices they own however they need, any time they want–includes “simply been given a huge shot in the arm,” stated Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive manager of The Repair Association, a right-to-repair advocacy group.
Kerry Maeve Sheehan, the US policy direct at the repair manual website iFixit, consented. “[F]inally a government agency is stating exactly what we’t said all along–that manufacturers’ justifications for imposing fix limitations aren’t endorsed by evidence,” Sheehan wrote in an email.
The analysis traces its roots back to a July 2019 workshop that the FTC held to research how producers restrict repair of the apparatus. The workshop brought together right-to-repair advocates, groups representing producers of everything from gaming consoles to home appliances, and independent investigators. It encouraged everyone to submit empirical research on the fix landscape. A year later, Congress directed that the FTC to issue a report summarizing its findings, with a focus on mobile phone and automobile markets.
These findings amount to nothing less than a wholesale rejection of these anti-repair arguments advanced with lobbyists not only for mobile phone and car businesses, but home appliance industries, medical device makers, and more. In its 56-page account, the FTC lays out frequent manufacturer arguments in favor of limiting repair. For every single debate, the Commission reaches a similar conclusion: There’s little evidence to support it.
Microsoft claimed layout choices which restrict repairability–like using glue instead of screws–are pushed by consumer tastes.
Take security concerns. Companies will often argue that limiting accessibility to this information and materials needed for fix prevents consumers, or mechanics that lack adequate training, from hurting themselves. For example, individuals attempting to swap the lithium ion within their phone might unwittingly puncture it, causing the battery to experience “sub-par event”–or in layman’s terms, overheat and explode. But besides a single 2011 incident between a mobile phone that undergone a thermal runaway incident on a plane following a faulty autonomous repair, producers supplied the FTC no signs of harms tied to individual fix. Nor did they furnish any information demonstrating that their authorized repair shops are more careful. Meanwhile, the years ’ worth of signs by the automobile repair business shows that even the most harmful consumer products could be safely fixed by an independent professional.
Other disagreements followed a similar pattern. Consumer technology producers told the FTC that committing a system which contains sensitive personal information, such as, for instance, a notebook, over to a different store can create security risks. But they failed to give evidence that independent repair companies are more inclined to mishandle that information than the manufacturer. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers advised the agency which manufacturer-backed repair suppliers help maintain the “manufacturer reputation” of businesses, however it didn’t show that consumers were satisfied with fix tasks conducted by independent mechanics. And while Microsoft argued that design options which restrict apparatus repairability–such as using glue instead of screws to secure batteries and displays set up –are driven by consumer taste, empirical research has indicated that consumers also care about the durability and repairability of the devices.
The FTC was much more sympathetic to fix advocates’ asserts that manufacturer barriers make fixes take longer and cost more. Additionally, it agreed with advocates that increasing access to repair may have environmental benefits, from reducing the energy use associated with making new devices into slowing the wave of toxic electronic waste. Industry lobbyists state that they have already employed take-back programs which have pushed e-waste levels down, but many experts say this debate is misleading. While the entire quantity of e-waste has been declining in the US as electronics get smaller and lighter, researchers state that the sophistication of today’s tablets tablet computers, and wellness TVs makes them more difficult to reuse and recycle. Sheehan of iFixit included that many nation electronics recycling legislation pay “a limited scope of goods,” such as old, bulky cathode-ray tubing televisions however not newer technologies like smart fridges.
All in all, the FTC concluded that the fix barriers manufacturers create possess “steered consumers into producers ’ fix networks to replace products before the end of the useful lives” with no decent justification.
“This is a huge tool for people,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the right-to-repair campaign at the advocacy nonprofit US Public Research Interest Group, said of the new FTC report. “We certainly will use this report to advocate for country right to fix laws. ”
“We certainly will use this report to advocate for country right to fix laws. ”
Really, the record comes as dozens of state legislatures have lately considered bills that could make it easier to fix little electronics, household appliances, and medical and farm equipment. The pandemic has helped fuel those invoices by spotlighting the “digital split ” between wealthier, whiter, more urban communities, which have more access to the electronic devices they need to work and learn remotely compared with lower income, ruralcommunities and communities of colour. Advocates argue that making it a lot much easier to mend broken devices could narrow that split, since fixing a telephone or notebook will become a cheaper option than replacing it. The pandemic has also demonstrated that allowing producers restrict the utilization of technical equipment like ventilators could be a matter of life and death.
While advocates continue to push for the right to fix to get enshrined into lawenforcement, the FTC may start cracking down on businesses that violate existing laws. The Commission’s investigation into fix restrictions came , in part, due to its concern over companies violating the so-called “anti-tying supply ” of the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which makes it illegal for producers to void warranties if consumers go into an independent store or use an off-brand component to repair their devices. In the event you’ve been advised by, say, the business that produced your phone printer which opening this up and repairing yourself will void your warranty, you understand this law is not being harshly enforced.
“People have this idea in their heads which they’re somehow violating a contract with a producer ” if they mend their apparatus, ” said Proctor. “And that is cultivated continuously and aggressively with producers. ”
But the Wild West days of businesses creating their own warranty principles could be numbered. The afternoon its report came out, the FTC’s official Twitter accounts called on members of the public to ship in an account if they were told that their warranty would be voided by an independent fix.
A spokesperson for the FTC advised Grist that along with “pursuing proper law enforcement options” with respect to this Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, the FTC would be looking into different regulatory and legal paths to encourage private fix “consistent with our statutory authority” and also teaching consumers about their rights.
“The Commission also stands willing to work with legislators, either at the state or federal level, to be able to make sure that consumers have options when they need to fix products that they buy and own,” the spokesperson stated.
Article Source and Credit motherjones.com https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/ftc-report-tech-right-repair-iphone-ifixit/ Buy Tickets for every event – Sports, Concerts, Festivals and more buytickets.com
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