The bills would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair companies and would also require them to open source diagnostic manuals. It would also give independent repair professionals the ability to bypass software locks that prevent repairs, allowing them to return a gadget back to its factory settings.
Right to repair advocates are looking at this movement as a perhaps decade-long process that will require a grassroots movement of consumers to push back against the long-entrenched repair monopolies of companies like Apple, John Deere, and video game console manufacturers.
It"s heartening, then, that the bills in Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina were introduced without the help of Repair.org, the trade organization of independent repair professionals that is pushing for these laws elsewhere. While Repair.org has been heavily involved in crafting legislation in places like New York, Massachusetts, and Nebraska, the group wasn"t even aware that the movement had spread to three new states until last week.
"It came out of the blue to me," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the organization, told me. "We did nothing and they just popped up, which validates that this is an important problem for a lot of people who have been independently looking for a solution to repair monopolies."
"The fact that there were eight states that had already filed bills seems to have served as an inspiration," she added.
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