The battle for the right to repair continues to be an active battle as several companies and lawmakers are concerned about safety, cybersecurity and design innovation. But with concerns about e-waste, device quality and the health of independent repair shops, proponents like iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens are holding their gloves high. Leading up to Ars Technica’s first annual Ars Frontiers event in Washington, DC, last week we had a live stream with Wies investigating this critical technical issue.
Make it a federal case
Technical repairs became complicated in 1998 when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF]† Section 1201 of the Copyright Act essentially made it illegal to distribute tools for, or break encryption on, manufactured products. Created with DVD piracy in mind, it made repairing things like computers and tractors significantly more difficult, if not illegal, without the manufacturer’s permission. It also represented “a total change of what historic property rights were,” Wiens said.
This makes Washington, DC, the primary battleground for the fight for the right to repair.
“Because this law has been passed at the federal level, the states cannot pre-empt. Congress at the federal level has re-established copyright policy. This fix needs to be done at the federal level in the US,” Wiens told Ars Technica at the Road to Frontiers conference. reading.
The good news is that the US Copyright Office holds hearings every three years to discuss possible exemptions. Proponents of the right to reparation hope Congress will schedule this year’s hearing soon.
Wiens also emphasized the adoption of the Freedom to Repair Act [PDF] introduced earlier this year as critical to addressing Section 1201 and creating a permanent exemption for the repair of engineering products.
Apple’s Promising, Imperfect Progress
Apple’s self-service repair program launched last month marked a huge step forward for the right to repair, initiated by a company that has long resisted.
Wiens applauded the program, which provides repair guides for the iPhone 12, 13 and the latest SE and will eventually expand to computers. He emphasized how difficult it is for iFixit to reverse engineer such products to determine important repair details, such as whether a specific screw is 1 or 1.1 mm.
Apple’s program also offers repair tools, which mainly benefit independent repair shops, Wiens noted. But that doesn’t mean Apple can’t be more repair-friendly.
“What Apple is doing wrong in this case is that they continue with this strategy of attaching specific parts to the phone,” Wiens explains.
“If you take two brand new iPhone 13s and swap the screens, you don’t necessarily get all the functionality you’d expect, which is strange because if you take two cars and swap the motors, they just work just fine. … You take two Samsungs, and you swap the screens, they work fine.”
The CEO is concerned that despite Apple’s claim to provide a detailed service history, this tactic could lead to the banning of aftermarket parts.
“The repair economy, the circular economy around iPhones, is significant. … It creates a lot of jobs,” Wiens said. “Apple could easily short-circuit that economy by using these cryptographic locks to attach parts to phones. Then this would align with Section 1201 because it might be illegal to bypass those locks to get an aftermarket part working again. “
A recoverable future
Wiens envisioned a world where gadgets not only last longer, but where you can build relationships with local businesses to make your products work. He lamented the loss of businesses such as local camera and TV repair shops that have been extinguished by suppliers who no longer supply parts and tools.
“I think it’s the duty of all of us to say, what kind of economy do we want? Do we want a high street where we have local people who know how to fix and maintain our things? Or do we want a factory assembly line where we make stuff in Asia, we dump it here, use it as long as it works, and then there’s no maintenance plan for it,” Wiens said.
He also discussed the idea of giving gadgets a second and even third life: an outdated smartphone can become a baby monitor or a smart thermostat.
“I think we need to talk about smartphone life in terms of 20, 25 years,” Wiens said.
