About Fight to Repair Weekly
Repair is nobody’s “beat.” The Fight to Repair Weekly newsletter hopes to change that.
Hey there! Welcome to Fight to Repair Weekly, a newsletter that covers the global, grassroots battle for a digital right to repair.
Repair is nobody’s beat
This is a new chapter in an ongoing project for me and the culmination of a couple of years of volunteer work on the front lines of the fight for the (digital) right to repair. During that time, I’ve realized that, while there is plenty of outstanding reporting on the right to repair from publications like Wired, Vice and even mainstream publications like the New York Times, it is not properly anyone’s “beat.” But it really should be.
There’s a lot to repair
In its most basic formulation, the battle for a digital right to repair can be boiled down to the question “why is it so hard/expensive to get my cracked smart phone screen repaired?” But the questions surrounding right to repair are much (much) bigger. They touch on topics as varied as software and hardware engineering, the trend towards market and industry consolidation since the dawn of the 21st century, marketing and “disposable” culture, digital rights and copyright law as well as the public policy debate surrounding it (especially the push for right to repair laws in the EU and North America) and - not least of all - the environment and sustainability.
The Fight to Repair Weekly is about making right to repair my “beat,” to to speak, and actually exploring these underlying issues in more depth and with more consistency week-to-week, rather than parachuting in to cover the issue when something is “happening.” Functionally, the Fight to Repair Weekly is a companion to a daily newsletter, the Fight to Repair Daily (sign up here) that has been running for close to a year and that rolls up right to repair news from across the world.
Managing that (mostly automated) newsletter and seeing the various threads of “right to repair” come together convinced me that there is just a lot happening and that some of the bigger questions overarching themes that animate the repair question aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
The Fight to Repair Weekly will be my vehicle to do that. I really hope you enjoy what you read here and will be asking for your feedback and insights on what you’d like to hear more about.
About me
So who am I? I’m this guy: a long time technology journalist. I’ve spent the last 20 years writing about cyber security as both a reporter, editor and industry analyst. Since 2012, I’ve been focused on the intersection of cyber security and the Internet of Things. I created a website, The Security Ledger, that covers that topic and also a MeetUp and event, The Security of Things Forum. In many ways, my writing about the cyber security and privacy implications of connected things brought me to the issue of repair.
First: repair gets at one of the core tensions around the Internet of Things which is this: in a world populated by software driven, Internet connected devices, what does it mean to “own” something as property? What responsibility do device owners, the companies that make connected devices or Internet providers themselves have to all of us - the “commons” - to keep those devices safe and secure? Incidents like the Mirai botnet show that when thousands or millions of connected devices are left unsecured, they are easy prey for criminals and hackers, with consequences for all of us.
So I started attending local Fix-It Clinics and met folks like Nathan Proctor of US PIRG which is leading a nation-wide fight to enact right to repair laws in the states.
That brings me to my second reason for getting engaged with the Right to Repair movement. Simply: cyber security had become the point of the spear in industry efforts to defeat legal efforts to expand repair. Expanding access to diagnostic software, diagnostic codes and device schematics, industry groups argued, would open the door to hackers. As a longtime cyber security reporter, I knew these arguments were bogus - a version of the “security through obscurity” thinking that companies (including Microsoft) long pedaled to keep security researchers at bay.
To counter that disinformation, I tapped my network of security experts and formed a group: SecuRepairs, which gives information technology and information security experts a seat at the table in discussions of the right to repair. In two years time, we’ve notched some real successes. Since then, I have earned a seat on the Board of Directors of The Repair Coalition, the nation’s leading group advocating for a right to repair. I’m looking forward to bringing my perspective to Fight to Repair Weekly and to start exploring some of the broader issues around right to repair.
Free…for now.
This is a new project and I’m going to be busy for the next few months standing up this newsletter, finding my feet and - hopefully - building my subscriber base and a wider audience. At some point in the future, I hope to introduce a paid tier of subscribers as well that will provide access to premium content such as interviews and podcasts, virtual events and more. For now, however, Fight to Repair is free, so enjoy. You can “pay” me, as it were, by giving me brutally honest feedback about what you do and don’t like. That will enable me to improve the product and - hopefully - attract more readers like you. In the meantime, tell your friends!
Also: sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.