The Week in Repair Dec 13-20
In Canada: a push for a right to repair. Dell unveils Luna concept laptop with focus on repair. Also: Zephyr Teachout on how Big-Ag, Big-Tech threaten democracy.
Trudeau calls for Canadian Right to Repair
The right to repair movement got a big boost from the government of Canada, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed his Minister of Environment and Climate Change to work with the country’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry to implement a “right to repair” to extend the life of home appliances, particularly electronics, and require businesses to inform Canadians of the environmental impacts of consumer products. The move, which is being likened to the Biden Administration’s instruction to the FTC to pursue restrictions on repair also instructs Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry to "Work with the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to implement a ‘right to repair’ to extend the life of home appliances, particularly electronics. (pm.gc.ca)
Dell unveils Luna Concept PC that disassembles easily
Last week, I was able to check out Concept Luna...It's a laptop aimed at helping Dell achieve its environmental goals by offering parts that are easier to repair, reuse, and recycle. The machine is built to open up easily, so you can harvest its motherboard or other parts to use in future systems. Through this process, Dell hopes that a motherboard will be able to be used in up to three machines. (Ars Technica)
Repair listed in FTC Letter on Regulatory Priorities (PDF)
A December 9 letter from the FTC outlining its regulatory priorities says that “unfair methods of competition” will be a priority in 2022, including restrictions on repair. Citing a recent Biden Administration Executive Order that encouraged the Commission to consider competition rule-makings, the Commission cited the right to repair along with “pay-for-delay” pharmaceutical agreements, unfair competition in online marketplaces, occupational licensing, real-estate listing and brokerage, non-compete clauses and surveillance as areas where it may be issuing new rules to stymie anti-competitive behavior. (FTC.gov)
Why iFixit’s Partnership with Microsoft is Great News for the Right to Repair Movement
Opening up the range of tools available to independent repairers will help to reduce the number of Surface devices that hit the rubbish heap after sustaining damage or other issues, and is another step forward for Microsoft alongside the right to repair movement. (MakeUseOf.com)
The Metaverse Needs a Right to Repair, too!
As companies like Facebook and SnapChat work to make so-called “Extended Reality” (or XR) technologies ubiquitous, those companies should respect and governments should protect people’s right to repair, alter, or investigate the functionality of their own devices, writes the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (EFF.org)
Man sees Tesla Repair Estimate. Blows Up His Tesla In Protest
Tuomas Katainen, a Finland-based man, blew his Tesla up using 30kgs of dynamite upon receiving the company’s sky-high estimate for engine repair. An effigy of Elon Musk was strapped to the front seat and blown up with the car. The owner of the 2013 Tesla Model S, Katainen was unsatisfied with the company’s customer service and expressed his disappointment in quite an unusual way. He started facing issues in the instrument cluster and its repair cost was coming out to be around €20,000 and without any guarantee. (edtimes.in)
Celebrating 2021: digital access, learning from our repairs and the Right to Repair
As the pandemic forced more of our daily lives online, it brought the digital divide into sharp focus. People without access to devices were left even further behind. So in January, we launched our ‘laptops for lockdown’ campaign. Thanks to your support, we helped local projects collect, repair and distribute laptops to school children. In the process we realised how important repair is for digital access. Also, crucially and for the first time, the public made the connection between issues of social inequality and waste. (TheRestartProject.org)
Podcast: Zephyr Teachout on Building an Antimonopoly Movement
Zephyr Teachout, author of Break’ Em Up: Recovering our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money, and ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell discuss the increased recognition of the intersection of race and antimonopoly throughout history. Teachout reveals some of the ways that corporate entities are posing a threat to our democracy. (ILSR.org)
In Maine: More Devices than ever. But Nobody knows where They end up.
Mainers are generating more electronic waste than ever. And no one knows what percentage of that waste is sent for recycling. That’s a problem. Without understanding what’s available to be recycled, Maine does not know how successful its program is at diverting products from landfills, where discarded electronic devices can leach toxins. The state has no idea whether a drop in e-waste collection over the past six years is due primarily to lighter devices, fewer devices being collected for recycling — or both. (penbaypilot.com)
Poll shows GOP Voters More Likely to support Anti-Trust Laws
There is a bipartisan consensus among voters in Republican-heavy Iowa to update legislation to hold tech companies accountable. However, in a bit of a twist, more Republicans than Democrats back measures curbing abuses of power by large technology firms and strengthening laws to keep markets competitive, according to the results of a poll by Data For Progress shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. For example, 87% of Republicans say they at least somewhat support the American Innovation and Choice Online (AICO) Act, introduced by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, compared to 65% of Democrats. (DailyCaller.com)
Consumers to make Sustainability a Business Imperative in 2022
Consumers increasingly factor sustainability into their online and offline purchasing decisions. They’re paying attention to the sellers’ ethical practices, whether products or their components are sustainably sourced, and if they have eco-friendly product packaging (size, material, and recyclability) and delivery (vehicle and location options). (emarketer.com)
Right to Repair Law Gives New Car Buyers Choice on Service in South Africa
Service or maintenance plans have been part of the purchase price of most new cars sold in SA in recent years. The Right to Repair campaign successfully lobbied to have these plans unbundled from car prices to give consumers the choice of servicing their vehicles at independent service providers (ISPs) at a potentially cheaper cost. “Ford is acutely aware of consumers’ growing desire and right to choose where they wish to service, maintain or repair their vehicles,” said Neale Hill, president Ford Motor Company Africa (timeslive.co.za)
Online Poll: A Right to Repair Electronics - Yes or No? <-- VOTE NOW!
The Boston Globe was the stage for a “pro” and “con” debate about a proposed right to repair bill for consumer electronics and other products pending before the State legislature. “These days, makers of everything from toasters to tractors withhold the manuals, parts, and service tools people need to fix things,” writes Nathan Proctor of US PIRG. “When only the manufacturer has access to what you need, it forces consumers to go back to the manufacturer or their “authorized” service provider, where they can charge you whatever they want or push you into purchasing an upgrade.” Serving up the weak tea on the “con” side was some dude from “The Repair Done Right” coalition (??!) - a group that seems not to really exist. #soundsaboutright (bostonglobe.com)
Don’t Throw Away Your Toys - Repair Them!
Many people don’t like to throw toys away. Children (and parents) are often attached to specific dolls or cuddly toys, a battery-operated train or a remote-controlled car. Fortunately, in many cases, toys can be repaired very well. Bring your broken things to a Repair Café and find out for yourself!
Repair Cafés successfully repair electric and electronic toys in 70 per cent of cases, according to Repair Café’s RepairMonitor, an online system where repairers keep track of what they fix. For non-electric toys, the number is as high as 76 per cent. So: no need to throw broken toys away! (Repaircafe.org)
The Three Most Impactful Circularity Trends of 2021
The Right to Repair movement saw traction in the EU as repairability scores for electronics rolled out in France, appliances gained repair protections in Britain and the EU proposed universal charging cords for smartphones.Meanwhile on our side of the Atlantic: The first electronics right to repair bill was passed in New York state, a national repair bill was filed in congress and President Joe Biden signed an executive order to ensure repairability for farming equipment. The Federal Trade Commission even weighed in with an exhaustive 55-page report, rejecting manufacturers’ excuses for imposed repair restriction. (Greenbiz.com)
Committee issues 48 recommendations for switch to ‘circular economy’ in Ireland
Radical measures including forcing manufacturers to reduce waste packaging and to redesign products to make them more sustainable are among recommendations by an all-party Oireachtas committee to expedite a switch to a circular economy in Ireland, according to a report in The Irish Times. While some EU member states have legislated for a ban on obsolescence they have found difficulty with regard to implementation. “The Committee agreed further examination of the issue was needed to ascertain if measures such as enabling ‘a right to repair’ and ‘a right to reuse’ could be implemented [in Ireland] to reduce waste as a result of planned obsolescence,” Committee chairman and Green Party member Brian Leddin said. (IrishTimes.com)
As Apple shows: Californias can fix their own possessions
For years, Apple has monopolized product repair by withholding the parts and tools that customers and independent repair shops need to fix broken products. That’s finally changing. On Nov. 17, Apple announced that it will begin sharing with the public more than 200 parts and tools for its products, starting with the iPhone 12 and 13 lineups and its new Macs. This program will presumably grow to include newer smartphone models and Mac computers. That’s a huge breakthrough for the growing Right to Repair movement, which has been working to pass legislation to make sure that all Americans have the right to repair not just their phones but anything they buy and own. (MercuryNews.com)
Hyundai proves (again) that Automakers can totally change their Telematics on a Dime
For an industry that’s been arguing in court that its simply impossible for them to comply with Massachusetts recently passed Question 1 Right to Repair bill, the automotive industry can’t seem to help displaying just the kind of granular control over telematics systems that they’ve been claiming they don’t have. The latest example: Hundai, which said it would be making it easier for its customers to control access to, or even disable connected vehicle data collection and sharing. According to the report on Repairer Driven News: Through the new “My Data and Privacy” page, accessible through “My Account,” anyone who owns or leases a Hyundai vehicle can manage privacy settings for their account, for data collection used to enable vehicle features and services, for communications preferences and for telematics services, such as the monitoring of vehicle health and diagnostics. (RepairerDrivenNews.com)
iFixit’s most interesting teardown finds of 2021
Want to know how Samsung made the Z-Flip 3 water resistant? Or how the FairPhone 4 balanced innovation and repairability? iFixit spent all year taking apart a ton of devices, and along the way, they spotted some wildly cool things that are usually hidden from people who only ever see the outside of their devices. Check out their most interesting teardowns finds of 2021. (iFixit.com)
Oh Deere, is the Right to Repair Resolution Troubling You?
Deere (has) not been slow in their fight-back against the threat of right-to-repair legislation and their becoming its unwilling poster-child, with CTO Jahmy Hindman going on record stating that 98% of repairs to Deere machinery can be done by the farmer themself without need for a Deere agent. The question posed by supporters of the shareholder action is that given the substantial risk to investors of attracting a right-to-repair backlash, why would they run such a risk for the only 2% of repairs that remain? We’d be interested to know how Deere arrived at that figure, because given the relatively trivial nature of some of the examples we’ve seen it sounds far-fetched. (Hackaday.com)
3G’s Demise May Produce Tidal Wave of Obsolete Hardware
The sunset of 3G is scheduled for the end of next year. But with over 80 million 3G devices active in North America, what does 3G’s demise mean for consumers and industries like healthcare, where 3G connected devices are used to monitor patients in care settings?
(All About Circuits)
Home appliance makers take shortcuts, make cheap products that don’t last
Consumers’ desire for cheap appliances has let to manufacturers cutting quality at the expense of product longevity, Consumer NZ says. “Manufacturers sell appliances based on function and features, not durability,” Consumer NZ test manager Paul Smith. The quality of materials, ease of replacing parts, such as using glue not screws, and after-sales service, such as spare parts, help lower the cost of an appliance. “Appliance manufacturer business models mostly aren’t set up to make products last a long time. They depend on repeat sales of products that need replacement,” he said.(Stuff.co.nz)
Other Repair News
Right to repair on Law Bytes Podcast (MichaelGeist.ca)
Apple losing ground in customer loyalty poll (Bestgamingpro.com)
What really goes wrong with your tablet (Hackaday.com)
Senate Judiciary holds Hearing on Impact of Consolidation and Monopoly Power on American Innovation (judiciary.senate.gov)
Plan to pay more for car updates with 3G sunsetting (TheNextWeb)
Three reasons right to repair provides a more sustainable future (carrepairchoice.org)
Five best practices and benefits for manufacturers adopting right to repair (CGSInc.com)