Right to Repair Catches the Car

04/23/24 • 34 min

1 Listener

If you buy something—a refrigerator, a car, a tractor, a wheelchair, or a phone—but you can't have the information or parts to fix or modify it, is it really yours? The right to repair movement is based on the belief that you should have the right to use and fix your stuff as you see fit, a philosophy that resonates especially in economically trying times, when people can’t afford to just throw away and replace things.

Companies for decades have been tightening their stranglehold on the information and the parts that let owners or independent repair shops fix things, but the pendulum is starting to swing back: New York, Minnesota, California, and Colorado have passed right to repair laws, and it’s on the legislative agenda in dozens of other states. Gay Gordon-Byrne is executive director of The Repair Association, one of the major forces pushing for more and stronger state laws, and for federal reforms as well. She joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss this pivotal moment in the fight for consumers to have the right to products that are repairable and reusable.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

Why our “planned obsolescence” throwaway culture doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a technology status quo.
The harm done by “parts pairing:” software barriers used by manufacturers to keep people from installing replacement parts.
Why one major manufacturer put out a user manual in France, but not in other countries including the United States.
How expanded right to repair protections could bring a flood of new local small-business jobs while reducing waste.
The power of uniting disparate voices—farmers, drivers, consumers, hackers, and tinkerers—into a single chorus that can’t be ignored.

Gay Gordon-Byrne has been executive director of The Repair Association—formerly known as The Digital Right to Repair Coalition—since its founding in 2013, helping lead the fight for the right to repair in Congress and state legislatures. Their credo: If you bought it, you should own it and have the right to use it, modify it, and repair it whenever, wherever, and however you want. Earlier, she had a 40-year career as a vendor, lessor, and used equipment dealer for large commercial IT users; she is the author of "Buying, Supporting and Maintaining Software and Equipment - an IT Manager's Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle” (2014), and a Colgate University alumna.

MUSIC CREDITS

In this episode you’ll learn about:

Why our “planned obsolescence” throwaway culture doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a technology status quo.
The harm done by “parts pairing:” software barriers used by manufacturers to keep people from installing replacement parts.
Why one major manufacturer put out a user manual in France, but not in other countries including the United States.
How expanded right to repair protections could bring a flood of new local small-business jobs while reducing waste.
The power of uniting disparate voices—farmers, drivers, consumers, hackers, and tinkerers—into a single chorus that can’t be ignored.

MUSIC CREDITS

Previous Episode

Anti-Trust/Pro-Internet

Imagine an internet in which economic power is more broadly distributed, so that more people can build and maintain small businesses online to make good livings. In this world, the behavioral advertising that has made the internet into a giant surveillance tool would be banned, so people could share more equally in the riches without surrendering their privacy.

That’s the world Tim Wu envisions as he teaches and shapes policy on the revitalization of American antitrust law and the growing power of big tech platforms. He joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss using the law to counterbalance the market’s worst instincts, in order to create an internet focused more on improving people’s lives than on meaningless revenue generation.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

Getting a better “deal” in trading some of your data for connectedness.
Building corporate structures that do a better job of balancing the public good with private profits.
Creating a healthier online ecosystem with corporate “quarantines” to prevent a handful of gigantic companies from dominating the entire internet.
Nurturing actual innovation of products and services online, not just newer price models.

Timothy Wu is the Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School, where he has served on the faculty since 2006. First known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2002, he served in President Joe Biden’s White House as special assistant to the President for technology and competition policy from 2021 to 2023; he also had worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the last year of President Barack Obama’s administration. Earlier, he worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission and served as enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General’s Office. His books include “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age” (2018), "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads” (2016), “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” (2010), and “Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World” (2006).

MUSIC CREDITS

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Next Episode

Building a Tactile Internet

Blind and low-vision people have experienced remarkable gains in information literacy because of digital technologies, like being able to access an online library offering more than 1.2 million books that can be translated into text-to-speech or digital Braille. But it can be a lot harder to come by an accessible map of a neighborhood they want to visit, or any simple diagram, due to limited availability of tactile graphics equipment, design inaccessibility, and publishing practices.

Chancey Fleet wants a technological future that’s more organically attuned to people’s needs, which requires including people with disabilities in every step of the development and deployment process. She speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about building an internet that’s just and useful for all, and why this must include giving blind and low-vision people the discretion to decide when and how to engage artificial intelligence tools to solve accessibility problems and surmount barriers.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

The importance of creating an internet that’s not text-only, but that incorporates tactile images and other technology to give everyone a richer, more fulfilling experience.
Why AI-powered visual description apps still need human auditing.
How inclusiveness in tech development is always a work in progress.
Why we must prepare people with the self-confidence, literacy, and low-tech skills they need to get everything they can out of even the most optimally designed technology.
Making it easier for everyone to travel the two-way street between enjoyment and productivity online.

Chancey Fleet’s writing, organizing and advocacy explores how cloud-connected accessibility tools benefit and harm, empower and expose communities of disability. She is the Assistive Technology Coordinator at the New York Public Library’s Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, where she founded and maintains the Dimensions Project, a free open lab for the exploration and creation of accessible images, models and data representations through tactile graphics, 3D models and nonvisual approaches to coding, CAD and “visual” arts. She is a former fellow and current affiliate-in-residence at Data & Society; she is president of the National Federation of the Blind’s Assistive Technology Trainers Division; and she was recognized as a 2017 Library Journal Mover and Shaker.

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