Right to Repair Will Be Big Anti-Tech, Antitrust Issue This Year

Consumers outrage over barriers to repair of devices as various as tractors and laptops is a rare issue upon which there is bipartisan consensus. Farmers are wondering why they have to call the dealer to send someone out with a computer, a process that can take days, to diagnose a problem with an agricultural implement that they could have diagnosed with their own computer and fixed in five minutes. Anyone who owns a laptop runs into that same dead-end sooner or later. Manufacturers routinely deny warranty claims for anyone with an independently repaired device, thus raising the price of a fix and maximizing the downtime involved in repair. Twenty state legislatures are considering bills that would grant the right to repair to their citizens, and the House Judiciary committee’s investigation into whether big tech companies are committing potentially actionable antitrust violations is also considering the right to repair. Apple and Microsoft have lobbied against reform in Washington and California, but both have begun making their products more user-friendly when it comes to minor fixes. Farm implement manufacturers have also initiated what an article in U.S. PIRG calls “half-measures” to defuse the issue.