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As far as I can tell, this directive mainly mandates that producers offer to repair certain categories of products, for a price or for free and that independent professional repair shops/services can access tools, parts and information needed to do so. > Producers shall ensure that >independent [professional] repairers (From Art. 5) Unless I'm missing something, there is nothing here granting the right or feasibility…
Why is there gatekeeping of "professional" repairers and "repair services"? Why can't I as a consumer view a service manual and buy a part? If a washing machine costs £220, and a professional repair man costs £70 per hour, nobody will repair out of warranty.
As far as I can tell, this directive mainly mandates that producers offer to repair certain categories of products, for a price or for free and that independent professional repair shops/services can access tools, parts and information needed to do so. > Producers shall ensure that >independent [professional] repairers (From Art. 5) Unless I'm missing something, there is nothing here granting the right or feasibility…
In Sweden such agreements aren't legally binding at all. I'm sure it's the same way elsewhere.
I think monopoly laws should be used to combat this problem instead. "Repair of apple devices" is a market with many participants, including apple itself. If Apple uses its power in the "design and manufacture of apple devices" market to unfairly influence its position in the "repair of apple products" market, then that should be illegal and they should be fined for it. An example would be software locking serial num…
By the way, software locking serial numbers of all the internal components was purportedly done for anti-theft reasons. If you can't swap the screen or battery from a stolen phone to another phone, then there is much less reason to steal phones. Buuut , another approach would be for Apple to simply pop up a dialogue whenever parts are swapped saying "New Part Detected. Some parts of this phone are registered with ano…
But also "privacy" or "security". Like with iMessage, where they cannot open it up to other platforms or clients, without hampering their security model. Or app store reviews, in place to "protect consumers from harmful apps" but very useful for Apple to tightly hold the monopoly of what you may install.
Fascinating to witness a company using spin doctoring to protect their moat.
Edit: to be extra clear: I think all these cases are therefore net harmful to customers. As, in several cases, the EU or other regulators confirm by forcing Apple to change the model.
As far as I can tell, this directive mainly mandates that producers offer to repair certain categories of products, for a price or for free and that independent professional repair shops/services can access tools, parts and information needed to do so. > Producers shall ensure that >independent [professional] repairers (From Art. 5) Unless I'm missing something, there is nothing here granting the right or feasibility…
Parts are already available in many cases and no-one prevents you from sourcing them.
But in reality most people don't do that and don't want to do that. Either they call a repairman or they buy a new appliance, and this law won't change any of that.
Important economic fact: If only one single European country (with sufficient population) implements a rather strict right to repair law, then likely all manufacturers in all countries will need to adhere to it, since tech companies don't like to have to build multiple product variants (per country), but much rather just have a single "EU" product that gets sold into the 300 million head European single market.
So this country-level lobbying in the next phase is really important and can be a game change for the environment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most vocal person behind the right to repair movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npd_xDuNi9k Oh, and he runs a professional repair shop...
Saying Louis Rossmann is fighting for the right to repair while trying to keep individuals from repairing their own devices is like saying Linus Torvalds created Linux to keep people from getting the idea to build their own operating system. Rossmann is fighting the good fight and also often doing videos showing how a repair actually works. Most famously a video where he showed that a certain type of common Macbook s…
Why is there gatekeeping of "professional" repairers and "repair services"? Why can't I as a consumer view a service manual and buy a part? If a washing machine costs £220, and a professional repair man costs £70 per hour, nobody will repair out of warranty.
This is because repair doesn't scale with automation the way manufacturing does. Repair is likely to cost far more, unless you do it yourself, and then it costs you time.
This is only phase one; the citizens of Europe must now petition their own countries to implement great "Right to Repair" laws. Important economic fact: If only one single European country (with sufficient population) implements a rather strict right to repair law, then likely all manufacturers in all countries will need to adhere to it, since tech companies don't like to have to build multiple product variants (per…