The right to repair electronics is now law in 3 states. Is Big Tech complying?

If you’re considering purchasing a new gadget — whether that’s a laptop, a video game console, or a digital camera — you might expect to have access to whatever repair manuals or spare parts the manufacturer produces. But until recently, companies selling electronic devices in the U.S. were under no obligation to provide their customers with the parts or information needed to perform even simple repairs, like replacing a battery. 

Last December, New York became the first state in the country to require that electronic device manufacturers make their repair materials available to the public, when the state’s digital “right-to-repair” law — the first such law in the country — went into effect. In July, similar laws in Minnesota and California became enforceable. Over the next two years, consumers in Oregon and Colorado will also be granted the legal right to repair a vast array of digital electronic devices. 

Repair advocates say these laws are a critical step toward ending our culture of digital disposability, in which electronics are simply replaced when broken. Discarded gadgets are usually destined to become toxic e-waste, and manufacturing new ones drives environmentally destructive mining and generates carbon emissions and other pollution.

But these right-to-repair laws are brand new, and whether manufacturers across the wide range of affected industries will overhaul their repair practices overnight remains to be seen. Repair advocates are watching tech companies in these states closely, as are the state attorneys general tasked with enforcing the law. 

Many manufacturers are still “ostrich head in the sand” when it comes to the right to repair, said Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repair guide site iFixit. “There’s lots of companies that have not thought about this,” Wiens added.

A recent report by the U.S. Public Research Interest Group, or PIRG, a leading advocate for the right to repair, underscores just how far apart different industries are in their repair journeys. 

The report identified 21 devices covered by New York’s new right-to-repair law, which requires electronics makers to publicly release any proprietary parts, tools, and manuals needed to repair any devices first sold in the state on or after July 1, 2023. After the law went into effect, PIRG graded each of these devices based on the accessibility and quality of repair manuals, the number of spare parts the manufacturer offers, and the availability of commonly replaced parts like batteries. 

In general, the report found that smartphone makers provided the most comprehensive repair materials. Laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles were a mixed bag, while the digital cameras and VR headsets surveyed scored poorly. The authors were unable to access repair manuals for recent Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, or Canon digital cameras, while Apple didn’t offer any manuals or spare parts for its new VR headset, the Apple Vision Pro. Meta’s new Meta Quest 3 VR headset also lacks a repair manual, and spare parts offerings are very limited, the report found.

Grist was unable to locate a press contact at Canon, and an email to the company’s investor relations department went unanswered. A representative of Fujifilm North America told Grist in an email that the company’s technical service team “will provide diagnosis verification and self-repair support consistent with applicable Right to Repair requirements.” Media representatives at Nikon, Apple, and Meta didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment on the report’s findings.

A representative of Sony Electronics told Grist that the company has published around 300 service manuals “and we are in the process of releasing more.” The representative shared a link to the service manual for the Alpha 6700 camera, which PIRG researchers were unable to locate through a web search when they evaluated the camera a few months ago. Report co-author Nathan Proctor told Grist that Sony’s customer service division suggested the researchers check YouTube or iFixit for repair information. That speaks to a broader problem, he said.

“Even companies that are complying, their customer service people … haven’t gotten the message,” Proctor told Grist. “To me that’s a very frustrating state of affairs.”

Proctor emphasized that the findings aren’t a definitive analysis of whether a product is or isn’t in compliance with the law, which contains “a bunch of loopholes,” he said. (Chief among those loopholes: If a company doesn’t offer any repair support to begin with, it’s under no legal obligation to start — in New York or any other state.) Rather, Proctor said, the intent was to show whether manufacturers are complying with the spirit of the law by taking steps to ensure everyone can fix the stuff they own.

“The purpose of this is to kind of signal to manufacturers that someone is going to be paying attention,” Proctor said. “And that they should organize their plans for compliance.”

Preparing for a repairable future will only become more important as newer, and stronger, state laws enter force. The Minnesota and California right-to-repair laws that went into effect on July 1 cover devices going back to 2021. They also include some electronics that got a carveout in New York, such as e-bikes and, in Minnesota’s case, business computers. (However, both states’ laws exclude gaming consoles, which New York’s law covers.) 

Meanwhile, right-to-repair laws passed in Oregon and Colorado earlier this year take effect in January 2025 and 2026, respectively. These laws close one big outstanding loophole: Both ban parts pairing, the practice of serializing parts and using software to sync them with specific devices during repair. While some companies, like Apple, claim that the practice is vital for ensuring security and optimal performance after a device is repaired, critics say parts pairing allows manufacturers to unfairly restrict which spare parts can be used to complete a repair job. For instance, in order for a replacement iPhone screen to function properly, the screen must be purchased from Apple and paired using the company’s proprietary software tools.

Apple lobbied against outlawing parts pairing in both Oregon and Colorado. Having lost that battle, the company is now taking steps to open up its parts pairing system, including allowing customers to pair used Apple parts with certain iPhone models. An Apple representative declined to say which iPhone models will be affected by the change, or whether the company plans to extend this less-restrictive pairing process to other devices, like MacBook laptops.

In addition to outlawing parts pairing, the Oregon law will retroactively apply to most electronic devices going back to 2015, the longest coverage period yet.

Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association, a trade association representing repair businesses, said it was too early to tell which devices or companies might be out of compliance with the new laws. To answer that question, The Repair Association is in the process of collecting data from its members on numerous products they’re trying to fix and the challenges they’re facing. “We’re expecting there will be lots of holes, we just don’t have any information on where the holes are yet,” she said.

Once those holes are visible, advocates, repair workers, and the public can start pointing them out to state attorneys general, who can file suits against companies that are out of compliance with the law. None of the states with an active digital right-to-repair law has brought a public action against a company yet, but the offices of the attorneys general of California and Minnesota told Grist they are committed to enforcing the law. (The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment on the record.) 

If a state determines that a company is in violation of its right-to-repair law, that company could face fines — ranging from $500 per violation in New York to $20,000 per violation in Minnesota.

Whether these penalties are substantial enough to convince tech companies worth trillions of dollars to course correct on repair remains to be seen. But both Gordon-Byrne and Wiens, of iFixit, see an even stronger incentive for companies to follow the law: The embarrassment of being forced to pay the public back for selling unfixable stuff.

“I think the public reputational risks are as significant as the fines,” Wiens said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The right to repair electronics is now law in 3 states. Is Big Tech complying? on Aug 26, 2024.