Hackers, farmers, and doctors unite! Support for Right to Repair laws slowly grows

Slowly but surely, though, consumers and third parties outside of vendor-sanctioned circles have been pushing to change this through so-called "right to repair" laws. These pieces of proposed legislation take different forms-19 states introduced some form of right to repair legislation in 2018, up from 12 in 2017-but generally they attempt to require companies, whether they are in the tech sector or not, to make their service manuals, diagnostic tools, and parts available to consumers and repair shops-not just select suppliers. It's difficult to imagine a more convincing case for the notion that politics make strange bedfellows. Farmers, doctors, hospital administrators, hackers, and cellphone and tablet repair shops are aligned on one side of the right to repair argument, and opposite them are the biggest names in consumer technology, ag equipment and medical equipment. And given its prominence in the consumer technology repair space, iFixit.com has found itself at the forefront of the modern right to repair movement. All repair information for mobile devices, computers, etc. ought to be publicly available and free for everyone to use, no exceptions. The behaviour of companies like Apple is deeply amoral, unethical, anti-consumer, and just generally scummy.