Biden Praises Right To Repair, As John Deere Hit With Two Fresh Repair Lawsuits
While there's been no shortage of dumb and frustrating tech policy debates in recent years, one of the more positive shifts has been watching the "right to repair" movement shift from the fringe to massively mainstream. Once just the concern of pissed off farmers and nerdy tinkerers, the last two years have seen a groundswell of broader culture awareness about the perils of letting companies like Apple, John Deere, Microsoft, or Sony monopolize repair. And the dumb lengths most of these companies have gone to make repairing things you own both more difficult and way more expensive.
Things shifted greatly last July when President Biden formally included some right to repair measures in a broad executive order demanding the FTC craft stricter rules targeting efforts to hamstring independent and consumer repair options. This week the president gave the subject another mainstream boost with statements before the White House Competition Council lauding right to repair (as well as a tweet):
When you own a product, you should be able to repair it yourself. That's why I included support for the right to repair" in my Executive Order.
Now, companies like Apple and Microsoft are changing their policies so folks will be able to repair their devices themselves.
- President Biden (@POTUS) January 24, 2022
Granted it's still not entirely clear how much the traditionally understaffed and under-resourced FTC can do. The agency is greatly constrained under the FTC Act to intervene only when something is clearly "unfair and deceptive." And a lot of companies like Apple and John Deere have gone to great lengths trying to frame their repair monopolization efforts (whether that's bullying independent repair shops or DRM) as efforts to protect consumer safety and security. Which is to say we still have a lot of legal skirmishes waiting in the wings.
Like the two different new lawsuits filed against John Deere this week, alleging the company of violating antitrust laws by unlawfully monopolizing the tractor repair market. As we've long reported, the right to repair movement really took off several years back when farmers began complaining John Deere was making it a costly nightmare to repair farm equipment. Farmers were not only prevented from making even basic repairs themselves, they were routinely forced to take equipment to official John Deere repair centers -- which often required thousands of additional dollars and, for some, extremely long trips.
Knowing the staffing, legal, and resource limitations of the FTC, most companies are far more concerned about the push for state and federal right to repair legislation than they are about Biden's EO. As such, they've taken a handful of steps, quite often rather performative, to try and stall legislative reform. They also continue to make numerous bullshit arguments in this space as well, like the auto industry's ongoing quest to limit Massachusetts legislation by claiming (falsely) that it would embolden sexual predators.
So while there's a lot of work left to do on this front, it's progress all the same -- made possible by growing awareness. In fairly short order it went from the concern of a few nerds in Nebraska to being something supported by the president. In a tech policy arena saturated with no limit of stupid arguments (the attacks on Section 230 come quickly to mind) and gridlocked debates, it's kind of refreshing to see popular, bipartisan policy improvements get the attention they deserve.