Do-it-yourselfers and repair shops are celebrating a victory in Minnesota with the enactment of a new law that requires many manufacturers to share parts and information with tinkerers and small businesses.
The so-called right to repair law will allow equipment owners and independent shops to more easily fix devices like phones, laptops, appliances and other equipment.
Minnesota is the latest state to approve such a law, following Colorado earlier this year and New York last year. Massachusetts’ law covering vehicles was enacted in 2020. Do-it-yourselfers, farmers, handyman companies and small repair shops argue that without such laws, big tech companies make it almost impossible to get manufacturers’ parts and instructions.
Manufacturers, however, argue that broadening access could pose dangers to would-be repairers and the equipment as well as compromise the safety and security of devices.
As the bills make their way through the states, tech firms have successfully lobbied to exempt some types of equipment or allow other exceptions such as allowing manufacturers to provide only full assemblies of parts, rather than individual parts such as a chip, for what the manufacturers say is safety or security reasons.
Colorado’s law, for example, only applies to powered wheelchairs and farm equipment, while Massachusetts’ law covers vehicles. New York enacted a relatively broad electronics bill last December.
The Minnesota law, signed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz last week as part of the state budget, requires manufacturers of electronic devices such as phones, tablets, laptops and household appliances to provide parts, tools and instructions on how to fix equipment to independent repair shops and consumers.
But lawmakers removed farm equipment, video game consoles, specialized cybersecurity tools, medical devices and vehicles from the bill before it was approved.
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Despite those carve-outs, repair advocates say Minnesota’s law is the most extensive one yet. New York’s version, for example, excludes any “product sold under a specific business-to-government or business-to-business contract … not otherwise offered for sale directly by a retail seller.” That could cover school computers.
And New York’s measure only applies to products made after July 1, 2023, which excludes most products currently in use.
Originally published at www.penncapital-star.com,by Elaine Povich
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