The EU's Right to Repair

[loudthud]

Most of us who have done repairs for any length of time have run into situations where the schematic for a particular piece of equipment is not available from the manufacturer. It could be considered trade secret or not available in hopes that the owner will purchase a new piece of equipment as a replacement. In Fender's case, they just replace the equipment if it is under warranty.

On another forum (Link: https://www.ssguitar.com/index.php?t...;topicseen#new ) I read that in the EU, there is a law that gives a person the Right to Repair that can be used to compel the manufacturer to provide a schematic.

Link to info, may require registration: https://www.lexology.com/library/det...4-20a624b088b8

I'm not aware of any such law in the USA, but maybe we need one or can just obtain schematics through people in the EU.

[Enzo]

That would help guys like us, but I fear it is a consumer-friendly sort of law, and in the current political climate in the USA, things are swinging more towards business-friendly. So I won't expect it soon.

[Greg_L]

That would help guys like us, but I fear it is a consumer-friendly sort of law, and in the current political climate in the USA, things are swinging more towards business-friendly. So I won't expect it soon.

Not to mention that american business is only driven by profit and fear of litigation. I don't expect any manufacturer to willingly hand over schematics and details of products just so the consumer can screw it all up and possibly kill themselves. And then here comes the lawsuits.

[xtian]

Right to Repair in USA is...something at least. At least it has forced Apple to make equipment and parts available (for a fee) to end users for iPhone repair.

[Greg_L]

Right to Repair in USA is...something at least. At least it has forced Apple to make equipment and parts available (for a fee) to end users for iPhone repair.

Like what? I don't use an iPhone so I'm genuinely curious. What can a user repair for themselves on an iPhone?

[Enzo]

Cracked screen, battery pack, come to mind.

John Deere is in the same pickle. Unless you are a Deere dealer, you cannot get Deere parts or service documents, I think they even have some unique tools.

[nosaj]

And if like the Russians you steal John Deere combines and other agriculture machines they can turn them off remotely. This is about the only time I have thought it was a cool feature.
nosaj

[xtian]

Like what? I don't use an iPhone so I'm genuinely curious. What can a user repair for themselves on an iPhone?

Screen, battery, taptic engine (haptic feedback), and ...I forget the fourth one. Lots of interesting videos on YT:

[GoldtoneWorkshop]

Ran in to this a lot when I was fixing phones and computers before moving into amplifier repair. Some companies were better than others about making their devices repairable and getting insight on the repairability of the design from their repair partners. It wasn't until my company became national partners with some of the major manufacturers that we started to get access to OEM parts and repair information though.

In the States, groups like Repair.org are pushing back against bigger companies that lobby to make repairability limited through anti-trust rulings in the past. A while ago it was either Xerox or Kodak that was in some trouble with repairability on their commercial printers and a ruling ended up finding that limiting the serviceability and user availability of parts violated anti-trust rulings. Not sure if they have actually made any headway there, but in June at least NY passed an electronics right to repair bill.

I think at one point to Apple had anti-repair lobbying in all 50 states.

https://www.repair.org/stand-up

EDIT:

Apple goes back and forth with making things replaceable in their devices. Back in the older iPhones, like the 4 and 4S, nearly everything was replaceable. They then added the touch ID feature, which originally was swap-able like the touch ID on Samsung phones at the time, but had some software that basically bricked the phone during the next update. People got super upset about that and eventually the removed that feature, but disabled the touch ID functionality whenever the button was replaced. Then they got rid of the physical button in order to circumvent this problem and keep repairability to authorized service providers, as on the old phones a replacement button would still work as a button, just no touch ID. On the 7's and 8's, not so much.

Now the screen has to be married to the motherboard after a replacement screen is put on (even OEM modules) in order to keep Face ID working properly. Face ID is also tied to 3 components now and if one of them fails, you can lose functionality and have to go through the whole process again. It's a pain.

There's even code in the modern Macbooks that will brick the device if you replace the screen, but they don't have it turned "on" in the system software for now. Looks like with the newer chipsets they have consolidated discrete components into a single, non-replaceable part. Great for resource management, but terrible for repairs.

We always worried that Apple would set up some barrier that would lock us out of repair for a huge chunk of our income. For the most part we were able to adapt, but it was a constant worry. I could talk about this forever, spent too much time fixing those things