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The Fight for the "Right to Repair"
Smithsonian ^ | 13 July 2016 | Emily Matchar

Posted on 08/08/2016 11:34:02 AM PDT by Lorianne

Manufacturers have made it increasingly difficult for individuals or independent repair people to fix electronics. A growing movement is fighting back ___

Fifty years ago, if your television broke you could bring it to the local electronics shop to be repaired. These days, a broken TV likely means a trip to Best Buy for a new one.

Electronics have become harder to fix. This is, in part, because they’ve become more complex. But some of the problem is by design. Manufacturers have increasingly restricted repair information to authorized repair centers, leaving consumers and independent repair people unable to deal with even simple problems. It's just easier (and sometimes cheaper) to buy something new.

A growing number of people, seeing this as an unreasonable state of affairs, are fighting back. In a so-called “right to repair” movement, this loose coalition of consumer advocates, repair professionals and ordinary individuals are working to create legislation that would make it harder for companies to keep repair information proprietary.

The idea of planned obsolescence is nothing new. But the use of “repair prevention” as a method of making products obsolete is growing, say right to repair proponents. Many companies that manufacture electronics—anything from laptops to refrigerators to your car’s onboard computer—now have restrictions that prevent consumers from having them fixed anywhere besides a licensed repair shop. Some companies use digital locks or copyrighted software to prevent consumers or independent repair people from making changes. Others simply refuse to share their repair manuals. Some add fine print clauses to their user agreements so customers (often unwittingly) promise not to fix their own products.

(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS:
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This is one of my biggest bugaboos. It is harder and harder to find people to repair things and fewer and fewer ways for young people to learn how to repair things.

Also I try to buy products that have containers that can be re-used or repurposedin some way ... but this is getting harder to do as well as many dispenser type products have tops that cannot be removed, so you have to throw them away.

This is part of 'globalization' as well. As we are made more helpless and more and more dependent on products from overseas, which we cannot even reuse or repurpose to other uses, this forces us to continue buying new all the time.

I refuse to do this, so there are a lot of products that I simply don't buy.

1 posted on 08/08/2016 11:34:02 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

As long as China rules the roost, you can talk to the hand. no one cares or listens.


2 posted on 08/08/2016 11:42:23 AM PDT by x_plus_one (There are two kinds of people in Socialist countries- billionaires and slaves.)
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To: Lorianne

“Also I try to buy products that have containers that can be re-used or repurposedin some way ... “

Yep, in the good ol days you could the new TV on the old one!


3 posted on 08/08/2016 11:42:36 AM PDT by Beagle8U (Giggles the pig for POTUS - 2016)
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To: Lorianne

I play records on a record player I purchased for $600 in 1977 (1977 dollars). Still works great! I play Blue Rays on a player I purchased about 18 months ago. My fourth or fifth. When all of your discs start skipping, you know it’s not the disk.

But heck, a new one has new and better features, and is around $60 2016 dollars. The price of a couple of loaded pizzas. I don’t bother fixing stuff like that any more. They are cheap enough to be throw away.

And let’s be frank, the cost of repair on many items would be more than they cost new. It’s because repairs are always “custom”. Original assembly is mostly done by robots. i.e many things are cheaper to replace than repair. That’s a good trade-off.


4 posted on 08/08/2016 11:43:09 AM PDT by Mr. Douglas (Today is your life. What are you going to do with it?)
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To: Lorianne

I can recall taking a basket of radio or tv tubes into the hardware store’s tube tester to see witch one(s) were bad. In fact I recall doing that pretty often. Today, my electronics don’t go bad nearly as often. Office electronics are often still repairable (at least the higher cost ones) but home electronics are to be replaced. Ironically, where we lived overseas and where our home electronics are often made, we could usually get the TV and other things repaired. I suspect it had a lot to do with low wage levels making replacement impossible.


5 posted on 08/08/2016 11:46:50 AM PDT by JimSEA
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To: Lorianne

You might want to check out open source ecology. Mind blowing stuff they’re doing.


6 posted on 08/08/2016 11:48:19 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat (Make phone calls. Knock on doors. Write letters. Or wake to a nightmare in November)
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To: Lorianne

As a “72 year at the bench” watchmaker I loudly applaud and cheer this post.
People purchase so-called “HI TECH” watches and so often cannot get the serviced by the local professional. That is where you can find a watchmaker.
Campanies will not provide tech data. Nor will they provide needed parts, and it is too damn bad for the customer. Today the majority of places that sell watches have NO service personal, and I personally wonder if they know how to tell time.
There is no caring for the PERSONAL MEANING a given watch may have for a particular person. Grandpa’s watch, grandma’s pendant watch, regardless of money value are treasured by this generation.
I write this as a watchmaker, but the poor attitude, and worse service crosses the board.
Oh, I wonder if these manufacturers know how to SPELL the word “service” let alone its true meaning.


7 posted on 08/08/2016 11:48:33 AM PDT by CaptainAmiigaf (New York Times: "We print the news as it fits our views.")
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To: Mr. Douglas

To each his own I guess.
I hate throwing something away after 18 months ago, even if it is cheaper to replace than to repair. I just have a thing about that I guess. It bugs me no end.


8 posted on 08/08/2016 11:50:04 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: RKBA Democrat

Thanks, I will.


9 posted on 08/08/2016 11:50:59 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne
... increasingly difficult for individuals or independent repair people to fix electronics.
It's not just electronics. Bought a new refrigerator a week ago and the compressor was noisy like it had a bad bearing.
Went back to Lowe's and they said they'd replace the refrigerator (3 week lead time). "Why not just repair it?", I asked. They replied - it's too difficult to replace the bad part.
10 posted on 08/08/2016 11:55:51 AM PDT by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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To: oh8eleven

Yep, and probably a new refrigerator will end up in the landfill.

Insanity.


11 posted on 08/08/2016 11:57:58 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

What bugs me no end is when my wife’s 18 month old LG G3 phone dies for no reason and it’s $800 to replace it.

BTW, About a year ago, I broke my old LG G3 phone screen (made it inoperable), and was able to get parts from Amazon and fixed it myself. It really can be done, thanks to the internet.

The one thing that reduces the sting of replacing those DVD playars is that the new ones always offer more and more useful features. This harkens back to the “large garbage” issue in japan before their economic meltdown. People would replace their large TV’s (and other appliances) after just a year or two, not because they were broken, but because the new ones were so much better and not that expensive.

Electronics are becoming simply so inexpensive to manufacture that it is just cheaper to make a thousand TV’s in a process that makes the one that does fail virtually impossible to cost effectively repair, but drive down, significantly, the construction costs of each of the thousand TV’s.


12 posted on 08/08/2016 11:59:32 AM PDT by Mr. Douglas (Today is your life. What are you going to do with it?)
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To: Lorianne; All

Makes you wonder what sort of society we (won’t) have when those supply chains break due to economics or black swan event.


13 posted on 08/08/2016 12:03:09 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat (Make phone calls. Knock on doors. Write letters. Or wake to a nightmare in November)
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To: Mr. Douglas

I bought a Samsung 46” LCD TV back in 2004 or early 2005, when it was still $2,000. Within 5 years, the picture died. I let it sit for months, debating whether to try and fix it or buy a new one, since new ones with better features were only $700 or so by that time. But the background lighting was so much better on my TV than the new ultra-thin ones, so I decided to fix it. On a whim I did an internet search, found a description of my problem for my exact model within minutes, then found a you tube video detailing the fix. I ended up buying a replacement board from sears.com for $100, got it in the mail in a week, and replaced the board in about 20 minutes. TV was good as new. I’m still using it. I never watch TV though - it’s my computer monitor, heh.


14 posted on 08/08/2016 12:08:51 PM PDT by fr_freak
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To: Lorianne
Yep, and probably a new refrigerator will end up in the landfill.

Not necessarily. In b-school, some 25 years ago, design/manufacture for recycle was a coming thing. The example was on refrigerators. GE, maybe.

15 posted on 08/08/2016 12:18:12 PM PDT by Calvin Locke
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To: fr_freak

That is awesome! I had something similar happen around the same time.

I was given a laptop by my employer, but it had a “hardware” password and the person who had it before me was no longer available. I thought it was a boat anchor. But I went to the internet and found step by step instructions, complete with photos, to take the computer apart, put it “mostly” back together to power up, and then use a paper clip to short out two contacts on an IC. It worked. It cleared the hardware password.

To this day I use that laptop as a portable recording studio, using Sonar/Cakewalk - a version that matches the capabilities of the computer.

The new stuff really IS fixable, in many situations. Frankly, I even saw one that showed me how to fix my wife’s phone, but it truly was WAY too complex and required special tools.


16 posted on 08/08/2016 12:25:14 PM PDT by Mr. Douglas (Today is your life. What are you going to do with it?)
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To: Lorianne

“fewer and fewer ways for young people to learn how to repair things”

It’s heartbreaking. Young people are being denied the chance to learn there is ‘something they can do’ about a problem.

Don’t see where legislation can help though. Unless it’s to replace school indoctrination with education.


17 posted on 08/08/2016 12:26:10 PM PDT by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat/RINO Party!)
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To: Lorianne

The majority of today’s consumer products and electronics are highly engineered to be built efficiently, with the expectation that they will be discarded upon failure. IOW, things are designed to be put together, not taken apart.

Unless it’s a high value item, the repair costs usually exceed the replacement cost.


18 posted on 08/08/2016 12:26:56 PM PDT by factoryrat (We are the producers, the creators. Grow it, mine it, build it.)
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To: Lorianne

Grandkids broke the screen on my Dell laptop.
Then the hard drive shot craps.
You need steady hands, good vision, and small screwdrivers.

Great info for all brands here:

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/


19 posted on 08/08/2016 12:28:56 PM PDT by nascarnation
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To: Lorianne

I absolutely agree with this, and it applies to auto’s as well.

there is nothing more frustrating than an otherwise functional car with a nonfunctional ecu for the climate control or the lights or the windows or the locks or the seats ... and the ecu is NLA or costs $1000+

there is some high end electronics that can be repaired and is worth repairing, but it is expensive stuff, even used.
http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Pages/Home.aspx#


20 posted on 08/08/2016 12:32:00 PM PDT by Reverend Wright (UK out of the EU; UN out of the USA !)
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