A lot of product makers snub Right to Repair laws

Refrigerators and game consoles are the worst, but Apple, surprisingly, rates well

A year after the Right to Repair laws passed in California and Minnesota, many product makers still aren't doing much to help consumers fix the gear they bought.

"There are definitely some places where things have gotten a lot better and have totally changed as the result of this legislation, and then there's other kind of devices where these companies are not ready, despite the fact that these laws can be enforced," Nathan Proctor, senior director of US PIRG Campaign for the Right to Repair, told The Register in a phone interview.

Efforts to guarantee that people have the legal right to repair technology products, and to get the parts necessary to do so, have been underway for decades. But product repairability has become particularly challenging over the past two decades due to the way that intellectual property law has allowed companies to limit access to software, hardware, and design documentation. Copyright laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibit users from reverse-engineering digital locks that stop users from being able to service their gear, and patent and trademark laws limit the rights of third parties to reproduce parts.

In the past ten years or so, repair advocacy groups have arisen to challenge anticompetitive and ecologically damaging repair policies. Their efforts have resulted in Right to Repair laws in Massachusetts (for automobiles), California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, and Oregon, with proposed legislation in more than a dozen other states.

Proctor and Lucas Gutterman, campaign director for the US PIRG Education Fund, on Tuesday published a report titled Leaders and Laggards II that evaluates 25 products in five different categories – dishwashers, phones, tablets, laptops, and gaming devices – to see how well they comply with these repair laws.

Forty percent of these products received a "D" or an "F," 28 percent received a "B" or "C," and 32 percent received an "A."

The Framework Laptop 13 scored an "A+," as did Valve's Steam Deck.

Of the 25 products they assessed, the authors say they were unable to access a repair manual in 48 percent of cases and 44 percent had no spare parts available.

"There's just a lot of different kinds of companies that clearly advertise some kind of in-warranty repair service and refuse to make the parts, tools or information available to anyone," said Proctor.

One of the surprises was that Apple, noted for poor product repairability in the past, managed to score a "B+" for the repairability of its latest iPad. And its M3 MacBook Pro scored a "B."

"Had we released this report around two months ago, the iPad would have gotten a 'D' or an 'F,'" said Proctor. "But at some point in May released a whole bunch of documentation repair manuals for the iPad for the first time."

The worst scoring products were dishwashers (Beko, Bosch, Frigidaire, GE, and LG) and several gaming consoles (MSI, Atari, and Sony), among others.

The report concludes that in order to realize the goals of Right to Repair, consumers and independent repair shop owners need stronger intervention by state attorneys general. It points to the example of Steven Rhine, owner of repair shop Rhine Labs, who complained to California Attorney General Rob Bonta when American Hakko Products refused to provide access to the firmware he needed to effect repairs on a Hakko soldering iron. After the California AG's intervention, Hakko uploaded a copy of the firmware Rhine had requested.

"We're going to need more of that," said Proctor. "We're going to need more help from the attorneys general, and more people, frankly, complaining." ®