What is Right to Repair Movement?

In recent years, the right to repair movement has gained power in the US and Europe. Recently Joe Biden, the US President, gave a statement where he advocated for people to be able to repair their own iPhones. Activists and organizations around the world are raising their voice for the rights of the consumers to be able to repair their electronic devices on their own. 

Right to Repair Movement: What is it about?

Every single house in this world today has electronic devices. Be it rich or poor. The devices face deterioration as they are simply machines, and require repair every now and then. The population faces issues in repairing things themselves as there are no spare parts available to them in time. 

The movement began in the 1950s in the very beginning of the computer era. The goal of the movement was to encourage companies to make and supply electronic spare parts to people and repair shops to make them long lasting. This way the wastage of electronics would also be reduced.  

Reason of the Movement

The argument given by people is that these manufacturers are encouraging a culture of planned obsolescence. That means the devices are designed specifically to last a limited amount of time and to be replaced. 

They claim that this leads to immense pressure on the environment and wasted natural resources. Manufacturing an electronic device is a highly polluting process. For example making an iPhone represents around 83% of its contribution to heat trapping emissions in the atmosphere throughout the life cycle. 

So the manufacturing process uses fossil fuel which may impact the environment adversely. 

Reasons for planned obsolescence:

1. Ending support for legacy systems 
2. Encouraging consumers to buy the replacement products

Benefits of the Repair Movement:

1. Right to repair would be helpful in boosting the business for small repair shops. This in turn would help run the local economies. 
2. In case a manufacturer has monopoly on repairs, then the prices rise and quality drops. The right to repair would help reduce such monopolistic attitudes. 
3. Price would be lessened on repairs in future. 

What is expected of the companies?

1. Repair information, including manuals or guides 
2. Information about the products that can be repaired
3. Parts that can be used to repair the products 

Electronic Manufacturers oppose this movement:

Large tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla etc did not like the idea of the right to repair. They argue that this would result in them opening up their intellectual property rights to third party repair services which would result in loss for them and would compromise the security of their devices. Tesla openly says that such things may hamper their data security systems and create a loophole in cyber security.  However, only the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak supported this cause saying that he wouldn't have been able to build this empire had he not have had open technology rights.  Its time that will tell now  where the movement would go.  

GK Quiz on FOREX | Solve here