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by gpm 945 days ago
There are two "types" of right to repair. One is "you can't use the law to prevent me from fixing things", the other is "you have to make them easy to fix".

Based on the article, particularly the part that describes the bill [1], this is the former.

Amending the law so that it doesn't prevent repairing things adds absolutely no cost to manufacturing...

[1] "The bill would amend the Canadian copyright act, allowing individuals or independent repair shops to break digital locks in order to make software fixes."

1 comments

Yeah, I think this is an important distinction. As much as I personally wish almost everything was designed to be repairable and that parts/instructions were easily available from the manufacturer, I'm actually pretty uncertain that those should be _requirements_. I really just want it to be legal to repair and modify anything. The manufacturer should be allowed to design any way they want (and I will continue to attempt to avoid manufacturers who make repair hard), but the most important thing is that if I _do_ repair it, that is recognized as fully within my rights and that the manufacturer can't use the law to punish me, up to and including modifying software, as long as it's for personal use.

Anything beyond that probably needs to be a signal from consumers that they _want_ (and perhaps be willing to pay a price premium for) repairable goods with available parts and documentation.