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The Limited Promise of Right-To-Repair Reforms - ProMarket
Roy Shapira discusses the problem of wasteful consumerism and society's throwaway culture, arguing that while the "right to repair" movement is important, antitrust policy is unable to address the underlying social and psychological drivers that push consumers to constantly purchase new items and can even hinder bottom-up pressures to reduce waste. Shapira analyzes various policy proposals and legal avenues to help change companies' and consumers' incentives in order to reduce environmentally harmful product obsolescence.
These tactics to stifle repairs can include designing products with glued-in batteries and incompatible screws to weaponizing the law by claiming service manuals as trade secrets or using copyright to lock down the software needed to diagnose and fix problems. Over the past decade, a global right-to-repair movement has been gaining ground, and it now enjoys broad political support and regularly wins legislative battles in the U.S. and the European Union. Another conduit for affecting sellers’ reputational concerns is the discovery process in litigation, which can be utilized to extract information and increase the public saliency of wasteful practices.
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