Right to Repair
The legal and consumer movement ensuring that owners can fix, modify, and maintain the products they buy instead of being forced to use the manufacturer's authorized service. Also a battle over software locks, parts pairing, and who really owns the device.
Right to repair is the legal and consumer movement demanding that people who own a product be allowed to fix, modify, and maintain it themselves – or take it to an independent repair shop – rather than being forced back to the manufacturer for authorized, often overpriced, service.
For much of the 20th century, repairing your own stuff was simply normal. The modern push for a right to repair responds to manufacturers embedding software locks, proprietary parts, glued-shut enclosures, and “parts pairing” that refuse to work unless a serial-numbered component is blessed by the maker’s servers. The effect is that the device you bought can be disabled or bricked remotely, or become worthless the moment an authorized repair network is the only legal way to get it fixed.
Why it matters
When you cannot repair what you own, you do not really own it – you rent it. Repair restrictions shorten product lifespans, create mountains of e-waste, raise prices, and hand monopoly control over aftermarket service to a single vendor. The right to repair is also an environmental issue: the most sustainable device is the one already in your hand, still working because someone was allowed to fix it.
The software angle
The fight has increasingly moved from physical screws to software. Manufacturers argue that software is a separate thing from the machine, so copyright and license terms let them restrict repairs. Right-to-repair advocates counter that this is a use of copyright to defeat ownership – a pattern of enshittification that converts a durable good into a subscription to your own equipment.
Where it stands
Right-to-repair legislation has been introduced across US states and internationally (notably the European Union’s repair rules), but it runs into the same wall everywhere: manufacturers who insist that repairing your own property infringes their control. Progress is real but uneven – some states have passed limited repair laws, while broader federal and state efforts remain contested.
Organizations working to protect the right to repair include FULU (Fix Up Look Up), iFixit, and the Repair Association.