Documents reveal tech lobbyists revised a right-to-repair bill before New York's governor signed it.
Safe Haven prioritizes your needs with flexible and individuated substance abuse treatment, specifically opioid & alcohol addiction.“We had every environmental group walking supporting this bill,” Fahy told Grist. “What hurt this bill is Big Tech was opposed to it.”
That New York passed any electronics right-to-repair bill is “huge,” Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne told Grist. But “it could have been huger” if not for tech industry interference.Reached for comment, the governor’s office sent Grist a copy of a statement that Hochul released when she signed the bill, outlining changes made to the text. Her staff declined to address questions about the potential negative impacts of those changes, or about the process behind them.
For years, consumer technology companies like Apple have effectively monopolized the repair of their devices by limiting access to parts, tools, and manuals to “authorized repair partners,” which often only perform a small number of manufacturer-sanctioned fixes. Those limited services often force consumers to choose between continuing to use a broken device or obtaining a brand-new one. The
that passed New York’s Senate and Assembly last spring sought to level the playing field for independent shops by requiring that companies make parts, tools, and documents available to everyone on fair and reasonable terms.A broad coalition of manufacturers opposed the bill in the spring, and its sponsors had to make significant compromises in order to pass it. “We made a lot of changes to get it over the finish line in the first day or two of June,” Fahy said.
Those changes included explicit exclusions for everything from home appliances to police radios to farm equipment. Fahy says she was willing to omit those devices because she thought focusing on small electronics would give consumers “the biggest bang for their buck.” Data from the repair guide site iFixit shows that eight of the top 10 devices New Yorkers attempted to repair in 2020 were small consumer electronics, with cell phones and laptops topping the list.
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