Advocates Praise Introduction of House Freedom of Repair Act

Right-to-repair advocates hailed the introduction Wednesday of House legislation to remove or ease most Digital Millennium Copyright Act restrictions against self-repair. The Freedom of Repair Act, sponsored by Reps. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., and Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., “would permanently fix an important aspect of copyright law, making almost all electronic repairs legal by default,” blogged Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit director-sustainability. The DMCA “made it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures for any purpose, repair included,” she said Wednesday. The “limited exemptions” advocates have won from the Copyright Office over the years “don’t allow people to share the tools or software necessary” to do their own repairs, she said. The Jones-Spartz bill “would simplify all of this” by clarifying that “working around digital locks when fixing things isn’t a copyright violation,” Chamberlain said. “Making tools and software for those repairs would become legal. All products with embedded electronics are included, with the exception of medical devices. (We’re not thrilled about this exception.)” Enacting the legislation would be “a major victory for the right to repair,” said Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Kathleen Burke. “The DMCA was never intended to prevent consumers from repairing things they own.”