Texas Will Soon Be the Ninth State to Pass a Popular ‘Right to Repair’ Law ⇥ techdirt.com

Richard Lawler, the Verge:

Texas moved closer to becoming the next state with a right to repair law on the books, as the state Senate unanimously voted 31 – 0 to finalize HB 2963 this weekend. It would require manufacturers to make spare parts, manuals, and necessary tools available for equipment sold or used in the country’s second most populated state.

Maddie Stone, Grist:

That [if Ohio’s bill becomes law] would mark an important political inflection point for the right-to-repair movement. While most of the states that have passed repair laws so far are Democratic strongholds, bills have been introduced in all 50 as of February. The adoption of a right-to-repair law in deep red Ohio — where Republicans control the state House, Senate, and the governor’s office, and Donald Trump won the last presidential election by more than 10 percentage points — would further underscore the broad, bipartisan popularity of being allowed to fix the stuff you own.

Karl Bode, TechDirt:

This is definite progress, and I hate to be a buzzkill, but it’s worth reiterating that of the 8 states that have passed right to repair reforms so far, not a single one has actually enforced them in any meaningful way. This despite no shortage of bad corporate actors working overtime to kill independent repair shops, make manuals and parts hard to find, use obnoxious DRM, or claim that repairing your own stuff violates warranty.

The problem with corporations insisting upon the safety and reliability that only comes from staying within their own ecosystem of parts and accessories is that they are frequently lying or, at least, exaggerating about the dangers. At least lawmakers across the political spectrum and around the world are beginning to call them on their tall tales.