The Right to Repair
A stupendous new book on a very urgent subject.
Today, Aaron Perzanowski publishes “The Right to Repair: Reclaiming Control Over the Things We Own,” from Cambridge University Press. It’s a fitting followup to “The End of Ownership,” the book he and Jason Schultz published in 2016.
The Right to Repair movement has gained momentum over the past decade, cutting through questions of IP law, environmental survivability, consumer culture, tinkerers’ rights, consumer protection, fraud, information security and more.
Repair is simple: who gets to fix stuff, and under what circumstances? But preventing repair is decidedly complex: for manufacturers to assert the right — or even the duty! — to force you to use their repair services (or throw away your stuff) requires serious skullduggery.
The arguments against repair aren’t new — for centuries, manufacturers have claimed that letting you fix your stuff, or replace the original parts with third-party alternatives, or refurbish something someone else threw away, would put you and your neighbors and civilization itself at risk.
