Why is the right to repair important?

While throughout the world there is a tendency to discipline society by establishing restrictions and removing rights, resistance is beginning to emerge from civil society, and the principles of free software extended to another area is an important part of it. in this post We discuss why the right to repair is important and why it is being demanded around the world.

It is worth mentioning that this elimination of rights is not limited to a political system. Both democracies and dictatorships, whether devoted to savage capitalism or traditional Marxism, have decided to turn 1984 into an instruction manual.

In the 80s, a judge in my country coined the phrase "technological vassalage." A now-defunct multinational computer company had made one of its clients sign a contract that prevented him from seeking other cheaper or more suitable alternatives. not so extreme though we are all victims of vassalage when we buy a certain product and depend on its technical services and from a single component supplier.

Let me tell you about a case I witnessed the other day.

Martin's story

My friend Martin's all-in-one computer stopped working. He took it to the official technical service where they told him that it would take a month to find the problem and give him the estimate. All this in the context of the dollarized Argentine economy where even nationally manufactured products are priced according to the parity of the peso with the US currency. In short, with each passing day the repair was going to be more expensive.

After a month they answered that the problem was in the motherboard and that it would take three months for the manufacturer to have spare parts.

I interrupt myself to make a brief explanation.

In the 80s, the military government of Argentina, with the excuse of promoting immigration in Patagonia, exempted electronic products manufactured in the then National Territory of Tierra del Fuego from taxes and added taxes to those imported. The governments that followed continued both practices with the occasional tax cut.

As a result, except for Apple products and some other exceptions, they are "manufactured" in Argentina by an oligopoly. The quotation marks are because what is manufactured is usually the “Made in Argentina” label.

Continuing with my friend's story, I became suspicious. There are not too many motherboard manufacturers and they supply the world market. I advised my friend to take him to an unofficial technical service that works with several brands. At the same time I found in an electronics forum the motherboard model and that other manufacturers use it.

The end of the story is that my friend asked a contact in Brazil to buy the part on a sales portal and he is going to take it to another technical service to have it changed.

Why is the right to repair important?

The right to repair refers to the possibility of end users, whether home or corporate to be able to decide the best option to restore an asset of your property in case of failure or breakage. This means not only your customer's freedom of choice but also free access for repairers to all documentation, diagnostic tools and parts needed to enable them to do their job.

Although this type of initiative is not part of the Open Hardware Initiative, It complements perfectly with it since the second focuses on the creation of devices whose components can be manufactured by anyone.

both Europe as in United States There are movements dedicated to convincing legislators to establish the right to repair since they consider that not only do they not violate the manufacturer's intellectual property, but that it would benefit from it. The more independent eyes that see the information, the easier it is to spot errors. Does that sound familiar to you?