Copyright Shouldn’t Stand in the Way of Your Right to Repair

If you bought it, you own it and you can do what you want with it. That should be the end of the story—whether we’re talking about a car, a tractor, a smartphone, a computer, or really anything you buy.

Yet product manufacturers have chipped away for years at the very idea of ownership, using the growing presence of software on devices to make nonsense arguments about why your tinkering with the things you own violates their copyright. It’s gotten so bad that there’s a booming market for 40-year-old tractors that don’t rely on software. We’ve worked for years with advocates with the Repair Coalition, iFixit, U.S. PIRG, and countless others, to get lawmakers to make it crystal clear that people have the right to tinker with their own stuff.

It’s working. The wind is at our backs right now. In just the past two years, the right to repair has won at the ballot box in Massachusetts, received a supportive directive from the Biden Administration, and made some gains at the Library of Congress to expand repair permissions...."