The existence of third-party repair shops for computers, smartphones, and home appliances so that people can repair them and extend their useful lives, should be something people can have easy access to. Not only so they can save money, but also to reduce the electronic waste.
Yet companies making their products harder to repair, not allowing third-parties having access to whats needed to conduct the repairs, and some repair shops malpractices, show that some level of government regulations should be put in place if companies and the people who run the repair shops don't clean-up their game. People have the right to repair things when they choose to do it, only replacing when they see fit to do so and not because its made artificially difficult by companies to do so.
The right to repair doesn't strife innovation, since to make repairs technicians don't need to know the internal workings of things, or access to the source code of the software that runs our devices. They just need to have the schematics needed to make the repair, or software tools to verify the repair leaves the device working as intended.
Most often than not stealing the intellectual property used to build modern appliances, and other consumer electronics, by third-party shops is almost impossible because of their complexity. Not only that, those third-party shops don't need access to all the schematics, or to the source code of the software used in them, to make repairs. They just need the specific schematics for the repairs they performed, or to software tools to verify the repair was successful.
People should be the ones making the decision of when to repair, or when to replace their things. Planned obsolescence should be made illegal, since it needlessly increases e-waste at the benefit of companies not of the people or our environment.
Short term economic gains of companies shouldn't come before the people interests, or the environment. As a society, we need to be playing on out long term interests.
No comments:
Post a Comment