From Lee Vinsel at The American Conservative:
Manufacturers are creating monopolies by preventing customers (or anyone else) from fixing their products. It’s time to end that.
The so-called Right-to-Repair movement, virtually unheard of a few years ago, has gained a great deal of ground recently. In March, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, announced that Right-to-Repair would be part of her campaign platform. Then in April, The New York Times editorial board came out in support of the idea.
Right-to-Repair focuses on removing what are known as repair restrictions, technological and legal barriers that manufacturers use to prevent consumers and independent repairpersons from fixing their products. Repair restrictions make users dependent on producers to get things fixed.