Hi, it's time to talk about right to repair and I'm sure a lot of my audience have been hearing about it. This because I I know a lot of my audience followed Louis Rossman, who of course is pretty much now devoting most of his uh, time instead of doing repair videos. he's actually now advocating uh, right, uh, to repair in the Us and like setting up various uh, you know, non-profit groups and things to uh, do that both, uh, within the political sphere and otherwise. Anyway, a lot of people don't know that there was an Australian repair Summit.

Uh, just last month. it's just ended and it was down in Canberra, which is Australia's a capital and there are a lot of people involved in this and I was going to go to it. I had all plans to uh, go to Canberra and stay for a few days and attend this, but unfortunately, yeah, we're locked down here in Sydney at the last minute so I couldn't attend unfortunately. But luckily they have actually recorded all of the videos which are in full available over on this Vimeo live stream page over here.

but I'm going to, uh, edit some of these they have. Thank you very much. They have given me permission to actually edit and re-upload these videos so I'll put them on my second channel. So this is like a main channel video.

uh which will have Kyle wins from who's the founder of Ifixit and after I yap on, you'll be able to hear Kyle talk about right to repair. He actually uh presented at the summit and did a Q A so I'll include that at the end of this, but head on over to my Eevblog2 channel where I'll make um, other edited videos available and probably just dump the full videos as well for those who want to watch it on the Youtubes anyway, right to repair? Yes, it is a big issue. It's not just about that modern devices are like so complex that you can't work on them anymore. That's not really the problem.

The problem is is that so many manufacturers out there large ones very fruity companies out there. uh, love to like actually make their products hard not only hard to open, but hard to uh repair not only in terms of like physical access and things like that. Even that's not necessarily a huge problem like this as I fix it I show in their great videos of how to like, tear down various products and actually you know, give them an accessibility and repair score and things like that which is fantastic. But it's also the fact that they seem to be going to a bit nefarious means to uh, try and obfuscate our design by not only uh, serial lies in uh, parts so that if you try and swap, say you know one part or a camera module from one phone to another phone or something like that, it won't work because it's it's now serialized even though you know they're two genuine products in the exact same parts.

And they also hinder you in repair by something like as something as mundane as a switch mode uh, regulator for example. uh, you know, power Controller chip something like that instead of using one of the hundred off the shelf ones available, they go to the big manufacturers and go, hey, if we order 10 million of these chips, design us a little slightly different custom one that we can use in our phones. And by the way, you're not allowed to sell that to anyone else either. So if you want to repair your stuff often, you can't get the chips because not just because they're custom silicon, because you know, like a huge custom basic or something like that you can understand, but something like you know, like a switch mode controller.

There's no reason for it apart from, you know, preventing people from repairing their own stuff. And it's not just the consumer electronics industry with phones, it's John Deere Tractors. It's automotive industries, the military industry, the medical industry. They've all been hit with these uh companies that really make it extremely difficult and or extremely expensive for you to repair your own products that you paid for and you should own.

so it's ridiculous. Anyway, I won't go into too many more details because I've done an excellent view. Uh, interview with uh, Louis Rossman. We talked for like an hour and a half or something about right to repair so it's available on the Amp hour so you can download that and listen to that wherever you are.

I highly recommend it. Lewis just lays it all out on the line and it's a fantastic discussion. Highly recommended. So yes, the Right To Repair Summit happened and we had lots of people actually are speaking at this and um, it was a quite a great event so I highly recommend watching uh, the full things if you've got time.

but I'll try and make some edited content available. Anyway, What has just happened is the Australian government actually spent some of my tax dollar coin. Thank you very much on a Right To Repair A report from the Productivity Uh Commission here in Australia, they've just released their draft report. Unfortunately, it's 340 pages long.

so um, yeah, there is a summary, uh, document. I'll link these in down below. It's 42 pages for the summary document, so I'm gonna have to, uh yeah, sit down and do some bedtime reading. and if I can do like a summary video of uh, the this, uh, Productivity Commission uh report, then I'll um, possibly do a video on that.

But anyway, I'll link those in down below if you want to check them out. and if you want to follow right to repair in Australia, I would recommend that you follow uh Mendet Australia on uh, Twitter because they just continually, um, right on the ball, posting new stuff with the right right to repair stuff here in Australia. Anyway, enough of my renting. I'll hand it over to Kyle Wenz who's uh, the founder of Ifixit, who I'm sure everyone all in my audience is familiar with.

and uh, he does a great uh, present, uh, talk on this and then he takes uh questions at the end of it. So leave your thoughts and comments about right to repair down below. and as I said, uh, over on my Eevblog2 channel. Many more videos to come, so check those out but take it away Kyle.

Catch you next time. We now, um, turn to Um, an online presentation in this true hybrid fashion that we have today and we welcome Carl Wines from Ifixit in the United States. He has done a pre-recording uh message. He is one of our funders and very keen supporters of the Right To Repair movement.

Hello! I am so excited to be here. I wish I was joining you in person. Unfortunately, flight restrictions just not quite there yet. The world is reopening.

Uh, and I look forward to joining all of you in person soon. Uh, I'm Kyle. I started. I fix it.

I thought I'd give you a little bit of my background, I fix this background and then I'm going to walk you through what's happening with Right To Repair uh in the U.s because there has been a lot happening. Even as as recently as this morning, there's a lot of activity happening. I got into this: I actually my first job when I was in high school was repairing Apple Computers. I got a job at our local Apple Authorized Service Centers.

They were doing warranty work on Apple Devices when I was 14 and I've been in the industry ever since I started. I Fix it when I was studying at university and I was trying to fix my own computer and I had trouble working on it. And the reason I had trouble was I didn't have access to the service manuals that Apple that I had access to when I was working for an Apple Authorized Service center. It turned out that Apple had sent copyright threats to anyone that posted their service manuals online and had wiped that knowledge from the internet.

And as someone who was young and idealistic who believes in the power and freedom of information, that really kind of rankled me. And so I decided that I would write my own service manual to replace the information that Apple had taken offline. Uh, we've been doing that ever since. I Fix It has helped hundreds of millions of people around the world learn how to repair not just their Apple products, but products across the board.

And and one of the main reasons that we do this. Of course, it's beneficial for consumers if they can fix things, it's beneficial for the local economy, but it's also really essential. Uh, for the environment. These these electronics that we have are some of the most carbon intensive products that we we have.

If we, if everyone in the United States was to use their phone for just a year longer, it would be the equivalent of taking 600 000 vehicles off the road. And almost all the emissions during the lifespan of a cell phone is not from you plugging in and charging it off the wall. It's all embodied at a time of manufacture. It takes a huge amount of raw materials, fresh water, carbon, raw materials dug out of the ground to make one of these things.

And so if we are going to go all that effort of making it, let's make things last as long as possible. And of course I know I am preaching to the choir. That's why all of you are here. So let's dive in and talk about some of the obstacles that we've seen manufacturers throw up.

Of course, there's the service manual problem and I know Tim Hicks is here and will be speaking later this afternoon. Back when Tim got his uh, takedown notice from Toshiba Australia, he was running his amazing website sharing service manuals with everyone. Toshiba says no, those are our authorized. those are our copyright service manuals.

They're only available to our authorized technicians. Well, now we're seeing manufacturers go beyond just the service manuals. they lock down access to parts. Apple, for example, won't sell anyone a battery for your phone.

Samsung has special diagnostic software tooling for working on their smartphones that they don't make available to anyone else. John Deere has special software that their technicians have that they won't make available to farmers across the board. We see all kinds of these obstacles that manufacturers are throwing up: there. access to parts, access to tools, access to information, the ability to pair parts, trademark issues, patent issues.

I mean the entire intellectual property regulatory regime is designed to protect creators. Unfortunately, at the same time, as electronics are making it into more and more products, they're interfering with all of our ownership rights. You know, we have the things that we traditionally think that we can do with property. If it's mine, I bought it, I paid for it.

I should be able to do whatever I want. Well, manufacturers have found ways of using the intellectual property laws that were designed to protect creators creatives. Uh, they're using that to uh to eliminate competition in the repair market and we've seen the harms that it has has done in our communities. There used to be Cam a camera shop in just about every Uh city in the world and now there are very, very few.

Well, that's because Nikon and Canon decided to cut off support to independent camera shops including access to repair information. As as I talk with consumers and I ask them, hey, you know, would you be you've got your thing that's broken, Would you be interested in repairing it One of the major uh things that I hear from consumers that has always been sort of interesting is this psychological barrier around warranties. I say, hey, your phone is broken, why don't you open it up and fix it yourself and I'll say, well, what about the warranty? Won't I be voiding my warranty if I do that And I find this absolutely fascinating for a few reasons. One, it's already broken.

If if the warranty really mattered, wouldn't you just have already taken it to the manufacturer. Two, Where is this idea coming from? Like it has completely, uh, pervaded our society? This this idea that warranties, uh, you'll avoid your warranty if you work on your product. And I realize this is a country by country situation, but it just so happens in the United States, it's not legal to do that. It's not legal for manufacturers to void the warranty, but consumers think that anyway.

And the reason is these warranty voided for move stickers that are in products across the board And I yeah, it feels like they've been added to more and more products. Well, in the U.s the Federal Trade Commission has started taking action on this. They sent know this to Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony telling them to knock it off, stop putting those warranty, voyage, remove stickers off products And earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission launched a website reportfraud.fdc.gov and they've said that those warranty void different moves stickers are actual fraud. So that's the kind of thing that maybe consumer organizations around the world uh, you know, and governments could get involved with pushing back on on manufacturer practices like that.

And it's it's It's a psychological barrier that gets people to think, oh, I can't open anything. I have to take it to an authorized center. The manufacturers want you to go to them for permission to do everything and that's not the way the world works. If they wanted permission for everything you were going to do with the product, they shouldn't have sold it to you in the first place.

They sold it to me. it's mine. I can do what I want with it. I can fix it if I want.

I can break it if I want. I can paint it purple if I want. It's mine. If if they wanted a you know to restrict me from doing it, they shouldn't have sold me that product in the first place.

And it's nice to see the U.s Federal Trade Commission get more and more involved in this. We have heard a number of arguments from manufacturers opposing right to Repair and and the the U.s Federal Trade Commission recently released a report called Mixing the Fix where they went through and they systematically analyzed those manufacturer obstacles. uh, and I can. I can talk through all of them ad nauseam with you, but it's everything from cyber security to safety issues and what.

What the Ftc found at the end of this exhaustive multi-year process was that there was no substantive data backing up any of the manufacturer arguments against repair. It turns out, I mean, and this has kind of been cleared to those of us working on the issue from the beginning that these are all excuses. The real reason is we have a monopoly. It's very profitable for us.

We'd like to continue having that monopoly and we have to step back and say, is it in society's best interest for every manufacturer to have a monopoly on service of their devices? Uh, probably not. And 27 different U.s states agree. Uh, So in the Us broken up, we have where a lot of different states, every state runs their own legislative process separately and and we kind of have two tracks of policy that we're working on. In the Us, we have state level legislation and federal legislation at the state level.

What we're working on doing is addressing the competition, access to parts tools and information, and so the state right to repair bills based on the model Uh bill put out by the repair Association basically says hey, if manufacturer has a repair network, they need to make available the same parts, tools and information to independent repair shops and consumers that they make available to their repair network. Those state bills are making progress. None of them have passed so far. This year, New York passed it in the Senate, but then failed to get it through the assembly.

in time, the State of Arkansas introduced a hospital focused Uh bill that also passed the senate. In Arkansas didn't make it all the way through. There are a number of U.s states that are still active, so it's a possibility later this year that one could pass. increasingly.

those you know when 27 different states are working on on on something, it tends to raise it to prominence at the Federal level. And so the Uh. President Biden's administration has announced that they are going to release an executive order asking the Federal Trade Commission to do a rule making where the Federal Trade Commission can put in practice rules that govern trade. One example of a rule that they have is if you put Made In America on a product that has to be made in the Usa, well, we don't necessarily have laws on the books to enforce that.

Instead, the Federal Trade Commission has has introduced rules and they have the power from Congress to enforce those rules. So the Biden Administration has asked the Federal Trade Commission to do something similar around right to repair. It will be very interesting to see where that goes. They specifically singled out smart phones and farm equipment for the Ftc to look at, but you can imagine that will capture a number of other industries in addition to what's happening in the U.s Uh, we also have a lot of momentum happening around the world.

Uh, the European Commission has already passed some lightweight right to repair regulations around appliances and they're looking to expand that to smartphones Another in the future, France has rolled out repairability scoring where where laptops, smartphones and other products have to have a score from one to ten on how easy it is to fix something that score factors in availability of parts and availability of service information. so you have. Samsung has now released service manuals for many of their flagship smartphones in French. They have not released those uh in uh, American or Australian yet, but we will see we're we're hoping and it will be nice to see other countries adopt the French approach.

Also, Canada is working on on fixes specifically fixes to the anti-circumvention provisions that we've seen in copyright acts around the world. And all of you are going to be talking today about what's happening in Australia, So I just want to say welcome to the global movement. This is something that is greater than any one country or jurisdiction. All of these manufacturers are making and selling and distributing these products globally.

All of us are using them around the world. We would like to be able to fix them and I'm optimistic that if all of us can come together we can find some common sense solutions. uh, that will that will advance human rights in Australia. Thank you very much! Have a great event Thank you Kyle! Um, thank you so much it it's um, great to have you involved and fantastic to have you speak to us today but also to Um support our repair summit.

We've got Kyle and Shane Um, happy to take questions this is from. Ken, Is there or does there need to be a distinction between a consumer, agricultural and a commercial right to repair? Well, maybe I'll answer first, but then pass it off to Shane because I think this is kind of a question of what is good policy. I, I am concerned that we tend to like address these things in isolation. It's much better to address these issues.

I mean, in principle, across the board, I don't see a fundamental difference between a farmer having access to the information he needs to repair a tractor and a consumer having access to the information they need to replace the phone. What we tend to see is that the intellectual property laws that are preventing access to repair are the same across the board, and the restrictions that manufacturers are using. The tactics that they're using are similar across the board. So I would like to see a universal approach.

Um, across U.s states like California's Right to Repair Bill this year was focused solely on medical equipment for hospitals, ventilators, and and Critical Cove with equipment Um and and the hospitals are being cut out of the mix the same thing, same way that the farmers are. I have a question. Kyle from Scott Smith, Um, can you address the manufacturer's concerns over security and Ip as reasons to prevent participation in repair? I think you did mention a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely I said.

this is I, I'm a software engineer. I have a lot of friends in the security committee in the cyber security community and they're really annoyed by this objection. Uh, and and they're They're frustrated. Like not in our name.

Are you going to use cyber security to restrict people's access to their hardware? Uh, The the security experts that we work with say there's just absolutely no reason like cyber security. You can design a product that's repairable and securable, and it's repairable and and secure. Uh, they're kind of orthogonal issues. They don't have a whole lot to do with each other.

This is I think an argument that has been dreamed up by by lobbyists that are like scrambling for reasons to stop this. In in the Us and in the state of Massachusetts. there was a recent raid to repair ballot initiative where individual voters could could vote their perspective on this issue. Uh, and it was around automotive wireless access to data coming from your car and it came down to a security debate where the auto manufacturers were saying it will be insecure if you can, uh, access the data off your car and they ran scare campaigns.

They ran advertisements showing like someone tracking something to their house with the information coming off of their car and and the rest of us are looking at that and saying that's crazy from a software perspective. So they put my software engineering hat on a little bit. This is a tactic that we call security via obscurity where the car is already transmitting wirelessly, the manufacturers are relying on some kind of secret information, a secret protocol that they've designed. That's how the car communicates.

Uh, a bad actor will reverse engineer that. That secure protocol will be able to talk to it. So whether a consumer has access to the information or not, it doesn't matter for a long time. Locksmith didn't like people talking or lock manufacturers didn't like people talking about how they had a you know, pick locks.

It turns out, locks get more secure when people know what the vulnerabilities are and then in the open space we can. We can innovate and we can other aid. So I would say to this one, uh, defer to your friendly neighborhood cyber security expert and they will happily debunk the manufacturers because there is complete consensus in the in the computer security industry that right to repair is actually a benefit to improving the security of these devices by by reducing the obscurity of these proprietary interfaces. A couple of comments um from John Deere that they provide detailed product information, software solutions and parts and a website is provided, but also um, a comment from someone saying that John Deere was one of the first key Ag companies that actually met the right to repair deadline with customer tools and resources and um, the contributor would like to see that point corrected.

Um, today. Well, I would love for the person who asked that question to point me to where I can get that software for a John Deere tractor because John Deere has said that it's available, but we haven't found a single dealer that can sell sell you that software. What I've been told is that potentially there may be a 5 000 a year license available where you might be able to get access to a lightweight version of what John Deere calls Service Advisor. But there is a big difference between what John Deere is talking about, potentially allowing customers to do even with the subscription access to the software, and what their technicians can do.

And I'll give you a really good example. I'm in the farming community. My friend Dan called me panic a couple years ago and he said hey my my tractor is down. This is a big 300 horsepower treaded track tractor.

He spent over 300 000 on it and the tractor would not start. It was throwing an error code it wouldn't start and it turned out the reason was that there was a sensor on the hydraulic track that measures the pres, the pressure of the tension of the track and the sensor had gone bad. The tractor was perfectly fine, there was nothing wrong with it, the sensor was bad. He wanted the way to be able to bypass that sensor so that he could farm while he waited for the part to be shipped to him.

And and by the time the part got to him, it was going to, you know, dramatically reduce the yield on his harvest. and there was no way to be able to bypass that sensor. So one of the arguments that we'll hear from John Deere is they'll say, well, we support repair, but not modification Well, there's not a whole lot of difference. Like he needed to make a short-term modification of that tractor to bypass the sensor so that he could.

He could harvest his his equipment and I can tell you, I have a tractor. I make modifications my tractor all the time. Uh, what? Whether you call a modification or repair, it's a fix and that's that's what farmers need to do. So I I think we're seeing a lot of sort of false arguments by manufacturers.

One argument that John Deere has been saying lately as well: Farmers can can do like. The only repairs that they need to do with electronics are like two percent repairs. They can do all the rest well. Since when do I only own 98 of my machine? Um, we now have another question from Adrian Selig: Have you had any feedback from the American Watchmakers Association? Kyle In the U.s Because our watchmaking industry here in Australia has similar issues to the mobile phone industry, I have heard this from from watchmakers in our area that they are increasingly having access to Uh having challenges getting access to equipment.

And by the way, just to kind of point out, the macro scale watchmakers I think is the only industry term where the term watchmaker applies to repair, but they're actually making manufacturing new parts. I I have a wonderful friend here as a watchmaker and I ask him, hey, if you can't get a particular gear, what do you do He's like, well, I'll make a wax mold and I'll melt down some metal and I'll make a new new gear. So watchmakers are incredibly sophisticated, incredibly talented people, but absolutely they're They're seeing challenges. Um, you know, one thing that I would be interested in working on and I think we have some ways to go with the legislation is the reference legislation in the United States is focused on products that have electronics.

So if you have a purely mechanical product, the current U.s state reference legislation would not help watchmakers in that instance. and I think maybe there's an opportunity to improve Uh our approach so I would welcome their their involvement. I would say the watchmakers in the Us have not been particularly involved, but we'd love to work with them. And a question from Dr.

Sasha Alexander, who's a design academic, Do industrial designers product designers require repairability? on the on their interdisciplinary list of things to do and their extended product responsibility? Absolutely. I can't under underscore enough how important the role of design is. We are living in a world where all the waste that we see around us is by design. It may be accident.

Yeah, it may be a mistake. It may be bad design, but these products that are short-lived That's that's a nine intent I have here. This is an Imac. It's a gorgeously designed, aesthetically designed product, but they decided to make it so thin.

Um, that. uh, you can't even put feather traditional Usb port in it. Uh and uh, the it's so thin that they couldn't make the ram upgrade. Well, it could make the storage upgradeable.

so when the flash memory fails on this computer, it's going to be a very beautiful piece of trash. So yes, we would like to see more designers factor this in. I think it should be a skill on the cv of every industrial designer and we're starting to see that more and more. I run design workshops for industrial designers for all kinds of large electronic companies and companies Outside of the electronics industry, I work with apparel designers with outdoor gear designers and it's something that really you have to factor in.

And I'll bring them a product that's failed and we'll sit down. We'll do a workshop and say, how can we design this Not so it won't fail, but so it's easier to repair when it does fail. Uh, because uh, the the the Second Law of Thermodynamics is coming for us, right? Entropy breaks everything down. Eventually we have to design.

Uh, resilient systems. Which means products that can be mended. Thank you, Um, for those online. If I can just capture that, it was about the service economy and how to improve that quickly because it's so important to society more generally.

Yeah, this is a great question. Uh, and we talk about this a lot. in the context of the circular economy. The the advantage of a service ecosystem like you're describing is it aligns the incentives so the product designers want to make a product that will last as long as possible.

We have these electric scooters taking over our cities here and you know you scan the code on your phone and then you can drive the scooter. And I've talked with some of the design engineers at these companies and they tell me the profitability of these scooter companies is dependent on how long they can make the thing last, how fast they can make it serviceable. So that's cool. Um, on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to completely live in the post ownership society.

I like owning my computer. I don't want to rent my computer. um, I just have hike owning my bicycle. I don't want to rent my bicycle so I think that we'll have a hybrid model.

But I certainly think that the kind of strategies that you have where you're going to design something to be long lasting, robust, durable. Because the manufacturing centers are aligned, we need to find a way to do that same thing with consumer products that people own. Thank you very much and thank you again to Shane and Kyle for your contributions. This is great!.