FTC 'Nixing the Fix' Workshop to Be Heavily Stacked With Right-to-Repair Advocates
The FTC’s “Nixing the Fix” half-day workshop July 16 about manufacturer restrictions on third-party repairs of consumer products will feature three panels heavily stacked with right-to-repair advocates, but no individual tech companies, according to a final agenda released at the…
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agency Tuesday. Walter Alcorn, CTA vice president-environmental affairs and industry sustainability, will appear on a panel on the impact of self-repair restrictions on consumers and small businesses. CTA, along with other tech groups, has lobbied for years against state right-to-repair laws, saying they wrongly impose government regulation on the relationship between OEMs and equipment repair facilities (see 1704090001). Alcorn will share the panel with Vibrant Technologies CEO Jennifer Larson, whose firm refurbishes and resells used information technology equipment. Larson is a supporter of right-to-repair legislation in her native Minnesota because she argues the large tech firms are trying to put organizations like hers out of business through measures that include limiting free-market access to replacement parts. Another panelist, Theresa McDonough, who owns Tech Medic, an independent repair shop in Middlebury, Vermont, argued on a Vermont Public Radio podcast last year that all the big tech companies are “guilty” of building planned obsolescence and limited repairability into their products, making it difficult for operations like hers to survive. "The older-generation iPads, if you needed a new charging port, they had a pop connector, you could easily change them out,” she said. “But with some of the newer generations, they solder them in. I get that there are some technological advances that require soldering, but things like charging ports don’t need the micro-soldering.” Apple didn’t comment Wednesday. Other workshop panels will feature state legislators who have sponsored or backed right-to-repair bills, plus the Repair Association advocacy group and iFixit, one of its key board members. The FTC has said the workshop will examine whether manufacturer repair restrictions can undercut consumer protections in the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which it’s charged with enforcing. The commission will accept written comments through Sept. 16 in the Nixing the Fix docket but has been silent on what actions it might take on the public input it receives.