The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
—Douglas Adams
In Aaron Perzanowski’s 2022 book The Right to Repair: Reclaiming the Things We Own, he offers a comprehensive and easy-to-read coverage of an underappreciated topic. This review offers both praise of Perzanowski’s coverage of the topic and constructive criticism regarding areas where he appears to go too far. With the Federal Trade Commission’s 2021 Nixing the Fix report supporting the right-to-repair movement, average consumer product lifespans decreasing, and growing concern over environmentally harmful e-waste, this book has the potential to serve as a powerful catalyst for change.
Overall, Perzanowski does an excellent job detailing the problem, documenting existing legislative efforts, and advocating for reform. When considering the issue of a right to repair, many people likely do not consider anything past the immediate costs and benefits of facilitating repairs. Perzanowski makes a strong case for repairability by emphasizing the environmental benefits. This includes the obvious problem of high levels of e-waste, which is particularly harmful to the environment. But it also produces a problem on the supply side by producing harm through increased extraction of rare-earth materials, a particularly harmful process. Perzanowski also provides a realistic assessment of the limited ability of recycling to offset these harms.
Perzanowski provides numerous examples of corporate behavior that minimizes repairability. Examples include planned obsolescence, use of patent law to limit availability of replacement parts, use of trade secrets to keep repair information secret, and use of copyright law to keep diagnostic tools private. He also describes how large corporations collaborate to restrict third-party sellers. For example, in 2018 Apple and Amazon reached an agreement that included banning all third-party sales of Apple products from Amazon.com.
Perzanowski provides an analysis of case law relevant to the right to repair. The following are a few examples:
· The landmark 1901 case that upheld the right of a children’s book reseller to repair damaged books and then resell them.
· The class-action lawsuit against Apple for, without warning, locking thousands of iPhone owners out of their phones for using third-party repair services.
· The $500 million settlement Apple agreed to pay for intentionally reducing the performance of older iPhones allegedly to convince owners to purchase a new iPhone.
· The 1992 case in which New Kids on the Block unsuccessfully sued USA Today for trademark infringement for publishing a poll asking the prescient question “Who’s your favorite New Kid?”
Perzanowski provides numerous potential solutions to improve repairability. Examples include requiring companies to make parts available for seven years, waiving sales tax on buying replacement parts and paying for repairs, enacting laws against planned obsolescence, and requiring product packaging that reports ease of repairability information. He also posits creative uses of existing law to benefit repairability. Examples include an expansive interpretation of implied warranties, using the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act to prohibit companies from voiding warranties solely because their brand of replacement parts were not used, and prosecuting companies for deceptive trade practices for omitted or misleading statements regarding product repairability. Perzanowski also promotes the use of antitrust law to stop companies from using “tying agreements” through which a company sells a product under the condition that the buyer also purchase additional, tied products.
At times, Perzanowski goes too far in his zeal for repairability. He alleges that the act of repairing provides various, amorphous benefits above just cost savings and e-waste mitigation. For example, he claims that “[t]hrough repair, we become better informed about the world around us, develop analytical and problem-solving skills, exercise greater autonomy, and build stronger communities.” He further states, “Repair cultivates a sense of self-sufficiency and autonomy that is increasingly rare in a world shaped by networked technologies.” And he alleges that if consumer products “are extensions of ourselves, the right to repair them is vital to our personal freedom and agency.” He views these benefits as so great that “the effort is worthwhile even when a repair fails.”
Perzanowski oddly laments how AirPods are a “textbook example” of a product that is likely designed to be “antagonistic to repair.” He accurately points out how AirPods are difficult to repair because they have no screws and that “Apple’s designers and engineers . . . certainly could have designed headphones that incorporated replaceable batteries.” Perzanowski seems to be ignoring the tradeoffs involved. Yes, AirPods could be designed with screws, replaceable batteries, and other features, but that would almost certainly result in drastically reduced customer demand. AirPods are a wonder of technological advancement. They are wireless, have a built in microphone, have touch-activated controls, have a skin-detect sensor, allow hands-free internet searches, have active noise cancelation, have a motion-detecting accelerometer, have a speech-detecting accelerometer, have a force sensor, have water- and sweat-resistant sealing, provide six hours of listening, and weigh only 0.15 ounces. Adding screws and replaceable parts would be possible, but the resulting product would likely be so bulky and heavy as to be completely impractical as a product designed to stay wedged into an ear.
Other peculiar examples provided by Perzanowski involve the right to repair medical devices and military devices. Even a reader who is generally persuaded by the principles of repairability is likely to be extremely hesitant regarding applying these standards to military and health care products. Allowing unlicensed people to attempt to repair these products with unlicensed parts would likely cause far more problems than the associated benefits in reduced waste.
Perzanowski acknowledges that right-to-repair policies would be bad for corporations and their shareholders. But it appears he does not fully understand the complete ramifications of this. He shrugs off concern about harm to corporations by explaining that companies like Apple and Samsung could still “survive if [they] made less money.” Perhaps, but many in the middle class hold Apple and Samsung stock in their retirement portfolios. And reduced profitability at these corporations could result in layoffs.
Another demonstration of how Perzanowski appears to not fully account for the tradeoffs involved is his assessment of the Fairphone company and its product, the Fairphone. The Fairphone first came out in 2013 as a relatively inexpensive cell phone that emphasizes repairability and environmental sustainability. Perzanowski asserts, “A new Apple or Samsung phone might be a few millimeters thinner or load [TV Shows] a fraction of a second faster. But the Fairphone’s drawbacks are a reasonable sacrifice to make in the name of vastly improved longevity and far lower repair costs.” This is a personal assessment that, according to the miniscule market share held by Fairphone, very few agree with.
The comparison is further misleading because the Fairphone was created on the backs of all the technological advancements that came before it. Explained another way, yes, if society is willing to sacrifice quality for increases in repairability and reduced e-waste, it would not require a drastic diminution in quality. However, this would only be true in the short run. In the long run, the accumulated reductions in quality would become significant. To illustrate, imagine if this compromise had been made over the previous twenty years. In the first couple of years, there would not be a significant difference between the quality of cell phones and the higher quality of what would have been. But arriving at the present day after twenty years of diminished improvements in quality, the difference would be dramatic. Instead of the iPhone 14 (48-megapixel camera, 7.9 mm thick, LTPO Super Retina XDR OLED 120 Hz 3.6 million pixel display, ultra 4k recording, 4,323 mAh battery, wireless charging, and 1 terabyte storage), we would have something closer to the leading cell phone from twenty years ago, the Sony Ericsson T68i (8,000 pixel screen, 700 mAh battery, 19.5 mm thick, and 400 kb memory). In 2002, Perzanowski likely would have proclaimed that consumers do not really need much better than that Sony cell phone. And at the time, he might have been able to get others to agree. But in hindsight, very few people today would be willing to regress away from the iPhone 14 back toward that Sony phone in exchange for improvements to repairability and reduced e-waste.
While this review offers various critiques of the book, overall Perzanowski does an excellent job detailing the problem, documenting existing legislative efforts, and advocating for reform. The ability of such rhetoric to persuade consumers to tame their desire for the latest and greatest products remains to be seen, however. Perzanowski is optimistic, mentioning how marketing campaigns have successfully changed attitudes on issues like littering and smoking. While true, these two examples are an “easy sell,” as the practice of littering produces minimal benefit to the litterer and the practice of smoking produces great harm. Conversely, the practice of purchasing the latest product is highly desirable. Our society idolizes people who create the latest and greatest products, like Steve Jobs and Tony Stark, and sometimes criticize as “cheap” those who choose to repair rather than replace. Regardless of the likelihood of changes, Perzanowski provides an engaging and informative book that lays out the case for repairability.
