The New Hampshire State House squashed a bill that would have forced tech manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to share parts and manuals with third-party repair outlets. The Digital Fair Repair Act would have done away with one of the worst anti-consumer practices in the cell phone industry: monopolizing the repair process. Companies like Apple force consumers to pay high prices to have their phones repaired, pushing weak “insurance” plans onto customers, and squeezing out hundreds of dollars in repairs for everything from broken glass screens to charging port malfunctions. The bill was pushed back into a year-long interim study.
And while House members cited security concerns, according to NH Business Review, Republican state Rep. John Potucek from Derry didn’t feel this bill was necessary because “in the near future, cellphones are throwaways. Everyone will just get a new one.”
To be clear, Potucek represents the Republican Party, and his voting record lines up like the company man he is. The opinion that technological devices costing more than $1,000 are “throwaways” is extraordinary. Advocates of the Digital Fair Repair Act argue there are many reasons we need this consumer protection. It’s not simply the fact that cell phones are prohibitively expensive for most people, and going around tossing them in the trash every few months to a year is madness. Cell phones also make up a growing pile of our planet’s e-waste problems.
Still, the main reason that state legislatures across the country are debating similar fair repair laws is because manufacturers’ repair programs are clear monopolies. As Motherboard points out, the United States House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee launched an antitrust investigation in September into Apple’s repair program for this very reason.
Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have called for national right to repair laws for farming equipment and the belief is that if those laws can capture people’s imagination nationally, technological devices would soon offer similar consumer protections. At the very least, the more people understand the issue, the less likely idiots like Rep. Potucek can tell people to just spend more money whenever their disposable shaver gets dull.