U.S. Technology users are fighting to pass a law that will allow people to have access to the tools and the information to make their own repairs to their electronics rather than having to pay someone to do it.

Companies have been holding the health of electronic products behind an inflated paywall. Companies stand perfectly content with letting consumers with broken products get their products fixed in their stores for roughly three times the price of the parts.

The Right to Repair Law, or the Digital Fair Repair Act, according to CNET, will mean consumers  will no longer need to bring their broken electronic products back to their original makers to get an authorized repair and instead either fix them themselves or bring them to local independent repair shops.

The act has not been federally approved yet but The Digital Fair Repair Act is indeed gaining attention at a federal level with President Joe Biden supporting it and asking the Federal Trade Commission to draft right-to-repair rules in an executive order in 2021, with no new news about it until the case in New York. 

The first and only place to currently have a similar act in place is New York. It states that  manufacturers of electronic and digital products and services must provide access to buy spare parts and manuals to the public to inform them how to repair their own products.  Whether the consumer wants to risk attempting to repair the product themselves or bring the device to an independent repair shop is up to them, as not everyone has good technological prowess.

Some electronic device manufacturers have been trying there best to comply with consumers demands ith the new drop of the IPhone 14 this September on the 16 this year, Apple has tried to listen to people’s wants and changed the eternal design of the IPhone 14 to allow easy removal and repair of the back glass case and front screen. 

“Apple has completely redesigned the internals of the iPhone 14 to make it easier to repair,” wrote founder of iFixit Kyle Wiens, giving his response to CNBC “It is not at all visible from the outside, but this is a big deal.”

Where the problem really comes is the Iphone 14 Pro design, a more expensive and bigger model, doesn’t feature these easy to repair designs, making you actively pay more for something that will need an even more expensive repair and replacement down the road.

According to a teardown video by High Jeffreys, an independent repair man, Apple has recently doubled back on their progressive actions, adding firmware to the IPhone 14 IOS that will actively lock you out of certain key features if you attempt to replace a broken part with a working part of another IPhone 14. Apple has been adding serial numbers to each part of the IPhone 14 and not authorizing swapping out for parts of the same model. If you need to get a new part you are required to buy from Apple, paying extra. 

The Digital Fair Repair Act would bring technology users closer to the products that they spent their hard earned money on. Making it feel more like the product is owned and not simply borrowed.