# Right to Repair Right to Repair is the movement — and the policy demand — to make it legal and practical for owners and independent shops to fix the products they buy, rather than being forced to use the manufacturer or replace the whole device. Concretely, it asks that makers provide access to spare parts, repair manuals, diagnostic software, and the tools needed to fix a device, and that they stop using technical and legal locks ([[Parts Pairing]], [[Digital Rights Management]], [[Firmware]] restrictions) to block third-party repair. It applies far beyond phones — to tractors, cars, appliances, medical equipment, and wheelchairs. ## Why it matters here Right to Repair is one of the genuinely cross-partisan populist fights in American politics, which is exactly why it belongs in a vault that maps the right's coalitions and contradictions. **The coalition.** It unites unusual allies: farmers (especially over [[John Deere]] tractors that can only be fully serviced by authorized dealers), rural and agricultural conservatives, libertarians who frame it as a property-rights issue ("you don't truly own what you can't fix"), environmentalists worried about [[E-Waste]], consumer advocates, and antitrust reformers. The framing flips easily across the spectrum: on the right it is property rights and anti-corporate-elitism; on the left it is consumer protection and sustainability. The [[Lina Khan]]-era FTC made repair restrictions an enforcement priority, and the cause has produced rare bipartisan state legislation. **The opposition.** Manufacturers — led by [[Apple]], [[John Deere]], and medical-device and auto companies — resist, citing safety, security, intellectual property, and counterfeit-parts risk. Critics see those as pretexts for protecting lucrative repair monopolies and forced-upgrade revenue ([[Planned Obsolescence]]). The activist [[Louis Rossmann]] became a prominent independent-repair voice documenting these practices. **The wins.** A wave of state laws (Colorado's farm-equipment law, New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon — Oregon's notably restricting [[Parts Pairing]]) and EU rules have begun to mandate parts and manual access, and Apple, after years of opposition, launched a self-service repair program widely read as a defensive concession. The fight is a live, ongoing test of whether populist energy can constrain entrenched corporate power on consumer terrain. ## See Also - [[Parts Pairing]] — the technical lock at the center of the fight - [[Planned Obsolescence]] — the business model R2R pushes back on - [[Digital Rights Management]] · [[DMCA]] — the legal locks - [[E-Waste]] — the environmental case for repair - [[John Deere]] · [[Louis Rossmann]] — the emblematic opponent and advocate