
The US Government Wants to Permanently Legalize the Right to Repair - zeep
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3zbnz/the-government-wants-to-permanently-legalize-the-right-to-repair
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maxxxxx
If the Republicans pass this I will be positively surprised.

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enzanki_ars
A lot of Republican voters are farm owners [1], and this law is something many
owners of trailers, such as John Deer, have been pushing for [2].

[1] Only good source I can find. (Mostly sourced from observation.)
[http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/](http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/)

[2] [https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-
deere/](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/)

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dragonwriter
> A lot of Republican voters are farm owners

A single-digit percentage of the quarter or so of registered voters that end
up voting for Republicans, even if all US farm owners were Republican voters.

OTOH, that number is much higher in the places Republicans actually win
elections, would they are more politically important than their numbers would
suggest.

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kem
Your point is important, although I think farmers' political impact exceeds
their voting power, especially in GOP-voting communities.

I know from personal experience that this issue and related issues have become
very salient to farmers and those around them. It's not a small issue. When
your livelihood depends on a very expensive piece of machinery, being able to
repair it yourself (or have it repaired by whomever you want) is important,
and farmers are talking to their friends and family about it. They're being
screwed, and all they want to do is farm.

Also, this issue is bigger than what it nominally seems, because it affects
equipment dealers and mechanics as well. I know dealers who are pissed as hell
at Deere--they feel stabbed in the back by them because of this stuff.

This repair stuff is also the tip of the iceberg in terms of Deere's behavior
lately too. Many people I know would list the right-to-repair issue as just
one in a list of grievances they have against Deere. Over the last decade or
so, there's been a huge shift in Deere's behavior, and they've really become
kind of monopolistic in their general orientation toward who they deal with.
This has angered a lot of people. I suspect the right-to-repair in rural
Republican areas might be a kind of symbolic issue, representative of much
broader anger at Deere.

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burntrelish1273
Just have to slip single-payer in as a rider.

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zeep
Hopefully, that will include the right to replace your OS on phones,etc (for
when they stop updating them, they might as well be broke).

