If you’re considering buying a new device—whether it’s a laptop, a video game console, or a digital camera—you can expect to have access to any repair manuals or parts that the manufacturer produces. But until recently, companies selling electronic devices in the US were under no obligation to provide their customers with the parts or information needed to perform even simple repairs, such as replacing a battery.
Last December, New York became the first state in the nation to require electronic device makers to make their repair materials publicly available, when the state’s digital “right-to-repair” law — the first such law in the country — came into force. In July have similar laws in Minnesota and California became enforceable. Over the next two years, consumers in Oregon and Colorado will also be given the legal right to repair a wide variety of digital electronic devices.
Recovery advocates say these laws are a critical step toward ending our culture of digital disposability, in which electronics are simply replaced when they break. Discarded devices are usually destined to become toxic e-wasteand manufacturing new ones drives environmentally destructive mining and generates carbon emissions and other pollution.
But these right-to-repair laws are brand new, and whether manufacturers across the wide range of affected industries will overhaul their repair practices overnight remains to be seen. Reform advocates are closely watching tech companies in these states, as are the state attorneys general tasked with enforcing the law.
Many manufacturers still have their “ostrich heads in the sand” when it comes to the right to repair, said Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repair guide website. iFixit. “There are a lot of companies that haven’t thought about this,” Wiens added.
A recent report by the US Public Research Interest Group, or PIRG, a leading right-to-recovery advocate, underscores just how far apart different industries are in their recovery journeys.
The report identified 21 devices covered by New York’s new right-to-repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to provide any proprietary parts, tools and manuals needed to repair any devices first sold in the state on or after July 1, 2023, to be publicly released. After the law went into effect, PIRG rated each of these devices based on the accessibility and quality of repair manuals, the number of parts offered by the manufacturer, and the availability of commonly replaced parts such as batteries.
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Overall, the report found that smartphone manufacturers provided the most comprehensive repair materials. Laptops, tablets and game consoles were a mixed bag, while the digital cameras and VR headsets surveyed scored poorly. The authors were unable to access repair manuals for recent Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, or Canon digital cameras, while Apple offered no manuals or parts for its new VR headset, the Apple Vision Pro. Meta’s new Meta Quest 3 VR headset also lacks a repair manual, and the supply of parts is very limited, the report found.
Grist was unable to locate a press contact at Canon, and an email to the company’s investor relations department went unanswered. A Fujifilm North America representative told Grist in an email that the company’s technical service team will “provide diagnosis verification and self-repair support in accordance with applicable Right to Repair requirements.” Media representatives at Nikon, Apple and Meta did not respond to Grist’s request for comment on the report’s findings.
A Sony Electronics representative told Grist that the company has published about 300 service manuals “and we are in the process of releasing more.” The representative shared a link to the service manual for the Alpha 6700 camera, which PIRG researchers were unable to locate through a web search when they evaluated the camera a few months ago. Report co-author Nathan Proctor told Grist that Sony’s customer service department suggested the researchers check YouTube or iFixit for repair information. It speaks to a broader problem, he said.
“Even companies that are compliant, their customer service people … haven’t gotten the message,” Proctor told Grist. “This is a very frustrating state of affairs for me.”
Proctor emphasized that the findings are not a definitive analysis of whether or not a product complies with the law, which contains “a bunch of loopholes,” he said. (Chief among those loopholes: If a company offers no recovery support to begin with, it’s under no legal obligation to begin — in New York or any other state.) Rather, Proctor said, the intent was to shows whether manufacturers are complying with the spirit of the law by taking steps to ensure that everyone can fix the stuff they own.
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“The purpose of this is to kind of signal to manufacturers that someone is going to pay attention,” Proctor said. “And that they need to organize their plans for compliance.”
Preparing for a repairable future will only become more important as newer and stronger state laws take effect. The Minnesota and California right-to-repair laws that went into effect on July 1 cover devices dating back to 2021. They also include some electronics that were granted an exception in New York, such as e.g. e-bikes and, in Minnesota’s case, business computers. (However, both states’ laws exclude gaming consoles, which New York’s law covers.)
Meanwhile, right-to-redress laws passed earlier this year in Oregon and Colorado take effect in January 2025 and 2026, respectively. These laws include one major outstanding loophole: Both are prohibited parts pairingthe practice of serializing parts and using software to synchronize them with specific devices during repair. While some companies, such as Apple, claim that the practice is essential to ensure security and optimal performance after a device is repaired, critics say that parts pairing allows manufacturers to unfairly limit which parts can be used to complete a repair. For example, in order for a replacement iPhone screen to function properly, the screen must be purchased from Apple and paired using the company’s proprietary software tools.
Appeal advocated against it prohibits parts mating in both Oregon and Colorado. Having lost the battle, the company is now take steps to open up its parts pairing system, including allowing customers to pair used Apple parts with certain iPhone models. An Apple representative declined to say which iPhone models will be affected by the change, or whether the company plans to expand this less restrictive pairing process to other devices, such as MacBook laptops.
In addition to banning parts pairing, the Oregon law would apply retroactively to most electronic devices dating back to 2015, the longest coverage period yet.
Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Restoration Societya trade association representing repair companies said it was too early to say which devices or companies might not comply with the new laws. To answer that question, The Repair Association is gathering data from its members about the many products they try to fix and the challenges they face. “We expect there to be a lot of holes, we just don’t have any information yet on where the holes are,” she said.
Once those holes are visible, advocates, recovery workers and the public can start pointing them out to state attorneys general, who can file cases against companies that don’t comply with the law. None of the states with an active digital right to recovery law has yet filed a public action against a company, but the offices of the attorneys general of California and Minnesota told Grist they are committed to apply the law. (The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment on the record.)
If a state determines that a company is violating its right-to-remediate law, that company can face fines — ranging from $500 per violation in New York to $20,000 per violation in Minnesota.
Whether these fines are significant enough to convince trillion-dollar tech companies to naturally correct with recovery remains to be seen. But both Gordon-Byrne and Wiens, of iFixit, see an even stronger incentive for companies to follow the law: The embarrassment of being forced to pay back the public for selling unfixable stuff.
“I think the public reputation risks are just as significant as the fines,” Wiens said.
