[LHC] The Videogame Industry Is Fighting 'Right To Repair' Laws

[Felipe Sanches]

 The Videogame Industry Is Fighting 'Right To Repair' Laws
<https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/25/231234/the-videogame-industry-is-fighting-right-to-repair-laws>
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday February 25, 2017 @11:34PM from the
proprietary-consoles dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:

*The video game industry is lobbying against legislation that would make it
easier for gamers to repair their consoles
<https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-video-game-industry-is-lobbying-against-your-right-to-repair-consoles>
and for consumers to repair all electronics more generally. The
Entertainment Software Association, a trade organization that includes
Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, as well as dozens of video game developers and
publishers, is opposing a "right to repair" bill in Nebraska, which would
give hardware manufacturers fewer rights to control the end-of-life of
electronics that they have sold to their customers... Bills making their
way through the Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Wyoming, Tennessee, Kansas,
Massachusetts, and Illinois statehouses will require manufacturers to sell
replacement parts and repair tools to independent repair companies and
consumers at the same price they are sold to authorized repair centers. The
bill also requires that manufacturers make diagnostic manuals public and
requires them to offer software tools or firmware to revert an electronic
device to its original functioning state in the case that software locks
that prevent independent repair are built into a device. The bills are a
huge threat to the repair monopolies these companies have enjoyed, and so
just about every major manufacturer has brought lobbyists to Nebraska,
where the legislation is currently furthest along... This setup has allowed
companies like Apple to monopolize iPhone repair, John Deere to monopolize
tractor repair, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to monopolize console
repair... *
Motherboard's reporter was unable to get a comment from Microsoft, Apple,
and Sony, and adds that "In two years of covering this issue, no
manufacturer has ever spoken to me about it either on or off the record."
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