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The Congressional Librarian and the US Copyright Office have given American consumers and gadget repair shops greater freedom to repair their smartphones and other popular electronic devices in "right to fix ", the lawyers call a major victory.
In a new decision that comes into effect on Sunday, the congressional librarian has provided exemptions allowing citizens to legally bypass digital locks on their devices, such as voice assistants, tablets, smartphones and vehicles, to fix them. The motherboard has previously reported the decision.
Device manufacturers use digital safeguards to protect their intellectual property. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 prohibited the circumvention of technical measures used to prevent the piracy of books, movies, video games and copyrighted software.
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The goal of digital locks is to prevent the theft of intellectual property and prevent consumers from compromising their electronic components, thereby preserving the integrity and security of a device's operating system, industry groups explained. .
But consumer advocates claim that the ban on tinkering deprives consumers of the right to repair their damaged property and exposes users and repairers to the risk of copyright infringement simply by modifying the software contained in them. devices they own.
The new exemption "establishes that you have the right to repair something that you own that does not violate copyright protection granted to the manufacturer," said Nathan Proctor, director of the campaign for the right to repair, to the public. US PIRG interest group.
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The exemptions allow customers to unlock their smartphones and bypass restrictions built into other consumer devices, including PDAs, said Kyle Wiens, founder of iFixit. In a blog post describing the key freedoms granted by the ruling, Wiens said that third-party repair shops are now legally allowed to repair smartphones on behalf of their owners, in what he described as "extremely important "for the secondary market economy.
Proctor said this decision was a step forward in solving the irreparable electronic problem, which generates huge amounts of waste. But he added that advocates of the right to repair want more robust tools to help consumers. Consumer advocates have lobbied for legislation requiring appliance manufacturers to share instructional manuals and diagnostic tools to help consumers and repairers repair fixtures. devices.
"It's encouraging to know that we have the right to repair what we buy, which is legally protected," but much more needs to be done to change the country's "transportation system" to one in which the devices last as long as possible, said Proctor.
The Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office did not grant exceptions to video game console repairs, according to Weins, and, although motorized land vehicles were included in the exemptions , boats and planes were not there.
The Copyright Office conducts a rule-making process every three years to review potential deviations from the rules to avoid circumvention of digital access controls. .
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