Right-to-repair advocates have spent more than a decade working for a simple goal: to make sure you can fix and tinker with your own stuff. That should be true whether we’re talking about a car, a tractor, a smartphone, a computer, or really anything you buy. Yet product manufacturers have used the growing presence of software on devices to make nonsense arguments about why tinkering with your stuff violates their copyright.

Our years of hard work pushing for consumer rights to repair are paying off in a big way. Case in point: Today—July 1, 2024—two strong repair bills are now law in California and Minnesota. As Repair Association Executive Director Gay Gordon-Byrne said on EFF's podcast about right to repair, after doggedly chasing this goal for years, we caught the car!

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do after a long fight. But it's clear for the repair movement. Now is the time to celebrate! That's why EFF is joining our friends in the right to repair world by celebrating Repair Independence Day.

EFF is joining our friends in the right to repair world by celebrating Repair Independence Day.

There are a few ways to do this. You could grab your tools and fix that wonky key on your keyboard. You could take a cracked device to a local repair shop. Or you can read up on what your rights are. If you live in California or Minnesota—or in Colorado or New York, where right to repair laws are already in effect—and want to know what the repair laws in your state mean for you, check out this tip sheet from Repair.org.

And what if you're not in one of those states? We still have good news for you. We're all seeing the fruits of this labor of love, even in states where there aren't specific laws. Companies have heard, time and again, that people want to be able to fix their own stuff. As the movement gains more momentum, device manufacturers started to offer more repair-friendly programs: Kobo offering parts and guides, Microsoft selling parts for controllers, Google committing to offering spare parts for Pixels for seven years, and Apple offering some self-service repairs.  

It's encouraging to see companies respond to our demands for the right to repair, though laws such as those going into effect today make sure they can't roll back their promises. And, of course, the work is not done. Repair advocates have won incredible victories in California and Minnesota (with another good law in Oregon coming online next July). But there are a still lots of things you should be able to fix without interference that are not covered by these bills, such as tractors.

We can't let up, especially now that we're winning. But today, it's time to enjoy our hard-won victories. Happy Repair Independence Day!

Protecting people's privacy is the first step we should take to create meaningful online regulation. That's why EFF has previously expressed concerns about the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) which, rather than set up strong protections, instead freezes consumer data privacy protections in place, preempts existing state laws, and would prevent states from creating stronger protections in the future. 

While the bill has not yet been formally introduced, subsequent discussion drafts of the bill have not addressed our concerns; in fact, they've only deepened them. So, earlier this month, EFF told Congress that it opposes APRA and signed two letters to reiterate why overriding stronger state laws—and preventing states from passing stronger laws—hurts everyone.

EFF has a clear position on this: federal privacy laws should not roll back state privacy protections. And there is no reason that we must trade strong state laws for weaker national privacy protection. Companies that collect and use data—and have worked to kill strong state privacy bills time and again— want Congress to believe a "patchwork" of state laws is unworkable for data privacy, even though existing federal privacy and civil rights laws operate as regulatory floors and do not prevent states from enacting and enforcing their own stronger statutes. In a letter opposing the preemption sections of the bill, our allies at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated it this way: "the soundest approach to avoid the harms from preemption is to set the federal standard as a national baseline for privacy protections — and not a ceiling." Advocates from ten states signed on to the letter warning how APRA, as written, would preempt dozens of stronger state laws. These include laws protecting AI regulation in Colorado, internet privacy in Maine, healthcare and tenant privacy in New York, and biometric privacy in Illinois, just to name a handful. 

APRA would also override a California law passed to rein in data brokers and replace it with weaker protections. EFF last year joined Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) and others to support and pass the California Delete Act, which gives people an easy way to delete information held by data brokers. In a letter opposing APRA, several organizations that supported California's law highlighted ways that APRA falls short of what's already on the books in California. "By prohibiting authorized agents, omitting robust transparency and audit requirements, removing stipulated fines, and, fundamentally, preempting stronger state laws, the APRA risks leaving consumers vulnerable to ongoing privacy violations and undermining the progress made by trailblazing legislation like the California Delete Act," the letter said.

EFF continues to advocate for strong privacy legislation and encourages APRA's authors to center strong consumer protections in future drafts.

To view the coalition letter on the preemption provisions of APRA, click here: https://www.eff.org/document/aclu-letter-apra-preemption

To view the coalition letter opposing APRA because of its data broker provisions, click here: https://www.eff.org/document/prc-letter-apra-data-broker-provisions