The nation’s first real right-to-repair law – a pretty limited one covering instructions for cars, but it’s a start – went into effect in Massachusetts on Thursday. The Boston Globe reports (full story here):
The opposition arguments (safety! unintended consequences! it’s too hard for us to do!) will sound familiar to anybody who has set through hearings for right-to-repair laws in New Hampshire, which have always been squelched.
A federal judge on Tuesday cleared the way for Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell to begin enforcing the state’s embattled automotive right-to-repair law on June 1, even as the world’s carmakers continue their effort to overturn the statute.
The law requires that automakers who sell cars in Massachusetts provide consumers and independent repair shops with wireless access to the car’s “telematics” — digital information needed to diagnose the vehicle’s performance, so independent mechanics can easily repair the vehicles. A coalition of carmakers say that the law would undermine auto data security, and that the law is poorly drafted and impossible to obey.
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