Review - HR 8544 Introduced – Right-to-Repair

Back in May, Rep Morelle (D,NY) introduced HR 8544, the Fair Repair Act. The bill would establish a requirement for original equipment manufacturers to make available “documentation, parts, and tools, inclusive of any updates to information or embedded software” for the purpose of diagnosis, maintenance or repair of equipment sold or used in the United States. It would also make the Federal Trade Commission the agency responsible for enforcement of the requirement.

Morelle introduced a similar bill last session, HR 4006 (removed from paywall). No action was taken on that bill. There have been significant changes made from that earlier version.

Moving Forward

Neither Morelle or his three cosponsors are members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. Generally, this means that the Committee is unlikely to consider this bill. If the bill were to be considered in Committee, it would almost certainly draw significant opposition from Republicans supporting manufacturers, and from some Democrats for privacy issues. There may not be enough votes to move the bill forward because of that opposition.

Commentary

This bill addresses an issue of some importance, but I think that more works needs to be done on the concept.

There is one particular piece that deserves specific attention, the provision concerning security measures. If this were included in a bill written by some law-and-order Republican, I would suspect that §4(1) was specifically included to provide police with a way to get around encryption on computers and communication devices. Limitations need to be put into place to ensure that this is not a tool to get around self-incrimination protections.

 

For more details about the provisions of the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-8544-introduced - subscription required.