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Trained repair professionals at hospitals are regularly unable to fix medical devices because of manufacturer lockout codes or the inability to obtain repair parts. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, broken ventilators sat unrepaired for weeks or months as manufacturers were overwhelmed with repair requests and independent repair professionals were locked out of them. At the time, I reported that independent repair techs had resorted to creating DIY dongles loaded with jailbroken Ukrainian firmware to fix ventilators without manufacturer permission. Medical device manufacturers also threatened iFixit because it posted ventilator repair manuals on its website. I have also written about people with sleep apnea who have hacked their CPAP machines to improve their basic functionality and to repair them.
PS: he got it repaired.
We probably shouldn’t let people repair their own brake pads but that’s another argument. Not enough people die from randoms repairing their own brake pads. Repair an insulin pump the wrong way and it will absolutely kill you. Oxygen masks, CPAP machines, pace makers. So many medical devices that people rely on for life or death care.
I’m all for right to repair. But having seen some of the thing people have done to repair safety items I have serious doubts about the efficacy of someone repairing something wrong and killing their grandma. I can appreciate that not everyone feels the same way. I can appreciate that there are absolutely people out there who can and do repair their own devices, cars, machinery etc, and they may do it well. But there are always going to be people out there who don’t know what they’re doing but will try and then we’ll hear about them on the news because they touched a capacitor or something.
The FDA found there isn’t evidence that 3rd party repair is any less safe than 1st party repair.
If one part needs to be replaced and the company who owns the patients/copyright tells the manufacturer to not sell it to others then the patient cost is needlessly a whole new machine. How many lives would be saved by lowering cost of getting medical equipment working?
The argument that because some people can’t, or won’t do a good job, no one should isn’t a very good one. Under that same logic you could exclude wiper blades.
You end up like New Jersey where you can’t pump your own gas. There are already guidelines and fixes for this wrapped around repairing your home power. You’re not allowed to architect major changes without the sign off of somebody who is a registered professional but you’re absolutely allowed to fix things that are already there.
For more people die from not fixing their brakes, because it’s difficult and expensive than ones who fix their brakes incorrectly.