The Right to Repair: Struggles Over Digital Tools and Consumer Rights
Date
October 7, 2021 19:00 - 21:00
Location
Online
Details
Register
Why has it become so difficult to fix our things? What happens to our environment, economy, and culture when repairing our things becomes unappealing or impossible? What would robust and comprehensive provisions supporting repair look like, and how would such protections help our planet, our communities, our wallets, and our senses of self?
The fourth event in our series examines the challenges and opportunities situated around the right to repair movement. Increasingly, technology design is guided by private interests that are incompatible with repair. Businesses prioritize sales over repair and create disincentives that make repair inconvenient and expensive. Intellectual property and other laws and policies control activities of repair that previously have been commonplace. Manufacturers devise and sell products that appropriate our personal data and deprive us of information about how the product works, how it breaks, and how it can be fixed. Impediments to repair affect virtually all industries and sectors, including agriculture, health care, defense, and consumer goods. In the face of these developments, numerous consumer movements have arisen to claim the right to repair their technologies. They argue that an ethos of repair reduces the damage caused to the environment and human health wrought by our culture of consumption and waste; fosters the growth of secondary markets and support for local skilled repair workers; and encourages curiosity, problem-solving, and creativity. When we work with others to fix things, we build communities and systems of mutual support.
Big Data at the Margins is funded with the assistance of the Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western Research, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
