Once upon a time, when your toaster or blender broke, you took out your screwdriver, drove to the parts store and repaired it yourself.
But over time, computers have been added to most appliances, making them “smart” products. If you don’t want to throw out a smart — but broken — appliance, your only choice is to ask the manufacturer to fix it. Not surprisingly, they prefer that you buy a new one.
Since 2021, the federal government has worked on legislation to restore your right to repair. Bill C-244, which is awaiting third reading in Parliament, would amend the Copyright Act to give consumers the right to repair their products.
But experts aren’t sure the legislation will be effective.
Is a right to repair meaningful without tools or information?
Bill C-244 allows anyone to circumvent a product’s technological protection measure (TPM) to maintain or repair a product. Put simply, it permits someone to hack a product’s software.
This feature of the legislation is important because most smart goods — including phones, home appliances, cars and machines — include software. Broken goods will often not work properly unless the internal computer is programmed to function again.
But your average person won’t know how to repair software without tools or guidance.
The problem is, even if the bill passes, it will still be illegal to distribute or sell devices in order to circumvent the TPM of any product. And it is unclear whether users will be allowed to share information — such as YouTube videos or posts on a Reddit forum — on how to repair devices, says Anthony Rosborough, intellectual property lawyer and doctoral researcher in law at the European University Institute.
“The amendment [to Canada’s Copyright Act] would only allow you to basically devise your own tools necessary for repair and not to share or circulate them,” said Rosborough. “It means that you or I will have to come up with our own creative ways to hack, basically, onboard software without legally being able to share those hacks.”
Bill C-244 could enable companies to censor consumers
Rosborough also takes issue with the fact that the legislation could enable companies to effectively censor what information a consumer can put online.
“What’s more likely to happen practically in the real world, rather than a manufacturer suing someone for putting a repair video online… is that they would use YouTube’s takedown system. And they would just launch a complaint saying that the video infringes on their [intellectual property], and YouTube almost automatically just takes the video down,” said Rosborough.
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), the department of government responsible for managing consultations and the wording of Bill C-244, told Canadian Affairs that consumers who share repair videos are still under contractual, copyright and trade secret prohibitions against sharing information publicly.
Copyright protects against the “expression of facts and ideas” of a company’s products, ISED shared in a statement. Meaning, sharing information publicly that a company deems intellectual property — such as anything in a repair manual — could be considered copyright infringement.
Companies will not have to facilitate consumers’ right to repair
Bill C-244 also does not compel companies to assist consumers in repairing their devices by providing tools or information, says Catherine Lovrics, who is chair of the copyright committee of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC).
“To think that somehow this legislative amendment is going to result in consumers all of a sudden being able to readily repair all of their smart devices is not the case,” said Lovrics.
“You’re not going to all of a sudden walk into Home Depot and see a whole bunch of devices on the market that facilitate the right to repair, unless the manufacturers of the smart things choose to put those devices on the market,” said Lovrics.
IPIC thinks this is for the best, as a wide-ranging right to repair could compromise the safety of smart products if a repair is not done correctly. And such a measure would also put Canada out of step with major trading partners.
“I don’t think my dad should be able to tinker with his heart rate monitor,” said Lovrics.
During consultations about the bill, IPIC recommended to policy makers that the right to repair instead be applied to specific categories of products, and include a requirement that products be owned by the user, says Lovrics. ISED has said the bill enables “any persons, including third-party repair technicians, to benefit from the exception in the same way as the owners of the products.”
ISED also confirmed that Bill C-244 includes the right to repair “any product that includes a TPM.” However, certain products would still be subject to “other laws, regulations, and contractual terms and conditions.”
The bill would have “no effect on warranty terms and conditions,” according to ISED, meaning Canadians who undertake product repairs risk compromising their ability to later make warranty claims.
In short, even if this bill passes, Canadians will still need to be careful taking a screwdriver to their toaster.
