New York was the first state to turn a digital right-to-repair bill into law and industry experts say it will certainly not be the last, though they hope future bills will be stronger.
New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act (Senate Bill 4104) requires OEMs to make diagnostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment available to independent repair providers and consumers, but the bill also carries a broad range of exemptions and will only apply to devices manufactured after July 1, 2023, severely limiting its scope.
Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association, told E-Scrap News she hopes bills in 2023 sessions go further than New York’s law, which is “good, but not as good as it should have been.”
“The New York law that was signed didn’t get as far as it was supposed to,” she said. “It’s pretty much limited to consumer electronics and not even a really broad scope at that, so we have a lot of work to do.”
Many of the exclusions were added after the bill hit Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk. These include motor vehicles, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, air conditioning and heating units, off-road vehicles, power tools, farm equipment and medical devices.
The bill was passed along bipartisan lines in June and went to the governor’s desk on Dec. 16, where it stayed until the Dec. 28, 2022, deadline for Hochul to sign or veto the bill.
Alterations for ‘safety and security’
In a memo to the Senate, Hochul said the bill as drafted “included technical issues that could put safety and security at risk, as well as heighten the risk of injury from physical repair projects, and I am pleased to have reached an agreement with the legislature to address these issues.”