nies that want to invest in making their products more repairable and sustainable,” per a statement from Steven Nickel, Google’s devices and services director of operations. But even as the coalition of supporters broadened, Sollman says, the parts-pairing language remained an important sticking point. So Apple — which supported California’s Right to Repair legislation — did not follow suit when Oregon’s law was introduced, likely due to the parts-pairing language. “Parts pairing was such a sticking point because I felt that if we eliminated the language that we had in the bill, it would essentially provide Apple the lane in which they could continue doing the practices that they do, which to me was very anticonsumer behavior,” Sollman says. THE CURRENT PUSH to support tech consumers’ right to repair and to push back against manufacturers’ restrictive practices dates back to 2013, when the Digital Right to Repair Coalition — now known as the Repair Association — was formed in response to trends in electronics manufacturing. Manufacturers had stopped selling replacement parts or even making manuals available, and blocked customers and independent repairers from getting access to already installed firmware. Oregon was actually the first state to introduce Right to Repair legislation, in 2019. That bill died in committee, and two subsequent attempts to introduce a Right to Repair bill also failed. Oregon’s current effort was led by the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, which built a coalition of support including Hyperion and BrainWave, as well as environmental organizations like the Oregon Environmental Council and governments like Oregon Metro and the League of Oregon Cities. In the interest of full disclosure: I worked for one of the organizations in the coalition, Free Geek, in 2005 and 2006, and have in recent months volunteered for two others — SCRAP PDX and Repair PDX — as a sorter of donated craft supplies and repairer of clothing. That is to say, I was not involved in the Right to Repair campaign, but my brief tenure at Free Geek piqued my Sen. Janeen Sollman (D-Forest Grove) helped write the bill that recently passed the Legislature with bipartisan support. 31
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