SecuRepairs to testify as U.S. House asks “Is there a right to repair?”

Secure Repairs (securepairs.org) will take part in a hearing by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives week on Tuesday as it considers the question “Is there a right to repair?”

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet will hold a hearing on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. EST. The hearing, dubbed ”Is There a Right to Repair?,” will “examine the current legal landscape of the right to repair and related intellectual property issues, including potential future avenues for policymaking.”

The hearing will also discuss laws and regulations at both the federal and state level, including Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the implications for a range of industries from automotive to software to consumer electronics.

Secure Repairs founder Paul Roberts will take part in a panel discussion at the hearing, alongside Aaron Perzanowski, the Thomas W. Lacchia Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School and Kyle Wiens, Co-founder and CEO, iFixit. Also participating will be Devlin Hartline, a Legal Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Forum for Intellectual Property and Scott Benavidez , the Chairman of the Automotive Service Association, which recently signed a controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI). The AAI is the plaintiff suing the State of Massachusetts over its expanded automotive right to repair law.

The hearing will discuss impediments to the right to repair and their implications for the economy, as well as possible fixes, including passage of pending federal legislation like The REPAIR Act, as well as proposed changes to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 25 year old law that makes it a federal crime to circumvent software locks

You can watch the hearing live on YouTube.

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