“IBM supports right-to-repair policies that empower consumers while protecting cybersecurity, intellectual property, and critical infrastructure,” an IBM spokesperson wrote in an email to WIRED. “Given the critical and often sensitive nature of enterprise-level products, any legislation should be clearly limited to consumer devices.”
Cisco did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, but a Cisco representative at the hearing said, “Cisco supports SB-90. While it appreciates the arguments presented in favor of the right to repair, not all digital technology devices are equal.”
During the hearing, more than a dozen repair advocates from organizations such as PIERG, the Repair Association and iFixit opposed the bill. YouTuber and repair advocate Lewis Rossman was there. Repair advocates say the main problem is that the bill intentionally uses vague language to control who can repair their products.
“The ‘information technology’ and ‘critical infrastructure’ thing is about as pejorative as you can possibly be about it,” says Nathan Proctor, leader of PIRG’s US right-to-repair campaign. “It sounds scary to lawmakers, but it just means the Internet.”
Although not explicitly defined in the bill, “information technology” generally means technology such as servers and routers. “Critical infrastructure” is language taken from a 2001 federal law that defines the term as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so critical to the United States that the incapacitation or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating effect on national security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”
“I can point to at least five problems with the draft bill,” Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association, said at the hearing. “The definition of critical infrastructure is completely inadequate. The definition proposed in this Bill is not even a definition.”
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