Show Notes
If you buy something—a refrigerator, a car, a tractor, a wheelchair, or a phone—but you can't have the information or parts to fix or modify it, is it really yours? The right to repair movement is based on the belief that you should have the right to use and fix your stuff as you see fit, a philosophy that resonates especially in economically trying times, when people can’t afford to just throw away and replace things. Companies for decades have been tightening their stranglehold on the information and the parts that let owners or independent repair shops fix things, but the pendulum is starting to swing back: New York, Minnesota, California, and Colorado have passed right to repair laws, and it’s on the legislative agenda in dozens of other states. Gay Gordon-Byrne is executive director of The Repair Association, one of the major forces pushing for more and stronger state laws, and for federal reforms as well. She joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss this pivotal moment in the fight for consumers to have the right to products that are repairable and reusable. In this episode you’ll learn about: Why our “planned obsolescence” throwaway culture doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a technology status quo. The harm done by “parts pairing:” software barriers used by manufacturers to keep people from installing replacement parts. Why one major manufacturer put out a user manual in France, but not in other countries including the United States. How expanded right to repair protections could bring a flood of new local small-business jobs while reducing waste. The power of uniting disparate voices—farmers, drivers, consumers, hackers, and tinkerers—into a single chorus that can’t be ignored. Gay Gordon-Byrne has been executive director of The Repair Association—formerly known as The Digital Right to Repair Coalition—since its founding in 2013, helping lead the fight for the right to repair in Congress and state legislatures. Their credo: If you bought it, you should own it and have the right to use it, modify it, and repair it whenever, wherever, and however you want. Earlier, she had a 40-year career as a vendor, lessor, and used equipment dealer for large commercial IT users; she is the author of "Buying, Supporting and Maintaining Software and Equipment - an IT Manager's Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle” (2014), and a Colgate University alumna. MUSIC CREDITS Come Inside by Zep Hurme (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: snowflake Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Airtone
More from How to Fix the Internet
Three decades ago, the U.S government treated encryption like a weapon, and it took some unlikely heroes to set it free: a grad student, a junior lawyer, and a fledgling digital rights group who sued the federal government.
People are increasingly concerned about the ways in which mass surveillance is tracking our every move: from Flock license plate readers to face recognition to creepy ads that – based on what we see and do online – seem to know everything we’re thinking and planning. It didn’t have to be this way, and since the early days of the internet, a dedicated band of activists, lawyers and technologists have fought for a better, more secure and private digital future – a future that’s still attainable. Cindy Cohn, who just finished a 26-year run with the Electronic Frontier Foundation including 11 years as its executive director, has lived this fight. She says privacy isn’t just about secrecy: It's ultimately about power – who has it, and who has the ability to protect themselves from it. Welcome to the first episode of “Privacy’s Defenders,” a podcast about the people – lawyers, journalists, hackers, and others – who’ve fought to secure your digital liberties since before most people even knew what the internet was. In this episode, Cindy talks with EFF cofounder John Gilmore about how he – an early employee at Sun Microsystems – came together with Lotus Development cofounder Mitch Kapor and cattle rancher, philosopher and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow to create EFF as a bulwark against government investigation and prosecution of early internet users. It’s a story of the Secret Service’s “Operation Sundevil,” jet-setting tech titans, tie-dyed cypherpunks, and a fateful house party in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district amid the earliest days of online communications, setting the stage for the battles that created the internet as we know it and issues we still grapple with today. The “Privacy’s Defenders” podcast is a follow-up to Cindy’s book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance,” bringing to life pivotal moments in the voices of those who fought for your rights. Sales of “Privacy’s Defender” benefit EFF, so pick up your copy today!
While How to Fix the Internet is on hiatus, we wanted to share a great conversation with you from earlier this week. EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn spoke with bestselling novelist, journalist, and EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow about Cindy’s new book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance” (MIT Press).
Introducing the EFFector Podcast from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
All this season, “How to Fix the Internet” has been focusing on the tools and technology of freedom – and one of the most important tools of freedom is a library. Access to knowledge not only creates an informed populace that democracy requires, but also gives people the tools they need to thrive. And the internet has radically expanded access to knowledge in ways that earlier generations could only have dreamed of – so long as that knowledge is allowed to flow freely. (You can also find this episode on the Internet Archive and on YouTube.) A passionate advocate for public internet access and a successful entrepreneur, Brewster Kahle has spent his life intent on a singular focus: providing universal access to all knowledge. The Internet Archive, which he founded in 1996, now preserves 99+ petabytes of data - the books, Web pages, music, television, government information, and software of our cultural heritage – and works with more than 400 library and university partners to create a digital library that’s accessible to all. The Archive is known for the Wayback Machine, which lets users search the history of almost one trillion web pages. But it also archives images, software, video and audio recordings, documents, and it contains dozens of resources and projects that fill a variety of gaps in cultural, political, and historical knowledge. Kahle joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss how the free flow of knowledge makes all of us more free. In this episode you’ll learn about: The role AI plays in digitizing, preserving, and easing access to all kinds of information How EFF helped the Internet Archive fight off the government’s demand for information about library patrons The importance of building a decentralized, distributed web to finding and preserving information for all Why building revolutionary, world-class libraries like the Internet Archive requires not only money and technology, but also people willing to dedicate their lives to the work How nonprofits are crucial to filling societal gaps left by businesses, governments, and academia Brewster Kahle is the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, which serves millions of people each day and is among the world’s largest libraries. After studying AI at and graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982, Kahle helped launch the company Thinking Machines, a parallel supercomputer maker. In 1989, he helped create the internet's first publishing system called Wide Area Information Server (WAIS); WAIS Inc. was later sold to AOL. In 1996, Kahle co-founded Alexa Internet, which helps catalog the Web, selling it to Amazon.com in 1999. He is a former member of EFF’s Board of Directors.