system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: There should be a right to repair law

Inspired by recent news that Apple will be making future devices much more difficult to work on for end users and third parties, requiring proprietary software even for basic hardware fixes. But it's not just Apple, other companies have come under fire for preventing end-users from performing their own repairs, such as John Deere tractors. 

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I'm actually on the fence of this one. On the one hand I realize there may be legitimate reasons for company's to want their products only serviced by them. Also, it's a matter of free-market and this kind of regulation is a pretty significant limitation on how a private company can build and sell products and services. Also, I realize the complexity of many modern products means that end-user servicing is not feasible anyway. 

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On the other hand, I feel like many of these practices have no legitimacy outside profit motives, and are anti-consumer because they effectively limit the customers ability to use their property freely, even when they own it outright. These practices also effectively contribute to planned obsolescence, because if the company declines to support the product anymore than it can have a shorter useful lifespan. This leads to more waste and dilutes the value of the product. 

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Consumers already have limited protection under the Magnuson Moss warranty act. This act clarifies that companies can't unilaterally deny warranty claims just because the product was repaired with third party parts or at a third party services center. But companies can get around this by making consumer-side repairs physically impossible (for example a phone company gluing its electronics together just to make repair impossible...forcing consumers to replace rather than fix). So my view is these consumer protections should be extended to limit these types of practices. 

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Because I anticipate this argument already, I think the law can have exceptions, such as for products that are leased or when there is a legitimate need for the product to be built that way.
gpt
There shouldn't need to be a right to repair law.

Rather, intellectual property law needs to be weakened (specifically: Repeal the DMCA) so that it becomes impossible to abuse to strip property buyers from the right to modify their own, purchased, property.

The loss of 'right to repair' is accidental, a function of harmfully draconian enforcement of IP law. Remove that draconian intellectual property law and businesses will no longer have the power to tell people what to do with the stuff they buy.