Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, November 15 (Xinhua)-- maintenance website iFixit today issued a petition to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling for new maintenance rights regulations to protect the interests of consumers.

IFixit's petition calls attention to the "obstacles" imposed by manufacturers that prevent users and independent repair shops from repairing their electronics, such as using proprietary screws or requiring software authentication, an approach used by Apple. CTOnews.com learned from the petition that iFixit would like FTC to consider the following rules:

Consumable components should be replaceable and ready for use throughout the service life of the product.

Frequently damaged parts should be replaceable and can be used as repair parts at any time.

Consumers should be able to choose to take the damaged products to the repair shop of their choice, or repair them themselves.

When the manufacturer stops supporting the product, its key functions should remain intact and independent repair shops should be able to continue maintenance.

The same components of two identical devices should be interchangeable without manufacturer intervention.

Independent maintenance shops should not be required to report the customer's personally identifiable information to the manufacturer.

In France, maintenance laws require manufacturers to provide maintainability scores of equipment to show how easy it is to repair, and iFixit says FTC should adopt a similar policy in the United States.

IFixit wrote in a blog post in the petition that it could take years to develop and enforce any rules, but hoped that FTC would consider the request.

Apple supported California's maintenance law in August and won praise from iFixit. However, California law requires parts to be purchased from manufacturers and does not allow them to be purchased from third-party sources.

It is worth mentioning that while iFixit praised Apple for supporting California's maintenance law, the site lowered its maintainability score for iPhone 14 from 7 to 4 in September because Apple required maintenance components to be verified against specific devices.

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