This chapter considers how the set of tools provided by consumer protection law can push back on repair restrictions. Consumer protection law is designed, in part, to ensure the accuracy of information in the marketplace. But even in absence of outright deception, it recognizes the need to prohibit unfair practices that take advantage of the natural information asymmetries that sellers enjoy. It also offers remedies when products fail to live up to minimal, baseline guarantees of quality. Although consumer protection cases rarely lead to dramatic, structural remedies,the law profoundly influences marketplace behavior and can improve the day-to-day experiences of consumers seeking repair.

This chapter considers three sets of concrete benefits that flow from repair. First, repair helps consumers save money by extending the lifespan of products and fostering secondary markets. Second, repair lessens the massive environmental burden of modern consumerism, from the extraction of natural resources to the eventual disposal of the devices we buy. Finally, repair helps us grow and flourish as people. Through repair, we become better informed about the world around us, develop analytical and problem-solving skills, exercise greater autonomy, and build stronger communities.

This chapter introduces the threats to product longevity and durability created by legal frameworks and product design decisions that shift power from consumers to device makers. In contrast to earlier generations of technology, today’s devices—from smartphones and headphones to medical and agricultural equipment—are designed to be replaced, not repaired.

This chapter outlines the sophisticated array of strategies and techniques that today’s device makers have developed to discourage and obstruct repair. Firms rely on product design, economic manipulation, and consumer persuasion to steer us away from repair and keep us buying new devices year after year. They use hardware and software design to erect practical barriers to repair. They charge unnecessarily high prices for repair or refuse to fix products at all. At the same time, they deny independent repair providers access to parts and tools necessary to meet consumer demand. And through subtle and explicit messaging, they discourage consumers from even attempting repairs.

This chapter describes how device makers try to leverage intellectual property (IP) rights to restrict repair and why those assertions are, as a general rule, inconsistent with a proper understanding of the law. IP—in the form of copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets—offers manufacturers an arsenal of weapons in the war on repair. From a practical perspective, IP law allows firms to credibly threaten to enjoin, silence, and ultimately bankrupt anyone with the audacity to repair a product without permission. That’s true despite the fact that IP claims against consumers and repair providers rest on questionable legal foundations.

This chapter considers the role antitrust law can play in safeguarding repair markets and, along with them, the interests of competitors and consumers. While IP law may grants device makers power over their products, antitrust and competition law are designed to impose limits on exclusionary behavior. As a result, they serve as potential bulwarks against tactics that would impede repair. Despite significant doctrinal and policy hurdles to enforcement, antitrust law can help discipline firms that attempt to capture markets for the repair of vehicles, electronics, and appliances that account for hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue.

As people interact in online venues, they need to represent who they are to others. The details of how we do this matter. Sociologist Erving Goffman explains how, in the face-to-face world, we are always performing roles. These elements of identity translate into the online world. One of the key questions for online activity is the role of anonymity. The chapter explains the advantages and disadvantages of anonymous interaction. In fact, we’re all really some degree of “pseudonymous” (between anonymous and identified) most of the time anyway. How identity is represented turns out to be one of the most powerful design decisions that you make in creating an online communications environment.

Introduces some powerful examples of constructive uses of online collaboration—like Wikipedia and citizen science. Why do people spend hundreds of volunteer hours writing encyclopedia articles or counting birds? The chapter explains the incentive structure in peer production, and what kinds of things are possible using peer production methods, explores citizen science in some detail, and introduces Yochai Benkler’s theory of why peer production is important, and what factors are important for a peer production project to succeed.

In 2004, my son Noah was turning one year old and I had a problem: How do I make him a birthday cake? He was seriously allergic to dairy, soy, and egg. A mis-read food label or a bite snuck from another child’s plate at daycare could send us to the emergency room. But he was turning one – I wanted him to have birthday cake. I found a website called kidswithfoodallergies.org, and asked on the forum there: Did anyone have a dairy-, soy- and egg-free cake recipe? In response to my query, I got a flurry of warm welcomes from parents on the site. They shared an excellent safe cake recipe, and provided a host of other support. Parents on the site helped me figure out how to make a clear and effective allergy-awareness sheet for his daycare teachers. They shared tips for how to safely order food in a restaurant. Their experience was invaluable, and they also were emotionally supportive in a way no one else could be. Parenting an allergic toddler is stressful, and they understood completely.