Kyle Testifies at USITC Hearing on e-Waste

Posted on: May 18, 2012 at 9:00am — By: Elizabeth

Kyle spoke this week at a U.S. International Trade Commission hearing on used electronics exports. The hearing will be an important source for a USITC study for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. In his testimony, Kyle stressed the importance of repair worldwide:

As electronics have become more intricate, they have also become more difficult to repair. And getting the information necessary to repair is tough. Electronics manufacturers often use intellectual property laws to keep repair information proprietary. But manufacturers do have the detailed repair and disassembly instructions that would be invaluable to refurbishers: the repair manuals they write for their own technicians. Keeping this information secret costs jobs in America, costs jobs overseas, and contributes to the growing tons of toxic e-waste worldwide.

Stay tuned—we learned a lot at the hearing, and we’ll be sharing it with you here soon.

Comments

Good on Kyle! Let’s hope his efforts make a difference.

By: lwright633 - May 18, 2012 at 10:48 am

Good evening to all.
Your existence was revealed to me yesterday by the French TV. I am a French retired man of 69 years old and I exercised my talents of repairer (TVC, scopes) during approximately 30 years for a big brand the headquarters of which is in Netherlands. At the beginning, I had the soldering iron in hand, then I ended by creating a method of calculation of the reliability of our devices in the offices of the French head office. The former sets were repairable (and it was really necessary !). Then, when the reliability improved, the repairability deteriorated.
It seems to me that I have to help your work, but I do not know how. Are you interested ? As you notice it, my English is far from being good, but my French is much better. I am still capable of manipulating tools and, especially, of finding the cause of a breakdown if I can know how works the healthy device.
Best regards.

By: Georges Octruc - June 2, 2012 at 3:21 pm

Every gadget with a digital heart is repairable, provided there is access to the diagnostics, machine code updates, and to a lesser degree parts. (Parts are easily scavenged off working machines).

We just founded (January of 2013) a Digital Right to Repair Coalition to help consumers and business regain the ability to repair their purchases.

Please share your stories with us and we will do the same with you.

By: Gay Gordon-Byrne - January 18, 2013 at 5:02 am

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