People ought to be able to fix their stuff. That’s why we’ve been planning and building for the passage of Digital Right to Repair laws, regulations, rules, and standards for the past ten years.  It’s been a long game – longer than we ever expected.  Every small victory, such as the work done for the Nixing the Fix FTC study, has been preparing for the big fight. 

The real fight was always getting real protections in the force of law, and much like we saw last night, not everything went perfectly.  We got a bill passed in New York State but took some lumps getting over the finish line. 

As a history major, I love reading about World War II, especially Winston Churchill’s books. One of my favorite quotes from Churchill is from D-Day:  

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The law signed last night is the event marking the success of establishing a beachhead on Omaha Beach.  Now that we have boots on the ground – we can start advancing against the Axis of OEMs.  

Repair supporters are justifiably upset that the law signed bears little resemblance to our original. The governor never made a statement of her intent, but it's clear now that she never wanted the bill to include more than cell phones and laptops purchased at big box stores.  At the same time, we know that lobbyists had her ear – and TechNet in particular has clearly had the most influence.  But it still moves the ball forward so we’ll take our fight to the next level elsewhere.