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How to Save a Planet

Why Is It So Hard To Fix Our Electronics, And What Can We Do About It?

How to Save a Planet

Gimlet

Science, News, Society & Culture

4.81.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Electronics — smartphones, computers, televisions — exact a hefty toll on the planet. One way to lighten their load? Use them for longer. And yet, for decades now, manufacturers have made replacing our gadgets easier than repairing them. But Kyle Wiens, co-founder of the repair website iFixit, has been working to reverse that. He talks to us about why repair matters, why our devices are so hard to repair, and the policies that could change that. Calls to Action Read up on the "Freedom to Repair Act", the proposed federal right to repair bill. Talk to your state or federal representatives (or both) about supporting Right to Repair legislation. Visit yourstatename.repair.org (i.e. california.repair.org or montana.repair.org) to locate your reps and learn more about state actions. Have an old phone gathering dust? Check out websites like Backmarket or Swappa. There you can sell your old phone - our first call to action that might earn you some cash - extending its life. You can also try donating it in your community. Domestic violence shelters in particular sometimes have a need for old phones. If you take an action we recommend in one of our episodes, do us a favor and tell us about it! We’d love to hear how it went and what it felt like. Record a short voice memo on your phone and send it to us via our Listener Mail Form. We might use it in an upcoming episode. Find all the actions we’ve recommended on our show here! How to Save a Planet is a Spotify original podcast and Gimlet production. It's hosted by Alex Blumberg. This episode was produced by Kendra Pierre-Louis. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Rachel Waldholz, Daniel Ackerman and Anna Ladd. Our supervising producer is Matt Shilts. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music by Peter Leonard, Catherine Anderson and Emma Munger. Our fact checker for this episode is Claudia Geib. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to how to save a planet, I'm Alex Bloomberg, and this is the show where we talk

0:06.9

about what we need to do to address climate change and how to make those things happen.

0:25.2

Back when Kyle Wienes was a freshman in college, this was decades ago, he had this

0:29.4

Apple laptop. He'd saved up money to buy it by working his way through high school, but

0:34.5

then one day in his freshman dorm, he dropped it and the power cords stopped working.

0:38.6

But Kyle figured no problem, because that job that he'd had all through high school,

0:43.6

it was Apple computer repair technician.

0:46.7

So I figured, hey, I can fix this. I'm a technician, I know how to do it. And so I started

0:51.6

trying to take it apart and realize I needed the service manual.

0:55.8

How is even a service manual? What does it look like? What's in it?

0:59.4

Yeah, so there are 50 or 100 pages. And it has, you know, like, here's how to take

1:05.4

apart the thing. And so like, there's six screws on the bottom, remove those six screws.

1:10.1

There's a latch over here and serve the plastic tool. It's just like an IKEA manual, just

1:15.1

a little more detail. And so I did what you would do. I just started googling it. Couldn't

1:20.1

find the service manual anywhere.

1:23.8

Kyle was super confused. Why couldn't he find the manual online?

1:27.3

But then he figured it out.

1:29.7

Back then, Apple did not post its manual online itself. And they said anyone else posting

1:35.7

the service manual online violated the law, specifically the DMCA, the Digital Millennium

1:42.0

Copyright Act. It's this law that makes it illegal for you to say copy a DVD and upload

1:47.5

it online for other people to access. Apple said uploading their service manual was also

1:52.6

illegal. So Apple was using this copyright law that prevent people from having the knowledge

...

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