The Digital Right to Repair Coalition’s CES “Worst in Show”
The Digital Right to Repair Coalition has published its picks for CES’s “Worst in Show,” highlighting products that stink for their lack of repairability, privacy, security, and other factors. The industry group asked five experts to pick products in six categories:
- Repairability (Kyle Wiens, iFixit): The John Deere X-Series Combine Harvester, a million-dollar piece of farm equipment with proprietary digital connections that make it impossible for farmers to repair.
- Privacy (Cindy Cohn, Electronic Frontier Foundation): The Linksys Aware, which turns your home’s Wi-Fi into a household motion detector.
- Security (Paul Roberts, securepairs): The TCL 32-inch Class 3-Series HD LED Smart Android TV, which is full of security vulnerabilities.
- Environmental Impact (Nathan Proctor of Right to Repair at USPIRG): The Yves Saint Laurent Rogue Sur Mesure Powered by Perso, which is a $299 makeup mixing machine that uses disposable pads and rare-earth materials.
- Community Choice (Right to Repair Twitter community): The ColdSnap, which is like a Keurig coffee machine for frozen treats like ice cream, frozen yogurt, and smoothies. No more food pods!
- Overall Worst in Show (Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation): The aforementioned John Deere X-Series Combine Harvester. As Cory says, it’s “a $1 million dollar device that proves that even if you pay for the product, you are still very much the product.”
You can watch the full presentation on YouTube.
And while I recognize that this is a little far afield from the Apple ecosystem, it shows why the right to repair needs to be guaranteed by law.