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Guarantee fair repair, data portability, and interoperability rights unless a manufacturer proves a specific safety, security, or privacy risk.
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AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 6, 2026
Cited Sources
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What is failing, what we would change, and the conclusion we are willing to defend.
Modern ownership is becoming permissioned. A farmer may own the tractor but not the diagnostic software needed to fix it. A patient may have a legal right to records but still struggle to move them. A small business may rely on a platform but have no practical way to export data, switch tools, or interoperate with a competitor. A consumer may buy a device and discover that repair, parts, firmware, and data all remain under the manufacturer's control.
The Innovation Party's position: technology should expand what owners, builders, patients, farmers, and small businesses can do. It should not turn ordinary ownership into a permanent vendor permission slip. Repair, portability, and interoperability should be guaranteed on fair terms, with narrow exceptions for safety, cybersecurity, privacy, and fraud risks that the manufacturer or platform can actually justify.
Create a federal repair-access floor for products where software locks, diagnostic tools, parts restrictions, or firmware controls prevent owners and independent repair providers from completing lawful repairs.
Require manufacturers to provide parts, repair information, diagnostic tools, calibration tools, and security updates on fair and reasonable terms, with product-specific safety and cybersecurity limits where evidence supports them.
Require portability for user, business, farm, and device data in usable, machine-readable formats, including export rights that survive account closure or vendor change.
Require interoperability in lock-in-prone markets where switching costs and closed interfaces entrench dominant platforms, using standards or APIs that preserve privacy and security.
Put the burden of proof on the restriction. A manufacturer may limit repair or interoperability when it shows a specific risk and offers the least-restrictive workable alternative, not when it recites "security" as a magic word.
Enforce against false warranty, safety, privacy, or cybersecurity claims used to steer consumers away from independent repair or competing services.
This is not anti-manufacturer. Secure updates, safety-critical calibration, medical-device controls, and fraud prevention matter. The line is narrower: a safety rule should prevent the unsafe act. It should not become a general veto over repair, switching, or competition.
Turn frustration into useful pressure.
If this position misses evidence or a lived consequence, challenge it. If it holds up, help test it locally and connect it to the issues around it.