What the newly revised copyright law lets (and doesn’t let) you do with your gadgets

By Devin Coldewey

You think you own your phone, but you don’t. Copyright law prohibits you from modifying its software in certain ways, opening you up to a voided warranty, cancelled service or even a lawsuit — but that’s slowly changing as the government acknowledges the need (and arguably right) to repair our own devices. A favorable decision from the Copyright Office gives you considerably more freedom with your gadgets, but it’s far from an ideal solution.

As a brief bit of background, the law that prevents you from, say, installing third-party software on your car or sideloading apps onto your Amazon Echo is Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It’s meant to make it illegal to circumvent digital copyright protections on software and media, but it’s been used for much more than that.

Companies started stashing all kinds of things behind digital locks and therefore controlling the only means that consumers had to repair or modify them. Digital rights advocates such as Kyle Wiens at iFixit have been pushing back against this practice for years — and recently have made some headway.