Dear Editor:

In 2023 voters passed question 4, "Right to Repair Law" Vehicle Data Access Requirement Initiative with a whopping 84% of voters support. Now the car manufacturers lobby is back trying to water down the voter’s mandate.

The manufacturers are asking for a delay in implementing the law and to exclude trucks and motorcycles. If anything, our legislators should double down and extend the right to repair laws to also include protections of our right to privacy.

Motor vehicles have become rolling computers that we, the owners of these vehicles, do not have fair access to without the right to repair mandates. Also, when we plug in our smartphone device to the vehicle, the vehicle's software accesses the data that we store on it. It has been reported that car manufacturers sell this data, especially data about our driving habits to insurers.

Certainly innovation should be rewarded with limited copyright and patents, but overly strict Intellectual property laws limit access to knowledge, stifle innovation, create monopolies, and hinder collaboration. These laws have also opened the door to abuse through "patent trolling" and overly broad copyright claims.

The right to repair movement is a good first step to reforming our intellectual property laws to serve people as well as innovators.

Please join me in urging our legislators to implement the Right to Repair law and to include the right to privacy against car manufacturers prying into our private data.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay