“If you buy something, you own it—and you should be able to fix it.”
In this special Technology Reseller News and ITAD Association podcast, Willie Cade of Graceful Solutions discusses the growing right-to-repair movement and why the debate is expanding beyond hardware repair into software, data ownership and control.
Cade has spent much of his career in technology refurbishment and now works with law firms on right-to-repair matters. He also serves on the board of Repair.org.
For Cade, the core principle is straightforward: ownership should include the ability to repair equipment and access the software necessary to keep it operating.
That issue has become particularly important in agriculture, where modern tractors can contain dozens of processors and increasingly depend on software, diagnostics and data.
Cade discusses ongoing litigation involving John Deere and argues that repair restrictions can create significant costs for farmers, especially when equipment failures occur during narrow planting or harvesting windows.
But he says the larger issue may be data.
Modern agricultural equipment can generate substantial volumes of operational data. Cade argues that questions around who owns that information, who can use it and whether the equipment owner can benefit from it are becoming as important as the right to repair the machine itself.
“The second harvest is data,” Cade says.
The same questions apply well beyond agriculture.
From smartphones and servers to switches and other IT equipment, Cade says manufacturers can retain significant control after the sale through software restrictions, parts pairing and other mechanisms.
That makes right to repair increasingly relevant to ITAD providers, MSPs and channel partners whose businesses depend on extending equipment life, refurbishing assets and maintaining customer infrastructure.
AI adds another dimension.
As businesses generate more data through AI applications, Cade says organizations should be asking not only where their data resides, but whether they actually control and own what is being created.
For MSPs and ITAD providers, that creates a broader advisory opportunity around ownership, repairability, data rights and long-term control of technology assets.
Cade says these issues will continue to evolve as states and federal lawmakers consider new approaches to repair and data ownership.
Visit Repair.org to learn more about the right-to-repair movement.
