Short answer: Right-to-repair laws generally give the owner of “digital electronic equipment” a legal pathway to obtain the parts, tools, and documentation needed to fix their own hardware on fair terms — and, in Canada, the legal right to circumvent a technological protection measure (TPM) when doing so is solely for diagnosis, maintenance, or repair. What these laws do not do is force a manufacturer to retroactively redesign a machine it already sold, guarantee that any one model is covered, or apply uniformly across borders. For Bitcoin mining ASIC owners, the law often opens a door — but how wide that door is depends on where you live, when and how you bought the machine, and whether it is treated as consumer or enterprise equipment.
This guide interprets D-Central’s right-to-repair laws dataset for an ASIC repair audience: the dataset tracks the primary statutes, and this page explains what they mean for someone holding a hashboard with a dead chip. For the authoritative text of any provision, follow the official source links in the dataset.
Informational, not legal advice. This article summarizes publicly available legislation as of June 2026. It is not legal advice, and it does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Statutes are amended, phased in, and interpreted by courts and regulators over time. Before relying on any right described here, read the official source for your jurisdiction (linked in the dataset) or consult a qualified professional.
Are ASIC miners “digital electronic equipment”?
Most modern right-to-repair statutes attach to a category usually called “digital electronic equipment” — broadly, a product that depends on digital electronics to function. New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act, for example, defines covered equipment as any product priced over $10 that depends on digital electronics, and lists phones, computers, and similar devices as examples. An ASIC miner — a control board, hashboards full of custom silicon, firmware, and a network stack — fits that general description comfortably.
“Fitting the definition” is not the same as “being covered,” however. Every one of these laws carries carve-outs and effective-date cut-offs that can pull a specific machine back out of scope. That tension — broadly worded coverage, narrowly drawn exceptions — is the single most important thing for an ASIC owner to understand.
What right-to-repair laws actually entitle an owner to
Across jurisdictions, the consumer-facing right-to-repair statutes converge on a similar core. They generally require a manufacturer to make the following available to owners and independent repair shops, on terms comparable to those offered to its own authorized network:
- Replacement parts — the components needed to restore the product to working order (for an ASIC, that means hashboards, control boards, fans, and power supplies).
- Tools — including diagnostic software and firmware where applicable, not only physical tools.
- Documentation — service manuals, schematics, diagnostic procedures, and error-code references.
New York’s law is built around exactly this “parts, tools, and documentation on fair and reasonable terms” obligation. California’s Right to Repair Act (SB 244) goes further on duration: three years after a product line is discontinued for lower-priced goods, and seven years for goods priced at $100 or more. Oregon’s SB 1596 became the first U.S. state law to restrict “parts pairing” — software locks that stop a genuine replacement part from working unless the manufacturer authorizes it.
Critically, these are obligations on the manufacturer to supply repair inputs. They do not guarantee that any individual repair will succeed, that an old model will be supported forever, or that you personally have the skill to do the work. They lower the barriers; they do not do the soldering. If you would rather hand the board to a technician, D-Central’s start-a-repair intake covers that path, and the hashboard reference and repair bill-of-materials help you scope a job before you begin.
The TPM question: is it legal to bypass a firmware lock to repair?
A distinct branch of right-to-repair law deals not with parts availability but with anti-circumvention rules — the provisions in copyright law that historically made it illegal to break a digital lock (a “technological protection measure”) even to fix your own device.
In Canada, two amendments to the Copyright Act changed this. Bill C-244 received Royal Assent on November 7, 2024, adding an exception that permits circumventing a TPM where the sole purpose is the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of a product. A companion measure, Bill C-294, similarly permits circumvention to achieve interoperability between programs or devices. These are meaningful for owners of locked hardware — but they are narrow. The repair exception does not authorize copyright infringement carried out alongside a repair, and, as enacted, it does not permit manufacturing, importing, distributing, or offering to the public the circumvention tools or services themselves. In plain terms: the law made it lawful to pick the lock to fix your own machine, but it did not create a legal market in lock-picks.
The United States handles this differently. There is no general federal right-to-repair statute; instead, the Librarian of Congress periodically grants temporary DMCA exemptions for certain repair activities, and the protections most owners encounter are state laws plus federal warranty rules (below). The practical upshot is that TPM-circumvention rights are jurisdiction-specific and change over time — verify the current position from the official source before acting.
Jurisdiction snapshot
The table below interprets the core entries in the right-to-repair laws dataset. “In force / key date” reflects the dataset and the official sources; several laws phase in over multiple dates.
| Jurisdiction | Law | In force / key date | What it covers | Notable limit for ASIC owners |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | Digital Fair Repair Act | Effective Dec 28, 2023; applies to equipment first sold/used in NY on or after Jul 1, 2023 | Parts, tools, documentation for “digital electronic equipment” | Excludes business-to-business and government-contract sales not offered to retail buyers, plus enterprise/computing-facility devices |
| Minnesota | Digital Fair Repair Act | Effective Jul 1, 2024; covers equipment sold after Jul 1, 2021 | Documentation, parts, tools for diagnosis, maintenance, repair | Consumer-electronics framing; category carve-outs apply |
| California | Right to Repair Act (SB 244) | Effective Jul 1, 2024 | Parts, tools, docs for 3 years (lower-priced) to 7 years ($100+) after discontinuation | Duration is tied to product price tier, not to your need |
| Oregon | Right to Repair Act (SB 1596) | Effective Jan 1, 2025 | Parts and tools; first U.S. state to restrict parts pairing | Date cut-offs and product-class scope still apply |
| Washington | Right to Repair (HB 1483) | Effective Jan 1, 2026; products sold after Jul 1, 2021 | Parts, tools, documentation; restricts parts pairing | Scoped to covered digital products with exclusions |
| Colorado | Consumer Right to Repair Agricultural Equipment (HB23-1011) | Effective Jan 1, 2024 | Diagnostics, embedded software, tools, documentation | Agricultural equipment only — illustrates product-class scoping; does not reach ASICs |
| European Union | Right to Repair Directive (EU) 2024/1799 | In force Jul 30, 2024; national transposition deadline Jul 31, 2026 | Obligation to repair certain covered goods on request, even after the legal guarantee | Applies to named product groups (phones, tablets, servers); ASIC miners are not listed; rights depend on each member state transposing it |
| Canada (federal) | Copyright Act amendments — Bill C-244 & Bill C-294 | Royal Assent Nov 7, 2024 | Permits circumventing a TPM for diagnosis/maintenance/repair (C-244) and interoperability (C-294) | Does not legalize trafficking in circumvention tools/services, nor any accompanying copyright infringement |
| Quebec | Bill 29 — Act protecting consumers from planned obsolescence | Obsolescence ban in force Oct 5, 2023; parts/repair-info warranty Oct 5, 2025; good-working-order warranty Oct 5, 2026 | Bans planned obsolescence; mandates availability of parts, repair services, and repair information | Phased in over years; specific obligations depend on prescribed goods and regulations |
What these laws do NOT do
For an ASIC owner, knowing the limits is as important as knowing the rights. The most common misconceptions:
They do not retroactively make a product repairable
Right-to-repair obligations generally attach to products sold after a statute’s effective date. A manufacturer is not required to go back and redesign, document, or stock parts for a machine it sold years earlier outside the covered window. The cut-offs differ by state: New York’s law reaches equipment first sold or used in the state on or after July 1, 2023, while Minnesota’s and Washington’s reach equipment sold after July 1, 2021. That is exactly the kind of date sensitivity that decides whether your specific unit qualifies.
Coverage varies by jurisdiction and product class
There is no single “right to repair.” A right that exists in Quebec or New York may not exist, or may exist differently, in another province or state. Several U.S. laws explicitly exclude motor vehicles, medical devices, farm and construction equipment, and — directly relevant here — enterprise and computing-facility hardware. An ASIC running at home as a space heater and the same model running in a commercial Hashcenter can land on opposite sides of a carve-out.
Business-to-business and enterprise purchases are often excluded
New York’s enacted law excludes products sold under business-to-business or government contracts that are not offered to ordinary retail buyers, along with enterprise devices used by computing facilities. Mining hardware bought through a wholesale or hosting arrangement may therefore fall outside a consumer right-to-repair statute even where the identical machine bought by an individual would be inside it.
They do not hand you the circumvention tools
Canada’s TPM repair exception lets a person circumvent a lock to repair, but does not authorize a commercial supply of circumvention devices or services, nor any copyright infringement that happens along the way.
Enforcement phases in
Even where a law is “passed,” obligations often arrive on a staggered timetable. Quebec’s Bill 29 is the clearest example: the planned-obsolescence prohibition took effect in 2023, the warranty of availability of parts and repair information in 2025, and the good-working-order warranty in 2026. The EU directive is in force but only becomes a usable consumer right once each member state transposes it, with a deadline of July 31, 2026.
Right to repair is not the same as your warranty
Owners frequently conflate two separate questions: “can I get parts and fix this?” (right to repair) and “will fixing it void my warranty?” (warranty law). In the United States, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act addresses the second. Its anti-tying provision generally prohibits a manufacturer from conditioning a warranty on the use of branded parts or authorized service, unless those are provided free of charge or the manufacturer obtains a waiver from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has reiterated that a warranty cannot deceptively imply that using an unauthorized part or independent repairer automatically voids coverage, and the burden of proof rests on the manufacturer.
In other words, independent repair and warranty coverage can coexist. The specifics — and the firmware angle in particular — are covered in our companion piece, Does custom firmware void your Bitmain warranty?
How an ASIC owner should use the dataset
A practical reading order:
- Find your jurisdiction in the right-to-repair laws dataset and open the official source it links.
- Check the effective date and scope — does your machine, bought when and where it was, fall inside the covered window and the “digital electronic equipment” (or equivalent) definition?
- Read the carve-outs — especially business-to-business, enterprise, and computing-facility exclusions if your unit is hosted or was bought wholesale.
- Separate the warranty question from the parts-access question; they are governed by different rules.
- Decide DIY vs. service. Doing it yourself? The hashboard reference and repair bill-of-materials are starting points. Rather send it in? Begin at start a repair.
Right to repair is a recognition of something the repair community has practiced for years: that hardware deserves a second life, and that the knowledge and parts to give it one should not be locked away. The law is catching up unevenly — country by country, state by state, product class by product class. Reading the specific statute that applies to your machine is the only reliable way to know what you are entitled to.
Frequently asked questions
Does any right-to-repair law specifically name Bitcoin mining ASICs?
Not by name, in the statutes tracked here. ASIC miners generally fit the broad “digital electronic equipment” definition used by U.S. state laws, but whether a particular unit is covered depends on the effective date, how and where it was purchased, and any enterprise or business-to-business carve-out. Read the specific statute via the dataset’s official source links.
Is it legal to bypass an ASIC’s firmware lock to repair it?
In Canada, Bill C-244 (Royal Assent November 7, 2024) added a Copyright Act exception permitting TPM circumvention solely for diagnosis, maintenance, or repair. It does not authorize selling or distributing circumvention tools, nor any copyright infringement. Other jurisdictions treat circumvention differently — in the U.S. it turns on time-limited DMCA exemptions and state law — so verify the current rule for your location.
Can a manufacturer void my warranty because I used an independent repair shop?
In the United States, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act’s anti-tying provision generally prohibits conditioning a warranty on branded parts or authorized service unless those are provided free of charge. The FTC places the burden of proof on the manufacturer. This is separate from right-to-repair access laws; see our warranty guide.
I run my miners in a Hashcenter, not at home. Am I covered?
Possibly not by consumer right-to-repair statutes. Several laws, including New York’s, exclude enterprise devices used by computing facilities and equipment sold under business-to-business contracts. Hosted or wholesale-purchased fleets frequently fall outside consumer protections even when the identical home unit would be inside them.
Does the EU Right to Repair Directive apply to my miner today?
Directive (EU) 2024/1799 entered into force on July 30, 2024, but it becomes a usable consumer right only as each member state transposes it into national law, with a deadline of July 31, 2026. The directive targets specified product groups (such as phones, tablets, and servers); ASIC miners are not named. Check your member state’s implementing law.
Do these laws force a manufacturer to sell parts for an old model forever?
No. Obligations attach to products sold after a law’s effective date and, where a duration is set (such as California’s three-to-seven-year window after discontinuation), they expire. The laws lower barriers to repair; they do not guarantee perpetual support for legacy hardware.
This article is informational and reflects publicly available legislation as of June 2026; it is not legal advice. For binding text and current status, consult the official sources linked in the right-to-repair laws dataset.
