Afew years ago, Paul Wieland, a 44-year-old information technology professional living in Adirondack Mountains in New York, US, was wrapping up a home renovation when he ran into a hiccup. He wanted to be able to control his new garage door with his smartphone. But the options available, including a product called MyQ, required connecting to a company’s Internet servers.

He believed a “smart” garage door should operate only over a local Wi-fi network to protect a home’s privacy, so he started building his own system. By 2022, he had developed a prototype, which he named RATGDO, for Rage Against the Garage Door Opener.

He had hoped to sell a hundred of his new gadgets just to recoup expenses, but he ended up selling tens of thousands. That’s because MyQ’s maker did what a number of other consumer device manufacturers have done over the past few years, much to the frustration of their customers: it changed the device, making it both less useful and more expensive to operate.

Chamberlain Group, a company that makes garage door openers, had created the MyQ hubs so that virtually any garage door opener could be controlled with home automation software from Apple, Google, Nest and others. Chamberlain also offered a free MyQ smartphone app.

Two years ago, Chamberlain started shutting down support for most third-party access to its MyQ servers. This effectively broke connections that people had set up to work with Apple’s Home app or Google’s Home app, among others. Chamberlain also started working with partners that charge subscriptions for their services, though a basic app was still free.

While Wieland said RATGDO sales spiked after Chamberlain made those changes, he believes the popularity of his device is about more than just opening and closing a garage. It stems from widespread frustration with companies that sell Internet-connected hardware that they eventually change or charge subscription fees for.

“You should own the hardware, and there is a line there that a lot of companies are experimenting with,” Wieland said.

Too often, we are losing control of our personal technology, and the list of examples keeps growing. BMW made headlines in 2022 when it began charging subscriptions to use heated seats in some cars — a decision it reversed after a backlash. In 2021, Oura, the maker of a $350 sleep-tracking device, angered customers when it began charging a $6 monthly fee for users to get deeper analysis of their sleep. (Oura is still charging the fee.)

For years, some printer companies have required consumers to buy proprietary ink cartridges, but more recently they began employing aggressive tactics, like remotely bricking a printer when a payment is missed for an ink subscription.

The activists and tinkerers rebelling against superfluous hardware subscriptions and fighting for device ownership are part of the broader “right to repair” movement, a consumer advocacy campaign that has focussed on passing laws nationwide that require tech and appliance manufacturers to provide the tools, instructions and parts necessary for anyone to fix products, from smartphones to refrigerators.

This fight with a garage door opener company raises another important question: if companies can modify their Net-connected products however they want after consumers have purchased them, what does it mean to even own anything anymore?

This year, Google, for example, discontinued support for its first and second-generation Nest, a thermostat that automatically sets the temperature based on a user’s schedule.

“Being able to use the stuff we bought has always been a part of an agreement between consumers and vendors,” Kevin O’Reilly, the executive director of the FULU Foundation (it’s an acronym for Freedom from Unethical Limitations on Users), a nonprofit that fights for consumer ownership of devices, said.

So what to do?

There’s no easy solution since so many of our devices are Internet-connected and thus controlled by their makers. But Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, a company that sells repair parts, offered this rule of thumb: Always opt for the “dumb” devices — the refrigerators, dishwashers, exercise bikes and coffee makers that lack a Wi-Fi connection or screen.

For Wieland, the fight isn’t over. He started a company named RATCLOUD, for Rage Against the Cloud, to develop similar products that were not yet for sale.

NYTNS