The Only Repair Federal Rules Allow on a Game Console Is the Disc Drive — and the Newest Console Doesn't Have One

SEO Title: The only console repair US rules allow: the disc drive

Excerpt: A 28-word sentence in the Copyright Office's repair exemption is the whole of the legal permission to circumvent a game console's locks, and it covers one component: the optical drive. On 28 October 2026 the Office proposed readopting it unchanged, in a docket of ten proposed classes that never mentions game consoles. The newest console on the market has no disc drive at all.

The entire federal permission to break a lock on a video game console in the United States is one sentence, twenty-eight words long, and it is about a disc drive.

"For video game consoles, 'repair' is limited to repair or replacement of a console's optical drive and requires restoring any technological protection measures that were circumvented or disabled."

That is 37 CFR 201.40(b)(15), the consumer-device repair exemption created by the Librarian of Congress under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The phrase "limited to" appears exactly once in the whole of § 201.40 — a regulation of 5,049 words covering smartphones, cars, tractors, medical scanners, smart TVs, 3D printers, e-readers, voice assistants and library preservation. It appears in the console sentence.

On 28 October 2026 the Copyright Office published the notice of proposed rulemaking for the tenth triennial 1201 proceeding. It reviewed 43 renewal petitions and put forward ten classes of new or expanded exemptions. The Register "intends to recommend readoption of each of the other existing exemptions in their current forms." The console sentence is one of them. It is not discussed, not quoted, and not proposed for change. The word "console" appears twice in a 22,973-word document, both times incidentally — once in a list of devices iFixit repairs, once in a petition about "car consoles."

That is the finding, and it is narrower than it sounds. It is also, for anyone who owns a console, the whole of their legal position.

What the sentence does and does not do

Section 1201 does not ban repairing a console. It bans circumventing a technological measure that controls access to a copyrighted work — a firmware check, a parts-pairing handshake, a service-mode password. A repair that requires none of those is untouched by any of this. The exemption matters at the exact moment a repair needs software access: swapping a drive whose board is married to the mainboard, recalibrating a replaced component, or getting past an authentication step the manufacturer controls.

When that moment arrives, the regulation permits it for one part. Not the fan, not the HDMI port, not the SSD, not the battery, not the stick modules, not a swollen capacitor on the power board. The optical drive.

Everything else in the exemption's general grant — "diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of such a device" — is subtracted for consoles by those 28 words. Consoles otherwise qualify: they are, in the regulation's language, devices "primarily designed for use by consumers." They are inside the class and then carved out of it, component by component, in a single sentence.

There is one other place in federal rules where a console's own operating software may lawfully be circumvented at all, and it is not for owners. § 201.40(b)(19)(iii) permits circumvention of "computer programs used to operate video game consoles solely to the extent necessary for an eligible library, archives, or museum" to preserve a game. That is the only authorization of its kind in the United States, and it is conditioned on a public-service mission, open collections and no commercial advantage.

A console owner, in other words, has less latitude over their own hardware than a librarian does.

The docket that isn't about consoles

The tenth triennial proceeding is the largest 1201 docket in years. The Copyright Office's own proceeding page records 43 petitions to renew existing exemptions and 33 filings on the new-or-expanded track, which the Office grouped into ten classes: accessibility, criticism and comment, playback on unsupported devices, replacement copies, personal playback referencing, public domain works, jailbreaking, repair, video games and OS incompatibility, and video games and network play.

Class 8 is the repair class, and it is the one that contains the console sentence. Its consumer subclass, proposed jointly by Public Knowledge and iFixit, asks the Office to expand the consumer repair exemption to cover "reconfiguration, continued use, or reuse of the device or system" and to reach business and enterprise IT equipment.

That petition is 963 words long. It does not contain the word "console." It does not contain the words "video game."

The renewal petition for the same exemption, filed by iFixit, is 1,627 words. It mentions consoles once — inside a list of device categories where "software and access controls remain integral," alongside smartphones, computers and home appliances. It does not ask the Office to lift the optical-drive limitation, or mention that the limitation exists.

So the one exemption that governs whether an American can legally get past a console's software locks is being renewed and expanded in 2026 without either petitioner addressing the console carve-out. The Office, for its part, proposes no regulatory language touching it. Two petitions, 2,590 words between them, and the sentence survives by not being asked about.

The same document, five cycles

The console's presence in the 1201 record has been shrinking for as long as there has been a record to measure. Counting the word "console" in each cycle's final rule, and normalising for the length of the document:

The 2026 document is nearly as long as the 2015 one and mentions consoles eighteen times less often per thousand words. The decline is not a change in drafting style; it tracks a change in what the Office was being asked to do. In 2015, console provisions were live questions with petitioners, opponents and a recorded outcome. In 2026 there is nothing to decide.

How it got this narrow

The compression was deliberate at every step.

In 2012 and again in 2015, the Register refused to exempt console jailbreaking. The 2015 rule is explicit: "The Register concluded that the record in this rulemaking did not provide a basis for departing from her 2012 recommendation that an exemption for video game console jailbreaking should be denied." The reasoning was piracy — that jailbreaking consoles "continues to be closely associated with video game piracy, thus undermining the value of console software as a secure distribution platform" — and, on repair specifically, "the availability of authorized repair services."

In 2018 the Office considered repair arguments for "home appliances, smartphones, video game consoles, computers and ancillary or peripheral computing devices," and noted that "regarding repair of video game consoles specifically, opponents expressed concern that circumvention of TPMs creates the risk of unauthorized access to content and piracy." No console repair right emerged.

In 2021 the current structure was built. Public Knowledge and iFixit petitioned for an exemption "to repair optical drives in video game consoles and to replace damaged hardware in such devices." The Register granted the first half and refused the second, in a sentence that has not changed since: "For video game consoles, the Register concluded that an exemption is warranted solely for the repair of optical drives."

The 2021 rule was reported at the time as a win — "Consumers win right to repair all video game console optical drives," as one outlet put it, and Ars Technica's coverage carried the Office's own caveat that "if a console does not contain an optical drive, it is not eligible under this exemption." The 2024 rule carried the carve-out forward verbatim. The 2026 notice proposes to carry it forward again, into a term of three years running from October 2027 to October 2030.

The part is disappearing

Here the legal record collides with the hardware cycle.

Nintendo's current console, the Switch 2, has no optical drive. It takes cartridges. Microsoft's mass-market Xbox this generation, the Series S, has no optical drive. Sony sells a disc-less PlayStation 5. The exemption that defines console repair in America names a component that a growing share of the current generation does not contain.

For a Switch 2 owner, the federal rule's only named console repair is the repair of a part the device does not have. Not because the Office excluded the Switch 2 — "video game console" is the term used, and it applies — but because the carve-out was written around a 2021 hardware assumption and has not been revisited since.

This is an inference about consequence, not a documented intent. The Office has never said the exemption is a nullity for cartridge consoles, and no petitioner has raised it. But the arithmetic is not in dispute: the repair right is defined by a component, and the component is being removed from the category.

The states did the same thing

The federal carve-out is not an isolated artefact. It is the top layer of a consistent pattern.

Colorado's digital right-to-repair act took effect on 1 January 2026. The General Assembly's own summary of HB24-1121 lists the devices the act exempts: "marine vessels, aviation, and motor vehicles; medical devices other than powered wheelchairs; certain safety and security equipment; certain construction- and energy-related equipment; and video game consoles."

The Entertainment Software Association, the console makers' trade group, described the pattern to the Copyright Office in February 2024: "New York, Minnesota, and California passed right to repair laws in 2023, all of which recognize the need for video game consoles to be exempted from blanket right to repair obligations."

A reader can check the Colorado list directly in the bill summary. The other three rest on the trade group's own description, which is a party admission rather than an independent reading of each statute, and should be treated as such.

So the console is exempted by name at both layers: from the federal circumvention repair exemption except for one component, and from the state repair statutes that would otherwise fill the gap. Other device classes appear on Colorado's exemption list too — vehicles, aviation, medical devices — so the state exemptions are not unique to consoles. What is unique is the pairing: consoles are the only class I could find that is both carved to a single component federally and named out of the state statutes.

The only device excluded by name from security research

One more provision deserves quotation, because it is the cleanest statement of how the category is treated.

§ 201.40(b)(22) permits circumvention "solely for the purpose of investigating a potential infringement of free and open source computer programs." Its first condition: "The circumvention is undertaken on a lawfully acquired device or machine other than a video game console."

That is the only device exclusion in the provision. Every other machine in America — phones, laptops, routers, cars, industrial controllers, medical equipment — is eligible for the security-research exemption. The console is named and removed. A researcher who wants to audit the open-source components inside a game console has no exemption to stand on, while a researcher doing the same work on a tractor does.

Who is in the room

The 2026 docket is not quiet. The Office received eleven comments on the renewal petitions, three supporting and eight opposing; the opponents include the Joint Creators — the Entertainment Software Association, the Motion Picture Association and the Recording Industry Association of America — who filed against the nonprofit-video and medical-device renewals among others.

The trade group representing the three console makers is litigating this docket. It filed no comment about consoles, because nothing about consoles was proposed.

The one console-adjacent expansion in the entire proceeding is Proposed Class 10. Dan Elkins asks the Office to extend the game-preservation exemption from local play to online play, so that owners of a game whose servers have been shut down can connect to "independently implemented replacement network infrastructure." His petition states the current limit precisely: "The current exemption permits circumvention for gameplay on one computer or console and among locally connected computers or consoles, but excludes gameplay through an online service or facility."

If granted, Class 10 would be the first meaningful expansion of what console owners may do in more than a decade — and it arrives framed entirely as a video-game question, not a console one. Comments are due 7 December 2026; opposition is due 22 February 2027; replies 22 March 2027. Class 8(a), the repair expansion that does not mention consoles, is on the same calendar.

What this does and does not prove

Observed: the text of § 201.40, the text and arithmetic of the 2026 notice, the petition counts, the word counts of the two repair petitions, the 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024 holdings quoted above, Colorado's exemption list, and the ESA's characterisation of the New York, Minnesota and California statutes.

Inference: that the carve-out's survival is a product of inattention rather than an active 2026 defence. It is supported by the absence of any petition or comment addressing it, and it is consistent with the Office's streamlined-renewal procedure, which by design does not reopen codified language. It is not proved. A petitioner could have decided privately not to raise consoles for strategic reasons — iFixit and Public Knowledge have spent a decade choosing which fights to bring, and they may have judged that a console repair ask would fail and consume record-building resources better spent elsewhere.

Speculation, and flagged as such: that the Switch 2's lack of an optical drive will produce a test case or a petition in the next cycle. Nothing in the record indicates one is planned.

Two alternative readings deserve to be stated. The first is that this is a stable, defensible equilibrium: the console makers run authorised repair programmes, the Register has accepted that argument repeatedly since 2012, and the piracy risk it identified is real rather than pretextual. The second is that § 1201 is simply the wrong instrument — that the fix belongs in state repair statutes or in Congress, which is precisely the argument iFixit made in 2021 when it wrote that without access to tools "the exemptions are largely academic."

Both are reasonable. Neither changes the arithmetic in the table above, or the fact that a 22,973-word proposal published this week contains two mentions of the product category it governs and neither of them is a decision.

The comment window on the class that does not mention consoles closes on 7 December 2026.

Sources

Regulation

• 37 CFR 201.40 — current text, through 1 October 2026 (eCFR).

Federal Register — the five cycles and the 2026 documents

• 80 FR 65944 — 2015 final rule (console jailbreaking denied; preservation granted).
• 83 FR 54010 — 2018 final rule.
• 86 FR 59627 — 2021 final rule ("solely for the repair of optical drives").
• 89 FR 85437 — 2024 final rule (carve-out carried forward verbatim).
• 91 FR 34795 — 9 June 2026 notice of inquiry.
• 91 FR 67788 — 28 October 2026 notice of proposed rulemaking (Docket No. 2026-4).

Copyright Office proceeding docket

• Tenth Triennial Section 1201 Proceeding — petition counts, comment deadlines, term dates.
• Petitions for newly proposed exemptions — 33 filings.
• Petitions to renew current exemptions — 43 filings plus comments.
• Public Knowledge and iFixit, Proposed Class 8(a) — 963 words; no mention of consoles.
• iFixit, renewal of the device-repair exemption — 1,627 words.
• Dan Elkins, Proposed Class 10 (network play).

State law and industry filings

• Colorado HB24-1121, official bill summary — the exemption list naming video game consoles.
• Entertainment Software Association, comment to the Copyright Office, February 2024 — the New York / Minnesota / California statement.

Contemporary reporting on the 2021 rule (context for novelty)

• Ars Technica, 27 October 2021 — the optical-drive-only outcome and its caveat.