During the T-top days of the 1980's, thieves were stealing the removable hardtop panels from lots of Camaros and Corvettes and cars like that. These could not be pawned for much since it was unlikely that a buyer for that exact T-top would come in looking for that one any time soon. Unless the shop developed quite a collection. Eventually they would be unloaded to the used parts dealers.

I went to a police auction where a lot of the recovered stolen property which went unclaimed was being sold along with their surplus vehicles, office furniture, etc.

There were loads of T-tops and naturally the used parts T-top dealers were there to pick them up at rock-bottom prices. They all knew each other.

They knew exactly which car model each one would fit and this had become an increasingly more detail-oriented business.

When a theft victim showed up to a used parts dealer, if the dealer did not have the exact part in stock (or in his network) he would tell the victim that it would take a few days to come in.

Basically, when an actual willing buyer was identified, if the part was not available already, it would be stolen to order from a compatible vehicle by street thieves who had become more detail-oriented over the years themselves.

This is why modern cars and tractors encode the VIN in computers and don't let you replace parts without dealer tools. You buy a black market part, even though it is perfectly good it can't be used without the dealer getting involved and the dealer tool can automatically check against a list of stolen parts.

Right to repair has the downside of not checking for stolen parts like that. Which is why it isn't the black and white issue most people think it is.

Not going out of your way to check for criminal activity doesn't mean it's any less of a black and white issue. "But you can't automatically check if the part is stolen" is just a very specific pearl you're clutching.

Or we could have a police force that prosecutes theft.

Exactly. Receiving stolen property is already a crime. We don't need some automated system that as a byproduct also prevents people from fixing their own cars.

Trespassing is already a crime. We don’t need some automated system that as a byproduct also prevents people from entering their own homes.

Nice strawman but poor argument. What you're actually looking for is a system where the homebuilder has the keys to the home, which is as ridiculous on its face and trying to prevent people from fixing things they bought.

If this is an absolute priority (and it's not, because the costs inuced by theft are dwarfed by the the costs incurred by forced obsolescence) then just have a public challenge-response server with open source code so it can be maintained and secrets controlled by a government department paid for by registration fees.

You have to log ID, provide a small payment and it logs the VIN the item is being tied to as well as having a list of stolen parts.

No anti-repair steps needed so you can stop shilling.

That's one business opportunity.

The other business opportunity, complementary, is security devices to protect your parts, extra tricky huge locks and their lock-picking sets, secure parking lots along routes at premium fees and then of course a special platinum lounge thing with concessions. And marking parts with license plate numbers.[1]

Great alignment of incentives among the two excellent business opportunities.

[1] That last one I saw in Chile in fact like in 2001, stamping license plates on mirrors. Worse mirror of course. They also did windows, you wonder why, guess they had a glass stamping machine and not enough customers, wanted to get more money from the same customers. The dentist thing basically.