Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm sick of "renting" batteries that are permanently installed in devices that would otherwise work for tens of years, but their batteries wear out after only a few years. I'm sick of paying inflated prices for batteries that have bizarre configurations and that go out of production.
I understand there are significant engineering challenges for some things (e.g., earbuds that are basically some electronics wrapped around a lithium cell). But there's no reason a set of headphones couldn't have a replaceable cell (I'm looking at you, Bose). I'm happy to have slightly heavier headphones and slightly thicker laptops and tablets if it increases the device lifetime and reduces e-waste.
Not gonna happen without a mandate, that's for sure. Gotta keep customers on the upgrade treadmill.
Bedsides, how many AirPods are likely to be dying from poor battery life compared to being lost, damaged or upgraded?
If this did happen, I suspect there would be more instances of people losing the battery cap, or throwing it away because of undiagnosed battery terminal faults, or of children dying because they swallowed the impossibly small pill shaped battery...
Worse is better, and in this case, the iPhone, and everyone copying its permanently installed battery, is worse.
https://amazon.com/AA-Batteries-Rechargeable-ECO-Friendly-Re...?
But having to essentially defeat an end-user-hostile industrial design should be strongly discouraged.
I can dream.
I would imagine a battery with power wires + a legitimate connector.
Another issue is I don't want batteries in my keyboard, mouse, or electric razor. All these things I use next to another thing with a power source. It's pointless to have them be rechargeable. Yet it's becoming harder and harder to find keyboards, mice, and razors that are wired. Cordless mice in particular are a blight on society because the extra weight of the batteries aggravates carpal-tunnel and is a health hazard.
Also alarming is all the Apple crap where the hard drive, that lasts at most 2 years, is impossible to replace without great risk to the device, special replacement gaskets, etc, and when you do it turns out the original had a proprietary temperature sensor that means your replacement dies in 6 months.
RAM welded to the motherboard on general purpose computers is another design horror that harms the environment and should be banned. All RAM should be upgradable on devices that cost more than $1000.
Also the era of cell phones without SD slots must end.
Source? I’ve never experienced this using even low quality hard drives. If you’re including SSDs, then between 15 to 20 Apple products over the past decade plus have not had an issue within 2 years.
"Hot swappable" usually means you can swap it while the machine is turned on. At least, that's how people use the term when talking about harddrives.
Hot-swapping a battery works by replacing a battery while the device operates from a secondary power source (e.g. charger or secondary battery).
Swappable is better.
It looks like a "right to repair" for appliances has already been adopted. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-...
Note e.g. the requirements for monitors: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/c-201...
This is in many ways the opposite of the cookie law in that it specifies pretty precisely what outcome has to be achieved.
I don't think anyone else uses the term; to the layman, they're 'dumb phones', to contrast with 'smart' (although increasinly 'smart phones' are just 'phones').
Or since those are American sites, perhaps it's actually a variation of regional colloquialisms.
They'll exist as long as there's a market for it.
That said, the definition of 'dumb' phone is going to vary, and senior citizens in 30 years will be seeking what looks like today's iPhone, or an android phone. Maybe.
There are also rather a lot of KaiOS smart phones with the form factor of a flip phone, although I don't know how easy to repair they are or how many of them work on US networks.
Few weeks ago I decided to switch to Lineage OS. For that I bought a used OnePlus 3T on EBay. Now the exceptional fact about OnePlus is that they provide official repair service even for relatively old phones. Most recent model is OP 7T.
https://www.oneplus.com/de/support/repair-pricing/details?co...
Replacement of the battery cost in total 40 Euro. That's shipping back and forth, the battery and the replacement. Very much impressed me how fast that procedure took. altogether only 4 days. How awesome is that?
Works fantastic.
This is different from outright purchase of the car, where you can literally drive it to the nearest scrap yard and have it crushed right after purchase :)
Even this right is being eroded - see Tesla. You can drive it to the scrap yard, but someone else can't always drive it back out.
It's very reasonable to say that the vendors created an expectation of ownership to push their sale.
If you didn't notice that I called them "vendors" instead of "leasers", it adds to my point.
Other things being equal, I would agree. However, if market forces push us into a choice between ordinary people being able to own things and use them freely against ordinary people being forced to pay rent on everything forever and use things only as some higher power dictates, it's not going to take long to make that choice. This is the choice that we are heading towards with the increasing use of software and, in particular, the repurposing of laws originally intended to prevent exploiting the work of others to create software so that they constrain the ordinary use of a product by the person who bought it.
All of them will be licensed, almost abolishing private ownership. If we idly accept licensing of everything, we will enjoy what will be basically serfdom.
People that were writing these laws never imagined they would prevent you from repairing a cat-feeder or a lighting system. They were intended for another purpose entirely. Maybe it's time we stopped misusing those laws and created a separate body of law for this specifically.
This is already happening. I work in an engineering consulting, specialising on consumer electronics. I have to admit, the wider industry is becoming a part of the issue: everybody wants to become like Apple.
We have an enormous tide of new clients incoming, with prime majority of them having no previous experience doing anything with electronics whatsoever.
If we ignore customers with out in the clouds fantasies, we will be losing like 3/4 of the new business, on another, we will be loosing our engineers who will be leaving to work on something more interesting and merit worthy.
The hottest buzzword among Silicon Valley accelerator bred entrepreneurs I see is "product-as-a-service," which basically you buying a product, but still having to pay to use it even after you already own it.
We have a joke that soon even toilet paper rolls will come chipped, and the paper will not work unless you pay somebody on the internet.
Unfortunately not: https://futureiot.tech/ikea-sets-up-smart-home-business-unit...
It's sort of unfortunate. I can see having an idea, and wanting to start a business, but not have people copy it wholesale. But I can also see that people who do start companies go the full-tyranny route - closed source, phone app only, invasive data collection, until purchasing something is a compromise on every level.
If a house, a car, a shirt, or a phone is offered to you for sale, and you buy it, then you should own it.
FWIW, I agree with you. Please don't attack a straw-man!
Even if you don't mention them explicitly, you still have to acknowledge the difference because one of your examples was "software object".
When consumers pay money for software, it almost always licensed and not bought. If you buy MS Windows 10 from Amazon.com, you purchased a license. If you truly want to "buy" Windows 10 in the same sense as your other non-software examples, you'd have to convince Microsoft to sell you the "ownership of the codebase" or have enough billions to acquire the entire Microsoft corporation to "own" Windows 10.
- "buy software" the legal ownership sense : as in buying the copyright which is usually something companies (not consumers) do when they buy the intellectual property rights. E.g. Adobe Inc buys Macromedia Dreamweaver. This is the true ownership.
- "buy software" the casual sense : which just means the consumer getting a CD or a digital download to install a copy of the software. This the license not the ownership.
They are 2 different things that use the same word "buy" and just because a commentary omits the word "license" doesn't mean the above distinctions go away.
It's a similar distinction for many types of intellectual property. Photographers of weddings usually don't let couples buy the wedding photos in a legal ownership sense. Instead, they sell some prints with a license for use. Same with musicians selling "songs" to the public. People bought a license and not the copyright. Paul McCartney doesn't even "own" the songs he wrote with The Beatles. Thus, Paul McCartney can't do "anything he wants" with the song "Yesterday". He can't "resell the song" to somebody else like a used book. Instead, he has to ask for Sony's permission.
Does anyone "force" couples to license photos instead of buy them? In one sense, no. The bride & groom could conceivably contract with a photographer on a "work for hire" basis and thus own the copyrights to the photos. But most couples don't do that. Newspapers and magazines do establish "work for hire" with freelance photographers so they can own the photographs but most wedding couples don't.
As other commenters mentioned, the real issue is the slippery word "buy" that defies consumers' natural intuition of what that means. If you're really leasing/renting/licensing something, you need to make that clear.
You mentioned buying a software product, but that is not commonly done by consumers. We all license software. Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it. The replies mention changing software copyright for consumer products. I can imagine that to be a good idea, but I don't see the EU making GPLv3 software mandatory for software products. I don't see a way forward yet.
> Buying software means buying the copyright and become owner of it.
No, when people use the word "buy" here, they're using it in the same way I might buy a physical book.
When I buy a book, I'm free to write in it, scan it, transcribe it, rip it in half, reglue the spine, put a dust cover on it, or resell it. I'm not free to republish it or violate the author's copyright.
When I buy a piece of software, I should be free to hotpatch the DLL, back up the product, put wrappers around it, examine it, write about it, or resell it. That doesn't mean the owner should lose their copyright. You're conflating two unrelated concepts -- the abolition of copyright and the erosion of basic consumer ownership rights that have been established for centuries.
In fact, the EU already has a right to resale for digital software. And yet, despite that consumer-friendly rule, not every piece of software in the EU is currently GPLv3 licensed.
All that people are saying is that our rights as consumers shouldn't go away just because we bought a digital book instead of a physical one.
When the majority (consumers) decide they want everything for free and that they want absolute power over the creations of others creators will simply stop revealing what they create and stop making their creations available for purchase. Instead creating things for private use.
The vast majority of these "creators and skilled professionals" are doing work for hire for the same people who own everything else, and have absolutely no control over the product of their labor.
You pay the full cost of the device, but you don't own it, and companies retain the exclusive right for repair/replacement. But, they don't have any onus for repair/replacement, and you need to pay full price for a new device if your current one gets damaged.
An honest rental system might be preferable. At least then people would know what they're getting into. At least when I rent a device, there's some real obligation for the actual owner to fix it when it breaks. At least then companies who legitimately sell their devices and don't block repair efforts would have a marketing edge.
By all means, let people rent software. Just make sure companies are correctly marketing that as a rental.
When you buy a book, you own the hardware but not IP. You’re “licensed a nonexclusive irrevocable right to use, that allows reverse engineering but without sublicensing clauses” aka you can’t xerox the full book and sell it for $5. When you buy a sandwich, same except hardware can be eaten.
Really the deal of “mandatory licensed” software is that you can’t pirate it, and that should already be covered by laws. It should not require a million page contract and those contract mustn’t be much more than blank pages.
No, it's not that simple.
Exactly where we place the limits is up for debate, but I think I conclusively proved to everybody reading this that there need to be limits the only question is where.
I am allowed to remove my headlights, but I'm not allowed to drive on the roads if I have removed my headlights. The restriction is on roads.
I own my home, but I'm not allowed to replace the GFCI outlets in my bathroom with non-GFCI outlets.
Having the right to modify and repair does not mean a carte blanche to ignore and circumvent building and electrical regulations. You do have the right to remove, replace or add additional outlets providing that the regulations are complied with, and you can purchase outlets from any vendor which sells products compliant with the regulations.
Availability of first-party and third-party parts would greatly open up the market for electronic goods of all kinds. So long as they comply with the necessary regulations and perform equivalently to the original parts, it would be a vast improvement upon the current state of affairs.
Being able to repair things is very different, it is _in_ the common interest and likely against the interests of the manufacturers.
As for bad parts and bad repair jobs, sure. I would think that owners are incentivized to buy parts that are safe and to install them correctly. Of course some battery batches will be bad, but that's true for authentic parts too. Remember the Samsung Note battery issues?
Also if we want to prevent fires because of batteries then we should make Apple products illegal because it happened that Apple products had issues too https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall
The issue there is driving at night on public roads. You can, with your own car, remove your headlights. The car manufacturer can't show up and sue you for that.
> I'm not allowed to pour oil on the ground even though it would only destroy my own grass
That's not the only thing it would destroy (ground water, local wildlife, etc). You are allowed to style your hedges in the shape of a middle finger, or pluck all your grass out blade by blade (save for any HOA restrictions you agreed to).
I believe there are technical differences in how ownership of the land works in different jurisdictions throughout the world. The land or the earth below your grass might not be as yours as an article of clothing you're wearing.
If you own your car, and the headlight burns out, why shouldn't you be allowed to repair it back to the original factory state? Why should you be forced to pay someone else to do this?
If someone tries to argue that you're going to do it wrong, it seems like the onus should be on them to prove that your repair was bad and dangerous.
all of these are completely different actions, have different standing in front of the law, have different repercussions etc etc
the way i see these kinds of initiatives: i think they're healthy, i think we need them, but i also notice how they're from a bygone era where cars where fixed in the driveway. that age has passed, and sure, we need a new paradigm. but i still wouldn't trust a random person vs a dedicated service center to fix my phone. can we make those phones so simple that anyone can repair them? would this entail any performance drawbacks?
curios to see where this whole thing leads.
Do you feel that age has passed because manufacturers now block people having the info needed for repair, or are you meaning the complexity of cars has increased?
Perhaps the age of fixing cars in the driveway may return, if manufacturers aren't able to block the info needed.
At present, more technically advanced people seem to piece together their own CANbus diagnostic tools. But off the shelf products that work for "every model" should be practical if this legislation works.
Though, making your own engine block is pretty far from a "home garage thing" anyway.
People used to just buy those parts from a local supplier or wrecker, then fit them in their garage at home. That doesn't seem like it should have changed.
People into automotive (and boat, uav) CAN stuff have figured out ways to reverse engineer much of it though.
Not necessarily. Consider products that require radios like satellite internet transceivers. If you were allowed to "modify it however you want" you could easily modify it to put up a continuous wave and effectively DoS the satellite gateway, causing an outage for all other customers on the entire beam which is obviously something the ISP wants to avoid at all costs.
Hence, many companies only allow you to lease the transceiver, not own. And even if you did literally own it, they obviously don't want you modifying it for fear of harming the service of other customers.
It's one thing if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster to burn cool patterns into your toast. It's quite another if you buy a toaster and modify your toaster such that nobody else's toaster in the neighborhood works anymore.
What I'm trying to point out is that your comment seems to suggest restricting users from making any (all) modifications, even if they wouldn't affect anyone but themselves, because they might make a modification would affect others. I think one should be allowed to make any modifications as long as they're made responsible for how those modifications affect others. And even if a modification potentially (not through every use) negatively affects others, they should only face consequences when the use actually affected others or went against regulations of the shared resource (the air).
It's like arguing that people shouldn't be able to modify their home batteries because they could use them to purposely damage the power grid. That's kind of a ridiculous scenario to worry about when the same infrastructure is already vulnerable to utterly pedestrian physical sabotage. It's a facile rationalization for imposing restrictions that have an ulterior motive.
If we decide you have an inalienable right to repair the phone I made for you, does that mean I have to facilitate it? Does it mean I can't put technical barriers in place to make it harder for you? Do I have to offer you any sort of support & warrantee if you have modified it?
Can I refuse to offer you a sale on the object, and just offer a lease? Etc. etc.
Our B2B customers are in many cases Network operators.
Occasionally they request tens of thousands of unlock/repair requests for phones from competing networks for which they have won an enterprise tender.
Love/Hate relationship.
Examples are components which, while identical to the component requiring replacement, will refuse to work until coded to match the intended device with some proprietary cable (which is really a normal cable with a couple of wires reversed or some other dick move).
If someone such as Apple wants to use Lightning because they find existing specs to be deficient, they should get the spec standardized before theyre allowed to implement a device using it. Specifications should ideally be unencombered by patents or for a fair and reasonable license.
Additionally implementers of a spec should be required to have their implementations verified that they adhere to the spec by an independent lab, such as UL (Underwriters Lab), and be fined into nonexistence if they forge the lab's marks.
This should also cut down on the snake oil cables, such as $90 gold plated HDMI cables.
Here's the official website of the initiative: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/index_en.h...
Crossing the street in the morning is an exercise of how long can you hold your breath.
I think the average age of a registered vehicle here is around 10 years; it's not uncommon at all to see >20yo cars in local traffic and parking lots.
Taxes are higher depending on emissions, but it's rarely enough to offset the purchase price. For example, if you buy a stinky 90s car that emits 200gCO2/100km, tax would be around 300 eur/year today. A new car that emits 120g/100km is going to be somewhere around 150 eur.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhous... [see fig 4 about targets for 2020 and actual changes in emissions for 2017 and 2018]
Personally I prefer used imported cars, as well haha. It's just, if it passes technical inspection and emission tests, why not? An 8 year old VW or Toyota with all the options that's been well kept for 7000 Euros seems better to me than a 16,000 Euro new base model.
For getting around a city, public transport is good enough, though.
Another problem is just the number of cars - many cities have more cars than they can handle. Hopefully more cities will ban diesel cars or all cars in some parts...
Things are changing, slowly.
About glass, some people say that sicne glass is heavy you will use more fuel to move it around(I have no idea if this is true).
Besides that, most Apple phones since 2016 or so are water resistant.
Does depend on chips being available and some knowledge on how to diagnose the damages (e.g.: board schematics).
Here's an example of new age Macbook pro's dying from little water ingress (design oversight). And a combination of knowledge and a simple chip can fix your nearly write off Macbook. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU
For most manufactures the incentives now is to minimize repairability. Increasing the repair cost.
Having some regulation in place to limit repairability prevention may tip the scale a bit towards repairing.
Apple loves to say that their products are so expensive and complicated that manual repairs just aren't worth doing. But observably, in the real world, even with all of the crap Apple puts in front of repair shops to slow them down, that isn't true. Third-party repairpeople still manage to regularly beat Apple's prices.
Apple also threatens you with lawyers if you host or share schematics for repairing products. The new repair partner program from Apple is also a joke and created to appear they are trying to fix the problem.
Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly if everyone is allowed to sell stuff in its name.
And nobody curses Ford's name when they go to a crappy shop and spend $2 on a new headlight that fails in a week. That's the shop's fault.
Nobody is saying anyone can call their junk an "official apple product". Why would this not be the same as the car scenario? If you don't want to risk issues, don't go to sketchy repair shops.
So what? Apple's interests don't matter, unlike its customers'.
It's always better to avoid throwing something away by repairing it that trying to recycle it.
Europe probably has the strictest car emissions laws (so strict manufacturers have to cheat to comply with it), and many of its country banned single use plastic bags, straws, &c.
The only thing you might get away with is bribing a cop for a speeding ticket in some rural part of an eastern EU country. Anything else will eventually be discovered and you'll be fined accordingly.
I could understand your personal point of view if you live east of Poland though.
However, as I said, with a small bribe you can take out any particle filter here. It's common knowledge.
Besides that, did those VW cars got banned from the streets? No! Does VW pay for my health issues? No! Those money are normal taxes to conduct business in Europe.
It's known for being a bit less strict and a bit more corrupt than the west. At least from what I gathered from my bulgarian, polish and greek friends and from my own experience over there.
Idk where you live but in France we have mandatory vehicle inspections every 2 years and you definitely can't bribe these guys. You'll get fined if you get caught, like everything else. How else would it work, we can't have daily inspections on every single thing that could potentially be made illegal.
I agree with your last point though, but that's the german auto mafia, these guys get away with a lot.
Like the most important industries in most countries of the world, sadly.
And it's completely renewable
Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco&t=579s
You could still argue they are not doing enough, but at least some credit is due.
Let me tell you some stories about illegal stuff.
A few days ago you could smell chemicals in the air every morning. In the middle of the city. There was a big scandal and they said UK exported their shit here. European style. Nothing really came off of it.
Money talks.
No Silicon Valley would have meant no internet, no computers and no wearable magic toys. If Apple is forced to adjust the iPhone they should just flip the middle finger and refuse to sell in Europe and these shenanigans will end.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-linear/#Int
(I read many thousands of papers on programming-language design in the 10 years before 1987 and don't recall anyone investigating "use-once" variables or related ideas whereas soon after 1987 many designers were investigating that part of the "design space" and citing the French logic professor.)
Also it was Scandinavian professors who invented object-oriented programming (via the language Simula in the late 1960s). So Europe remains more innovative than most of the world (and remains wealthier than most of the world as a result).
But really people bought Apple products and want the company to act differently. Don't buy from bad companies and it doesn't affect you.
Don't eat at bad restaurant and you won't get poisoned! You do not need warranty for your phone, don't buy from bad companies. We do not need safety checks for foods and medicine just don't buy from bad companies.
The issue is that companies put billions into PR, so even if Apple is a bad company it has a good image and it's products are a status symbol, the consumers can't compete with those billions.
I think you did not understand the point and responded from reflex. Let me simplify it down;
Consumers try to explain that throwing away good devices because the battery is old is bad for the world is not effective enough because it is fighting billions spent in PR that shows you that you need the new device because is slimmer,smarter,cooler and the big companies is doing the best to recycle this products(we send them in China where the smartest of our employees(that are definitely not children) are recycling every atom. So continue buying new things, you don't want your friends thinking you are poor and have the old models don't you?
Is it clear now? You are not forced to buy anything, unless you are forced by a job or social group to use certain apps but you would probably argue that you are not forced and you can quit your job and find other friends.
Is this really a problem?
As an educated 10%er, seeing Apple products is an immediate red flag that the person falls for marketing.
I also know cases where a child from a modest family spent the money he earned on Fortnite cash. There is a group pressure to own certain things otherwise you are excluded.
Anyway my main point is about some regular citizens fighting a giant PR(propaganda) campaign is not easy. I follow some of Louis Rossman videos where he shows how politicians debate the right to repair and it is so clear how Apple and big companies PR succeeded in having those politicians putting more importance on copyright over repair schematics(because trade secrete). preventing repairing consoles(because pirates) and preventing replacing bateries(because fires and explosions). How much money and effort is needed to make a contra PR move to show people that batteries don't just explode if the repair person does not a paper that he is Apple genius or that making repair components accessible and repiar schematics accessible will not make video games more easy to pirate. Then there is also the idea that if you have access to rep[air your tractor then you can do dangerous stuff , thing that is ridiculous considering you can repair your car and then use it on a public road (not like tractors that are mostly used on private property)
Easily repairable equipment could fail more often or have a shorter life on average because of the necessary design compromises.
Data could show if this is the case.
Companies don't follow all those regulation for the fun of it, they do it because there is a lot more money to gain by doing it than by leaving that market.
Also if other jurisdiction don't follow on that (or on GDPR too, while we're at it) I don't know how they explain it to their citizens. We european are not magical people, we just tend to remember a bit more that our govs and laws are there by our authority, and to serve our needs.
Toxic kids toys are not sold in Europe, is it bad?
Europe has the right to set their own quality standards, companies have the right to not respect them and say goodbye to European market
What's wrong with that?
It could also start a new wave of European brands which are seriously lacking right now
Also, Apple in particular cannot really afford to leave the EU. About 23% of their profits were generated in the EU in 2019. Other big names are in essentially the same boat.
It's a bit of a nuisance. But overall, I feel this GDPR is doing more good than harm.
And at that point, why shouldn't you be able to swap in a new screen if it breaks? Maybe you're not clever enough to do it yourself, but I'm sure some local small business owner can hire and train people to be experts in screen and battery replacement. Then a repair for your device is 5 minutes away instead of an hour+ and demand is spread across providers (who can compete on price and quality).
There are many hardened phones that are repairable.
Edit: also a main issue with repairability is DRM and evil companies trying to use the copyright law so you won't publish repair manuals and schematics. Your ceramic phone won't suffer if someone shares a manual about it's internals .
Any phone (including iPhone) can be taken to nearly any service shop and it will probably be repaired within a day for an affordable price (if they have all parts, which they can order no problem; tools are not a problem a tall).
They also don't want the latest and greatest because that costs them way too much, most phones are mid market here, and the capabilities of these phones don't change much (same hardware for a number of years is not an exception) - but the design does. And no, the display notch is a very distinct status symbol that made the upgrade very much needed, same with multiple cameras on the back.
The few people who are buying Apple can choose between Apple stores, official Apple resellers and also a huge selection of unofficial (called "post-warranty") service shops. Not sure if it's OK with Apple, but it's definitely legal here, and it doesn't seem like these people have any problems with getting parts, getting tools or repairing the phones, but I agree that there should be an official way of doing so.
It's true that some phones became unusable with and because of software updates - that is wrong, but also an unrelated issue.
I guess that suffices to conclude that you have an extremely a-typical social circle.
People vote for representatives, those representatives enact legislation, and the free press reports on it, causing a feedback effect. Over time we have a picture of what society wants. It's really not that hard.
Obviously, there are many different interconnected societies in the world and not all of them have representative democracy or a free press. Maybe that was your objection?
I think it's clear why this tells us nothing about what the society here wants. It might be said that the EU was the voice of the nations before they removed the unilateral agreement requirement, but not today.
Nobody here (parties, the representatives) is even talking about the right to repair, how can you be so sure the society here wants it?
On the contrary, it very clearly tells us that your society is apathetic about the EU and does not care about decisions made in the European parliament.
In my own country, 2/3 voted in the latest EU parliament elections. The debates here were dominated by environmental policy, so I'm really not surprised that legislation like this is now being considered in the EU parliament.
Exactly, that is the only thing that is clear. And the reason is that we have much greater political problems to deal with so the EU is not that relevant to us, especially not issues like right to repair (which is not an issue to anyone I know and google gives me mostly no online discussions in our language). It still does not give anyone the right to shovel us "what the society wants". Our society didn't want the Lisboa agreement, but our politicians signed it anyways - so what exactly does our society want and what exactly should the EU be saying about it?
Even if 100% of people voted, still the 2.85% of voice don't seem like much space to express what our society wants, you know? And why there should only be space for one central opinion? That doesn't seem that diverse.
Then vote for a different set of politicians and leave the EU. The UK paved the way. I believe in you!
> Even if 100% of people voted, still the 2.85% of voice don't seem like much space to express what our society wants, you know? And why there should only be space for one central opinion? That doesn't seem that diverse.
Humans aren't borgs, but that doesn't mean we can't generalise about the general tendencies of society. Do you want me to admit that not everyone in a society has the same opinion? Seems a bit pointless, but sure, I'll admit that.
That's nice of you. I am not a leaver, I believe in European cooperation, maybe even federalization - but I don't believe in centralization.
We have to come to term with the fact that owning such devices isn't good for humanity in the long term.
> Who exactly will I hurt with my phone
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...
https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/27/europe-s-electronic-wast...
https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/czechs-become-eu-leaders-in-plast... ;-)
> I mostly don't care
Yeah, I figured out that part. The good thing is that there are less and less people like you in this world.
I certainly think that you should have the absolute right to attempt to repair your device, and you shouldn't be legally prevented from doing so.
On the other hand, I would like a secure, lightweight device, which lasts as long as possible on battery. All of those things will suffer if people who don't understand how modern phones achieve those things attempt to force them to be made up of piecewise-replaceable components.
On many modern devices, you don't have "a battery", you have battery cells fit into every available space and wired together. You're certainly welcome to try replacing those. I just don't want to see that reverted to a discrete battery design.
> Also I should have the right to use components from a broken iPhone into a different broken iPhone so I get a working iPhone
By all means! And "components" here may well mean "single integrated board", as it does on many laptops and phones.
Source for this. No device has unpackaged unprotected battery cells just floating around.
They may have many discrete batteries to use up all of the available space, but each unit is self contained with protection electronics and can be swapped independently of the others.
As I stated earlier in this thread, you should absolutely have the right to attempt such repairs. I just don't believe that there should be requirements to make devices use more modular components, at the potential expense of other desirable properties.
Each one will have a tiny PCB with protection circuitry on it. It’s the only way to prevent them from accidentally catching fire or exploding.
Batteries are far more complex than most people expect. Especially lithium batteries found in phones. The chemistry is super sensitive, and anything except careful monitoring of each battery pack risks catastrophic failure. Hence the tiny PCB on each battery pack.
WHY?! You'd end up with stuff 3-5mm thicker, but basically the same weight. Let's drop the "thinner" fetish once and for all, nobody cares about some mm of "wasted" space (that usually improves cooling anyway) inside a devices case and it being a bit chunkier, as long as it's almost just as lightwieght!
Fffs, let's go back to getting gold plated or diamond encrusted laptops and watches for showing off status! That's way better than the thinner/lighter nonsense...
Sure, getting smth. thinner bc technology actually improves (eg. displays) is cool, but shaving micrometers by packing everything close together is stupid.
(Oh, and we could start fixing our brains to think the same about cases for... people! Eg. housing. Like in kill the micro-apparments disease, there's enough room on the planet for all to leave confortable... in bigger rooms, and with chunkier laptops if that makes them more recyclable. "Space" IS mostly "free" ya know - very little of Earth's surface is actually usable for stuff like agriculture, energy production, mining etc.)
Then there is no phone that literally has a single board, there are other components such as the camera, earpiece, screen, etc. that are still replaceable.
I am not familiar with the latest models, do they changed that dramatically and I am out of date? Can't a competent mechanic replace any part on your new car?
This is done to ensure that "strippers" will not steal a car for the parts since the most valuable parts can't be sold.
Also anything which is structural is likely not going to be the part which maintenance needs to be done on
Unfortunately there hasn't been any significant follow through yet.
Yep. All those dark pattern cookie banners are illegal under GDPR.
Manufacturers just shouldn't be allowed to produce them.
Perhaps we don't need to go that far, but just removing the moats that prevent people from building compatible hardware would go far. That toners include DRM chips just to protect consumer unfriendly business models still bothers me. It's just e-waste for no good.
And I wouldn't include any used goods sold between actual people (not the corporation people) and grandfather in any products that were first put on the market before a certain date (and make that date a few years in the future as a grace period). And maybe even progressively introduce different restrictions.
But yes, by and large it has the same effect and yes, I think that this effect is to be desired.
Now the question that needs careful consideration is what constitutes "unrepairable" legally? It has to be sensible and legally ironclad.
If devices are locked down and become 'bricks' once their original owner is finished with them -- then they're unable to provide any more value.
Alternatively if they can be erased, upgraded and continue to function -- and ideally share components with other devices -- then the device and production cost continue to generate value.
We have a problem with quantifying and justifying that 'second-order value' since we often think only of the initial consumer's payment (be it one-time or recurring).
Meanwhile, aggressive marketing particularly to impressionable younger customers has kids and those who influence them raving about a notch or a third camera or whatever it is this week, even though the benefits of these relatively small changes are often negligible. This seems to be more of a cultural problem, possibly with a side order of exploiting vulnerable targets in dubiously ethical ways, than a technical problem.
That's exactly what I've said on my previous comment:
>The culture fabricated by those very corporations
And about right to repair I have bad experience: broken cable is enough for lots of buyers to throw away electronic appliances. Let’s be honest: majority of users will cause more harm than do good when repairing something. Another thing is planned obsolescence when electronics die right after warranty period ends. Buddy had this with high end washing machine and I had this with display recently.
Allowing people sharing a repair manual, a diagnose software won't harm any consumer.
Same with my laptop
Build with simple easy to replace common components. No black boxes. Obviously some products fit this more nicely than others. Simple devices like washing machines vs smartphones.
Washing machines and other products that have been smartened should have mechanical mode fall-backs so that cheap electronic controllers susceptible to failure which may cease production, don’t doom the usefulness of a product.
Right now if your TV has a broken part, it might be impossible to fix, even with a pro. Maybe a really good one might change some electronics, but not an OEM part swap.
Just don't do that and you're fine. Publish your schematics too, they are not a company secret, they are for your customers.
What kind of argument is that? Right to repair isn't about you and me fiddling about with with broken appliances.
It's about qualified and licensed people in repair shops being able to acquire parts and schematics to do their job. No one is arguing that your average Jane or Joe should be ones doing the repair! That's just another strawman that is easily dismantled...
In the US, anyone can repair a vehicle and not void the warranty. No license needed.
Once you take into account all these factors it quickly becomes apparent that not "anybody" will repair cars, appliances, and electronics by themselves; regardless of legislation.
The people who do care (farmers in the US, electronics repair shops, that dude on YT who repairs Teslas, ...) incidentally are the ones with the skills, the tools, and the incentive.
The licensed part comes into play as soon damage regulation due to improper use/repair occurs. This isn't a concern for private individuals (in the car example: there's a mandatory in-depth technical inspection every other year in Europe, so an improper repair results in a failed inspection anyway), though your insurance may become null and void depending on the circumstances.
Product obsolescence does seem to be a concern that the EU wishes to address:
"The Commission will propose legislation on Sustainable Product Policy, to ensure that products placed on the EU market are designed to last longer, are easier to reuse, repair and recycle, and incorporate as much as possible recycled material instead of primary raw material. Single-use will be restricted, premature obsolescence tackled and the destruction of unsold durable goods banned."[0]
I also think that legislating to ensure that issues such as energy efficiency, durability, repairability and recycling must be considered during the design phase are great progress too, as outlined in the Circular Economy Action Plan[1].
It's important to raise those concerns and get involved to help shape the process and outcomes.
[0] - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
[1] - https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_ci...
Yep, let's make everything a black box that can only be repaired under the watchful eye of a corporation, and they retain the right to refuse the repair and charge whatever the fuck they want. That's surely gonna work out well. That's surely gonna work out well.
Which display was that?
As for the software side this may be a tough one as many times a change in chipset can make features available in newer models that are not in older models and the real question is, how far back must they provided like software upgrades that new models have? iOS goes back quite a ways, is that not enough now? That my prior iMac no longer had support from Nvidia (2013 model) is whose fault? Apple's or Nvidias?
What people need to understand is that replacement parts may involve complete assemblies because there is no feasible means to replace some of the pieces in common tablets and phones. So take a dryer, you might need to replace an entire motor but depending on how the regulation is written that may not be sufficient.
tl;dr it all sounds well and good until those who have no understanding of repair start writing regulations that could lead to less reliable items, more electronics and batteries in the trash, and even most costly items.
Watch this testimony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLIW7mQ8CI4
It's insane how much power we let companies like apple have over products we purchase from them.
If an item really does have the potential to become harmful in some way if it is not properly used and maintained, the burden should be on the vendor and/or manufacturer to demonstrate that in order to justify any restrictions on its use or maintenance. Such demonstrations and restrictions should be subject to regulatory oversight by consumer protection agencies or similar bodies. If they are found to be unjustified by a competent authority then the burden should be on the vendor and/or manufacturer to either make things right or compensate those who bought the product (including reasonable consequential losses, not just the purchase price).