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Comment by yau8edq12i | Hacker News Reader

I've never heard of this "EU law". Which one are you talking about? I live in the EU and my bank pretty much only contacts me through email.

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If you've never heard of it why not Google "eu durable medium"? Looks like the claim is true and I didn't need to ask for a source to figure it out.

https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/durable-medium

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=788714a1-d7b6...

For some things, you must use paper (or as it turns out, USB).

Why the bank decided to use USB for this purpose, instead of paper, is very strange.

Here in Poland, I've already had several banks and at least one insurer send me CD-ROMs. Never heard of anyone sending USB sticks before, but I'm not surprised. The problem is, approximately no one owns a CD/DVD reader anymore, and there are no modern read-only physical media. With SD cards also going the way of the floppy, USB stick is just about the only medium you can hope most customers have means to read.

SD cards are really neat. Theoretically they could have been made with a fixed notch so they would always present as read-only.

Since SD cards and USB sticks are both just computers you plug in to a network port on your computer, they could definitely make write-once SD card controllers.

AFAIK notch is just declaration of intent, like with floppies and magnetic tapes - it's politely asking the reading device to not write to the medium, and it's up to the device to respect it (or up to user to not bridge the notch with a piece of tape).

Still, actual write-once (or read/write until hardware fuse is triggered, read-only afterwards) SD cards should be possible to make.

It depends on the card. Sometimes it is just a suggestion to the firmware, sometimes it physically prevents writes.

I've definitely encountered read-only SD cards which I couldn't figure out a way to set it back to RW mode.

Danish institutions (including banks) seems fine with PDFs.

I think that's shown by the post statistics: around 25 letters received per resident, per year.

I can't remember the last letter I received which only contained papers.

> For some things, you must use paper

Do you have a source backing that up?

Aside from the local tax collector, which insists on snailmailing me a copy of all correspondence even though they also sent everything to me digitally, I can't even remember the last time I received any documents on paper, and I'm in the EU.

5 words: Google search eu durable medium.

https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/durable-medium

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=788714a1-d7b6...

Why did you need a source for this?

From your link

"A PDF can therefore meet the definition of a durable medium."

Neither of those sources back up your claim that paper (or a USB drive, for that matter) is required in certain cases. The court case cited in your second link even lays out the conditions under which a website can be considered to satisfy the requirements.

I'm asking for a source. You're just reformulating the statement I asking a source for.

Likewise. I have multiple accounts across different EU/Eurozone states and with the exception of the original contracts that I've had to sign to open said accounts, I've never had to deal with anything other than e-mail or in-app communication.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

I do not read this court decision like that at all: the point of contention there seems to be that the customer was just sent a link to a webpage (where the contractual terms can be changed from under him at will by the company, thus this not being durable). The court makes it pretty clear in my (non-lawyer) opinion that attaching a PDF to the email would have been fine.

I was prepared to disagree with you, but I now have the same interpretation you have. Durable medium can be email - but the example seems a little fuzzy, for instance a durable medium is definitely when the email is stored on a HDD on a customer device. But is it still durable medium if the email only exists in a webmail? Probably yes, but maybe no. So the conservative approach would be to send paper for some things. (Or in this case, stupidly, USB devices. Banks, don't do that, please.)

Ramble Edit: it's unfortunate IMHO that there is no "read only" medium anymore. Not sure what it would look like now when USB-C is taking over the world, and that ship probably sailed, but it would be really cool and useful to have the option of a "data only" USB.

Maybe computers could have one USB port marked as "ROM". Or a switch or LED symbol indicating "ROM safe" mode.

When using such a ROM port, anything USB inserted there would only look like a DVD reader. A USB drive would get its files "mirrored" into a virtual ISO filesystem. Any other devices, such as keyboards etc would be just ignored and not connected to at all.

That doesn't fix the issue though. The issue is a killer USB or a virus on the disk. Being able to only read an infected file still allows it to be read.

Also, this is only a software solution as the USB protocol would require bidirectional transmission.

It doesn't fix the issue vs paper.

But it would bring us back to being as safe as a CD or diskette was.

I was thinking a special chip, talking bidirectionally both ways, pretending to be a PC host to the USB drive, and pretending to a DVD-ROM to the actual PC.

Most USB flash controllers support being read-only by either just being read-only or emulating optical drive. Obviously for the WORM usecase this is only an software solution inside the controller configuration as the underlying medium is still writable/erasable flash. In theory one could replace the flash with some kind of mask ROM with NAND-like interface and make it truly read only, but the cost makes that impractical for most applications.

Then there are LTO tapes that have WORM version, which is notionally not overwritable, but that is IIRC also only enforced by software (of the drive).

> There's an EU law demanding such documents to be delivered on a "durable medium". Some banks and financial institutions may have a strange approach to those, even though email attachments seem to be enough for others.

Even the (*-grand)parent never said the law actually says it can't be an email attachment, they said companies seem to interpret it that way. Which would not be surprising in the least. Then someone said they've never heard of any such law, and I pointed out that it exists.

I'm not sure who you're arguing with but it isn't me or in fact any of the people in this thread.

Putting aside the fact that the conclusion of this text is not at all what GP said... You do realize that this is not a law, not even a court decision, but that it is a prosecutor's opinion / suggestion to the court??

Putting aside what? Go back and read what the GP actually said, and what the parent comment (yours) actually said as well. All I was pointing out is that there is in fact such a law (requiring a durable medium), because you said you had never heard of such a law.

Sheesh, reading comprehension, please. That or stop moving the goalposts

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

Haha, nice try!

It defers to a repealed 97/7/EC, replaced by 2011/83/EU:

> Durable media should enable the consumer to store the information for as long as it is necessary for him to protect his interests stemming from his relationship with the trader. Such media should include in particular paper, USB sticks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, memory cards or the hard disks of computers as well as e-mails.

USB sticks are on the list, but so is paper and e-mail. This USB stick could have been an e-mail.

Yes, if two people are going to answer with the exact same link and nothing else, I'm going to answer both with the exact same comment.

It is a court decision. Citing the actual law and context for it.

Uh... Are we reading the same document?

> Opinion of Advocate General Mengozzi delivered on 6 March 2012.

> [...]

> In the light of the foregoing considerations, I suggest that the Court answer the question referred to it by the Oberlandesgericht as follows:

It is not the court's decision.

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