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Japan to Discourage Sale of Old Electronics
devphaeton writes to tell us Engadget is reporting that after April 1st (no this is not an April fools joke) the sale of old electronics in Japan could become much harder. From the article: "It seems that Japan's government revised its "Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law" back in April 2001, and added a stipulation that items authorized under the country's old law (the "Electrical Appliance and Material Control Law") couldn't be sold anymore, but granted those products a five-year grace period. Well, if you check your convenient wall calendar, you'll see that the five-year period is about to end, which means that as of April 1, pretty much any electronic gear sold before April 1, 2001 can't be legally resold in Japan." The article also mentions that sellers can continue to sell old gear providing they get certification that the items conform to modern safety standards.
Sounds like a great way to accomplish exactly what bunches of content owners (note I didn't say "producers") have been screaming at Congress about. Seriously, what better way to guarantee obsolescence and quick turnover for technology if you have to rebuy everything every five years because the old tech is straight up illegal? Maybe I read this wrong, but it seems like a huge windfall for consumer electronics manufacturers if/when this goes into effect...
I was gonna make an April Fools jab, but then I realized owning a room full of 30 year old tin boxes is no laughing matter.
I know I learned a lot about electronics from taking apart old electronics. I'm sure there are many people out there that did the same. Will this come to an end in Japan?
This has been an ongoing thing in Japan. It drives the Japanese imported car idustry in places like New Zealand. Forcing local consumption also helps Japan develop new products in its quest to export. For an interesting read http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Economics/Japan/J apanYes. I don't endorse or condemn what's written here, not that my endorsement or condemnation are worth jack.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is only retail sales, not individuals. And it isn't a ban, it merely requires the retailer to take responsibility that the device is safe according to the new standard. And it involves only the safety of high-voltage (mains-powered) equipment, not electronics.
c tronics-sales-will-not-soon-be-illegal-in-japan/
Here's a link discussing it: http://www.mutantfrog.com/2006/02/22/2nd-hand-ele
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
So if people can't resell the stuff, I'm willing to bet alot of it will end up in the garbage. And I'm sure most of what ends up in the garbage won't be disposed of properly.
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
This is ridiculous. Why stop the resale of old electronics? Electronics IMPROVE over time - why stop the resale of old ones?
As technology is phased out, it is hard to get unless resold - i.e. the Famicom. So you can't buy an old electronic?
Buying older games for my N64 doesn't provide any competition to my buying of games for my Xbox 360. The N64 is different, and I can get classics for it. I can get better (looking) games for my 360.
My point? Old electronics don't compete with new ones. To stop resale could kill older collectibles, like older video game systems or old formats (VHS, or in a few years, DVD). Heck, it could even kill formats...
This is rather disheartening news. One of the most wonderful things about Japan is its thriving second hand market, and I for one spent an awful lot of money in shops like Sofmap, mostly on Mac stuff.
:s
It all seemed to work so well. The Japanese have, to put it mildly, something of a penchant for things shiny and new, so what they toss out would be regarded by Westerners as nearly new. So rather than putting all this nearly new stuff to waste, they sell it to shops like Sofmap, who sell it on to people like me, who are quite happy with a nearly new bargain. Contrast that with, say, Britain, where, the mobile phone market excepted, we make the most of our computers and such - the term the Japanese use is tsukaikomu.
It's not as though this is going to net the computer companies much more profit - people buy new things anyway, as stated above.
Shame. I had hoped to net myself a Flower Power iMac next time I was out there...
iqu
Dumped Japanese consumer electronics. Buy Now!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Like Japan, this may effect the resale of used goods, although there will be a patchwork of mildly inconsistent laws throughout the EU. As I see it, these initiatives will have enormous impact on the used technology market AND on small manufacturers, as another level of paperwork and expense is added to the process. The result could be fewer garage startups like Apple and H-P.
--Pat
People in Japan over the last 30 years have been draining Vintage tubed audio equipment and horn loudspeakers from the US like no other country. If you were to go over to Japan with an old Western Electric 300b Based tube amp, you could get thousands of dollars for it. An example of a Mcintosh MC 30 6l6 based amp going price in the US is around 600-1000 dollars per mono bock. If I were to take the amps over there, I could get 5-10k for a set. The same with Altec, JBL, Klipsch, Western electric speakers. This will hurt a huge tubed audio and vintage audio industry in Japan. Most of their high end audio gear is still tubed based, and they often love to use vintage caps, resistors, transformers, for they think they have better sound. This will put lots of people out of business.
Welcome to the Entropy Bar, may I take your order?
I can just see this now:
"Hey, wanna buy a pager? Come on, Alphanumeric! How about a blender?
I've got a deal just for you on vcr's buddy.. Step into my alley"
What's the deal here? This hardly seems like news.
So, electronics that were authorized under the old guidelines cannot be sold... unless the conform to the new. Anything that is safe can still be sold!
Grammar Nazi
Of human lead disposal, the vast majority, over 90%, is car battries. Solder is only a fraction of the remaining fraction. Eliminating lead solder, while keeping lead car battries, is like saving power by turning off a table lamp, while leaving your windows open and AC on.
But it gets worse. The non-lead solders are predominantly tin. This has two major disadvantages over lead based solders:
1) Higher melting point. Means more components get fried and more joints don't form properly in creation, leading to more stuff for the junk heap.
2) Tin whiskers. For some reason, tin solders have little tiny tin cyrstals grow on them. Should that growth touch another lead, you get a short and thus a blown component. They happen even if you put a coating on the board. Given how close joints are these days on ICs, this is a bigger problem than it was in the past. NASA has info on it http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/
Really, this is not only a solution to a non-issue, it just makes things worse over all.
There must be a serious plague of exploding N64s and MP3 players in Japan.
Well, in all seriousness though, this is a problem.
Lots of early consumer electronics devices won't even remotely approach modern safety standards. Consider early radios and TV sets which often used a "hot chassis" (where the steel chassis was directly connected to one side of the power line as part of a system avoiding the use of an expensive power transformer), like those using the traditional "All American Five" tube lineup (50B5 or 50C5, 35W4, 12AV6, 12BE6, 12BA6), or the flip-leaf toasters of the 1920s. These items constitute only a very small risk because they will mostly be in very casual use by informed collectors and restorers, and short of mounting them in fireproof plexiglass boxes with isolation transformers, they will never even approach modern safety standards. (Note that a hot chassis wasn't as big a risk before they became surrounded by modern grounded electrical equipment - in their designed surroundings, you were unlikely to touch a grounded object at the same time as the radio. Also note that *many* post-war Japanese radios used the All-American Five design!)
Such a rule would effectively eliminate the collectable marketplace and probably result in the loss of many of the early products of companies which later became leaders in their fields. The first Sony transistor radio is historically significant, as is the first JVC VHS VCR, as is...
Japan is also noted among automotive enthusiasts for similarly draconian rules surrounding old cars - I cannot corroborate this, but I have heard that the *entire* braking system must be replaced in all cars over a certain number of years of age.
The grisly irony, of course, is that this is from a culture which reveres aged people... but they're apparently happy to destroy the remaining artifacts those people built.
(By the way, good rule of thumb: *never* leave any piece of electronic equipment made before about 1980 running unattended, inspect them for possible dangers like rotten insulation, and *always* assume that any exposed metal pieces are connected to one side of the power line.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I read that on a certain day every year in Japan, it is customary (at least in the wealthier areas) to put all of your used (from the last year or so) electronics out on the curb (or in the alley, whichever you have) as an emblem of your prosperity, and as a demonstration of your intent to replace your old Japanese goods with new.
Sigh. A kernel of truth blown up into unrecognizeability.
One week in April there are several one-day holidays that happen to fall in that one week, and the sole remaining workday is often made a holiday as well (or people just take one vacation day). It's called "golden week", and is a major holiday. Other longer holidays, like the new year, and Obon, are traditional and family oriented, but during golden week you're free to do whatever you please.
So it's not so surprising that this is perhaps the foremost travel holiday, but with so many people with free time, many stores also schedule major sales campaigns for that week. So lots of people buy new stuff during that week, and throw away the old. Garbage collecting is done at the curb here, and with all the old stuff being thrown out, and as the garbage collectors are on holiday too, it really piles up.
So yes, there tends to be lots of older electronics sitting by the curb at around the end of Golden Week - along with furniture, refrigerators, household stuff and plain old garbage. But most of it really is old and broken (people do buy new stuff for a reason), and no, nobody cares what people throw out. After all, apartment buildings and single homes both have a common pickup spot nearby so it's not like you can easily figure out whose stuff it is anyhow.
And while you can make the occasional find if you persevere, it's really no different from any dumpster-diving - often fruitless, and in many cases probably not entirely legal (the stuff does belong to either the thrower away or the garbage company, after all).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
They sound especially sweet when running off of non-copper electrical outlets that lack Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters.
Aluminum wiring wrapped with asbestos insulation is the best.
Here comes a hammer.
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