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EU Prepares 'Right To Repair' Legislation To Fight Short Product Lifespans (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The EU is preparing legislation that would legalize a customer's "right to repair," and would force vendors to design products for longer life and easier maintenance, in an effort to combat electronic waste and abusive practices like manufacturers legally preventing users from repairing their devices. The legislation is in its earlier stages of public discussion, but it already has the backing of several EU Members of Parliament, along with support from organizations like Greenpeace.
Currently, in the US only eleven states have similar laws, and they have been adopted after years of public discussions, and only for certain markets, and not for all types of products. It is unclear what leverage the EU will use to force manufacturers to produce longer lasting products, as this would mean lesser profits for big businesses, who often used tactics such as software DRMs, warranty contract lock-ins, and soldering components together, just to avoid users repairing products on their own.
Currently, in the US only eleven states have similar laws, and they have been adopted after years of public discussions, and only for certain markets, and not for all types of products. It is unclear what leverage the EU will use to force manufacturers to produce longer lasting products, as this would mean lesser profits for big businesses, who often used tactics such as software DRMs, warranty contract lock-ins, and soldering components together, just to avoid users repairing products on their own.
However, it may not be before the day of reckoning.
Meanwhile, various pillocks seem to thing that if one extreme is bad, the opposite is better. A plague on both your houses. Extremes are what is bad, and you American "Libertarians" fuckwits are no better than any other kind of extremist.
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Even America doesn't believe in free market capitalism, judging by its actions. If you truly believed in free market capitalism you wouldn't have telecoms monopolies, utilities monopolies, banks "too big to fail" and so on.
Perhaps the easiest first step would simply be to require public availability of repair manuals and guaranteed public availability of parts for X amount of time (maybe sector dependent) in order to achieve a CE marking.
While I applaud such measures [as a techno-nerd one of the most infuriating aspects of the economy for me is the enforced obsolescence] I cannot help but wonder - since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism, which inevitably result in forced obsolescence and a race to the bottom ["best product for the most affordable price' is the same as "worst product for the highest possible price"] why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
Hear! Hear! This sort of crap has been going on for far too long - there seems to be, maybe not an actual conspiracy, but something that looks a lot like a universal acceptance that this is the way to make business, from the invention of the razor with disposable blades onwards. However, there is also a strong and possibly growing trend the opposite way, of people tinkering and quite often re-discovering the "old ways": learning how to hone and use a straight razor, or learning woodworking without electric tools etc; and in the process discovering how little actual value is added by the supposedly indispensable, modern tools. Linux, FOSS and RaspberryPi are other examples of the same: maybe people are sick of being powerless and dependent on buying shitty products when it is so obvious that they are being defrauded, in effect.
As someone who works in implementing lean practices, this is a terrible approach. There is a cost to making something user repairable. Extra connectors, new interfaces, room for accessing subassemblies (which increases overall size), added thickness to support thread engagement of screws. If there isn't a mandatory recycling program (i.e. manufacturer has to buy back failed or obsolete or unwanted product), then we're just going to create more waste.
Even with a strong recycling program, this is not a win unless a large number of customers *actually* repair their devices instead of buying the new shiny version. How do we know that this isn't creating a cost for all customers and wasted energy (more material) to appease a vocal minority of customers many of whom won't actually repair their devices?
The EU needs to figure out a way to improve this iteratively by making smaller, incremental changes and seeing if customers respond. For example, find the most common reasons phones get tossed out and address those - battery, screen, and phone body are obvious candidates for replacement. This gets say 80% of the issues addressed for minimal cost. Then move on to bigger problems.
Neither is correct. Euroean countries are fairly social-democratic, not socialist (workers own the means of production). And as for China, communist government is an oxymoron. Even the USSR realised that and called themselves socialist (resulting in the citizens of many former socialist countries receiving a share of the state owned enterprises after the breakup/independence), with communism being a long-term goal.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
If we truly practiced free market capitalism, we wouldn't had a national telecom system at all.
Governments wouldn't have forced people to allow telephone poles on their property. To build a local exchange would require negotiating a contract with every single landowner where you needed to place a pole and you'd probably be paying monthly or yearly rent for it if you couldn't sucker the owners into selling rights to you.
After all those expenses, you'd still only be a local exchange. To connect to others, you'd have to make sure that your equipment is compatible with the other exchanges around you and come up with some sort of agreement on the costs of running lines between the exchanges (and paying off the landowners). On the wild chance that you get past all those hurdles, you'd then have to deal with peering charges for all those connections. Imagine a call from New York to San Francisco... hundreds, if not thousands, of peering charges tacked on by every local exchange in between (free market doesn't mean you get to use other people's equipment for free after all).
Assuming you pulled all that off, you'd now be the proud owner of a local monopoly. Imagine a competitor trying to enter the market... are you going to let them use your poles or wires? Of course not. They'd have to negotiate for a whole new set of poles and lines and pay the full cost without the hope of a monopoly on customers. And they'll have to negotiate a peering agreement with you so that their customers can call your customers. Unless you're feeling generous and love the idea of giving up your monopoly and sharing your profits with someone else, you've got no incentive to agree to peering. You're the entrenched monopoly, after all, and screwing over competition improves your bottom line.
So yeah... the nation wide phone system wouldn't exist. Telephones would be little more than a novelty available only in densely populated areas.
Oh... cell phones, ham radios or other wireless devices? Bwahahahaha.... the government allocats spectrum for them and prosecutes anyone who fucks with it. In the truly free market, you're on your own and any competitor who wants to take down your cell phone business can pay a few teenagers to drive around town in trucks with high powered jamming devices (you can buy one for about $100, though they're very illegal in the US) and boom... unhappy customers abandoning you for your non-jammed competition. All completely legal thanks to the truly free market.
Free markets always devolve into monopolies. Properly regulated markets are not free, but they also don't allow monopolies and too-big-to-fail companies.