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.

Comments

Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Evtim]

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.

What an absurd idea - make the worst and most destructive qualities of humans the most rewarded in the system [greed!], thus creating evolutionary pressure for all of us to become more and more sociopathic [i.e. successful] and then start pushing against the inevitable outcome.

Why don't we change the system so that it encourages and promotes human survival, procreation and happiness rather than greed and criminal wasting of resources. Ah, I know - the economists told me that the present system reflects exactly human nature [which is flawed, so we can't do jack shit about that - what a fucking LIE this is!] so this is the best of all possible worlds - where the ancestors of those economist set the system 200 years ago to benefit the "haves" and now we call that "natural system"; we claim that it is as immutable as the laws of Nature rather than a scam set up by humans to keep and increase their power.

'Summary: Humanity collectively opened the shitter above our heads and then stood in the shit rain wondering why it is shit and not honey.....unbelievable!

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Actually, I do RTFA]

since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism,

Really? European countries are fairly socialist. China is a communist government with a healthy leavening of capitalism. In the middle east, most countries are essentially giant oil companies (that collude in a monopoly) that play dividends to all their citizens.

I mean, yes, everyone agrees that some free market capitalism in the mix is important. But no one thinks that unadulterated laissez-faire free market capitalism (except about half of America, the half in charge).

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Gravis Zero]

I cannot help but wonder - since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism...

You have made a very incorrect assumption.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Anne Thwacks]

Eventually even the most hardcore socialists wake up, hopefully for the rest of us it's before they get to kill everyone else.

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.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[jandersen]

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.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nothing to do with Muslims, it's the fact the last few years have been a complete failure. We have learnt again that Tory policies are as corrupt and non-evidence-based as they have ever been. Despite the desperate attempts by the hard right in the UK to deceive the poor and uneducated that they will represent them people are starting to wake up and realise that's a complete fallacy. Scandinavia shows that a happy and prosperous society can be achieved through progressive policies and that the current regressive regime of conservatism only helps the already rich and big business.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[dunkelfalke]

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.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole

[TheRaven64]

In the real world, spectrum would be property and interference would be trespassing, as was being developed in the courts before the government laid claim on the entire spectrum.

Without a government-enforced license, how do you treat spectrum as property? I own all electromagnetic radiation that passes through my land (with no limit on altitude?) and can block anything that I want? How would you ever create a mobile network if that were the case?

What we really need is information.

[robbak]

The main impediment to repair of electronics is simply lack of information - that schematics and board overlays are simply unavailable. Without them, a repair person is flying blind. With them, they can determine the fault by measuring voltage rails around the board, and the repair is often replacing jelly bean parts that are worth pennies - or just bypassing broken board connections. The other thing we lack is source code. manufacturers abandon products as soon as they are sold, and withhold source code (as well as locking the device up with code signing) so users cannot fix their bugs. 'Right to repair' legislation should address these problems first.

Re:What we really need is information.

[v1]

I don't think it's nearly as cut-and-dry as you think it is. Things like schematics and source code are only useful to a very small percentage of consumers, let alone actual technicians. Most of the time only high dollar items will ever be worth repairing. What good is a schematic to repair a $20 device, when a an hour of a repair tech's time is $50? And really, source code? Try to find a shop you can take something to in order to have it reprogrammed. And then how much is several hours of a coder's time going to cost you?

A lot of this issue is more about the legal aspect, where companies abuse laws like DMCA and Copyright to help lawyers make repairs and 3rd party parts and services unlawful. It's the "razor blade game" where you are legally forced to buy their blades. It's easy for service parts to be that way simply because an electronic daughterboard or ECU is pretty easily seen as patentable, and the program that runs on it is copyrighted. Black-box development of say a replacement ECU is possible, but expensive, and then they try as above to abuse laws like DMCA to keep you buried armpit-deep in lawyers and sue you into leaving the market, whether or not they've actually found something legally justifiable to keep you out. They usually have a three step plan: 1: Sue you. if you win, 2: Sue you again. If you win (and assuming you still have enough money to keep paying your lawyers) then 3: buy you out and shutter your business. We see this time and time again. They need to address this "assault by attorney" problem head-on.

Although a lot of technical people wish they could repair things more easily, the truth is that a lot of consumers aren't going to be willing to do what it takes (or COSTS) to repair things. I've got a drop-in charger for a radio here that I've been fiddling with on-and-off for weeks, and haven't been able to figure out. I had no schematic so I wrote one up. All the parts are obtainable. Haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with it yet though. What's my time worth? I suppose I'd have been a lot smarter to just have gotten online and bought a new one by now. A lot of things simply aren't worth anyone's time to fix, even if they have all the ideal support. And it's not just a matter of the manufacturer not making it repairable - a lot of the time it doesn't even matter because even with ideal circumstances that by its nature it's going to be cheaper to make a new one than fix your broken one.

And if you're going to try to force them to make a better product, that's going to be a huge uphill battle. Manufacturing in the consumer market is a race-to-the-bottom where suppliers like China are doing their best to provide products at the minimum (and ABSOLUTE minimum) acceptable quality and durability the consumer will accept, in order to provide it at the lowest possible price. That makes forced-durability a tug-of-war, and one that will have boundaries and limits that are impossible to clearly define in any standard way.

Look at a laptop computer nowadays. One board. Memory and even sometimes the SSD are soldered down. Unquestionably the lowest cost way to manufacture it. Display panel is one integrated piece, no separate backlight or even LCD controller, it's all glued into the top shell along with the camera. Again arguably the lowest cost way to make it. That leaves the top case with its keyboard, trackpad, and speakers, all manufactured as one piece. If you're thinking demanding the schematic to the board is going to get you anywhere, you're insane. How about the camera being replaceable? No, the consumer demands low cost and a thin, light design, and so the camera is going to have to stay glued into the top. The only point of leverage here that makes sense is to somehow cap the cost of the parts. An $800 laptop should not have a total cost to assemble from parts of $1500. If anything, the parts aren't assembled and that should result in a LOWER cost for sum of parts than for completed product. $800 laptop? Then $750

Re:Wonderful

[Opportunist]

Oh please, melodrama much?

For once the EU actually does something to the benefit of the average Joe, but rest assured you find some dimwit to complain about it.

No problem

[Chrisq]

Send all the unrepairable junk to the UK. They will be desperate for any trade deal.

Re:Wonderful

[thegarbz]

Oh please, melodrama much?

For once the EU actually does something to the benefit of the average Joe, but rest assured you find some dimwit to complain about it.

To be fair you would kind of expect "Vinegar Joe" to complain when Average Joe is the one who gets the benefit.

How it worked for longer warrenty

[houghi]

When I worked at a major electronic company in Belgium, the warranty period went from 1 to 2 years. We also sold extended warranties and that made a nice sum. When we went from 1 to 2 years, that would mean the following:
1) More repairs done during the warranty period
2) Less sales in warranties as people will think 2 years might be enough.
So I asked the CEO if this was a burden and he said no. The reason as that we knew exactly how much it would cost and the price was adapted accordingly (I believe an increase of 1% or less).

So what will happen is that the prices will slightly go up, so the companies will need to make up in loss for a tiny bit. Not even enough to really notice. If this means I get a better product that can be used for longer, I have no problem that the government "forces" me to pay a bit more.

It is a bit like paying extra for a red triangle in your car. It is a small extra cost required by law to have, but in the end it is better, even if I (hopefully) never need to use it.

Not Lean

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not Lean

[Opportunist]

First of all, cost means nothing. Nothing at all. Take any phone you want. Now try to tell me with a straight face that the cost to make it has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the price the customer has to pay. Try it and I'll yell BULLSHIT at you before you're done. Because it is.

Cost has literally nothing to do with the final price of a product. Cost determines whether a product is made, for it will not be produced if the cost outgrows the potential selling price, but that's it. Do you really want to tell me the iPhone would get a cent cheaper if it could be made for 10 bucks less?

The price the customer has to pay is a careful calculation of the profit "sweet spot". Where is the maximum of profit_per_item*items_sold? That's the question. You really want to convince anyone that the extra buck it costs to make it repairable would change that by even that buck? I call bullshit.

And thickness: Newsflash, nobody gives a shit how thick your phone is. If anything, it might actually survive being slipped into a pocket again if it's thicker than the average slice of tinfoil again.

Re:I am sceptical

[Opportunist]

Authorized? It's my phone, if anyone gets to authorize anything here, it's me.

It's about time Apple and the likes of it learn the meaning of "selling" and "ownership". Either you sell me something or you retain ownership. Trying to do both is a con job.