In a landmark move, the European Parliament voted today to support consumers’ Right to Repair. The resolution was adopted with 395 in favour and just 94 against, with 207 abstentions.
[…]The vote calls for the EU Commission to “develop and introduce mandatory labelling, to provide clear, immediately visible and easy-to-understand information to consumers on the estimated lifetime and reparability of a product at the time of purchase.”
Good.
Oh gawd, that’s bad. For those not in the know, the EU likes the concept of “information is available at the time of purchase” as an excuse to delay passing badly-needed regulation for decades. This mentality is the reason why EU cars didn’t get catalytic converters until 1993, while US cars had them since the 70s: Back in those pre-catalytic converter days, in EU car ads, some fine-print would scroll-by telling you how the advertised car pollutes a lot, so in theory, you would be informed and choose a car with a catalytic converter instead (never mind such cars didn’t exist). Similarly now, they will tell you how your hi-end phone is nigh-unrepairable and such, so you could choose to buy one of those non-existent repairable high-end phones instead.
The only good news is that they are addressing the matter of software updates and even separating them from upgrades (didn’t expect them to think so far tbh), although in a rather vague fashion.
kurkosdr,
Information and truth in labeling are good, but obviously that falls short of the real right to repair laws we need. I think this survey sums up what consumers really need…
I don’t know that I would go so far as to force companies to repair products if they choose not to, but consumers absolutely should have a legal right to repair their devices at independent repair shops. If the manufacturer interferes with independent repairs, the law should prescribe increasing punitive damages for denying owner repair rights.
This is not just about consumer convenience anymore, this is about the ecological consequences that non-repairable devices have on our planet. We cannot afford to be so wasteful with carbon emissions for the sake of higher corporate profits.
As opposed to North America where we do basically nothing if not screw the consumer. That’s much worse.
I suppose cynics will say, that a right to repair doesn’t by it’s very nature mean that it will be easier or cheaper to repair.
And my own cynicism thinks it just creates something open to gaming by nefarious executives, we’ve already seen this through schemes that license official service providers, parts and knowledge bases. It creates an environment that is almost the antithesis of open!
And here comes the question: If a “right to repair” bill existed since -say- 2006, would we have gotten water-resistant phones, ever? How do you make a water-resistant phone with a replaceable battery? Can an easy-to-repair water-resistant phone even exist?
Regulation of design is very tricky can always come with unpredictable side-effects. For example, when the United States legislated a maximum length of 40-bits for encryption keys as part of their export law, they didn’t expect it would make WEP-secured WiFi networks so easy to crack, or that they would make DVDs brute-forceable.
Regulation for right to repair is always welcome obv.
kurkosdr,
I don’t see why not. Keep in mind the right to repair isn’t just about home repair, it’s also about the right to use the repair shop of your choice. And the right of those shops to obtain the schematics/equipment/parts/instructions for repairs, etc.
I think the government did know the side effects but politicians didn’t care. It was in reality a goal and not a side effect for encryption to be ineffective and have back doors. I think the main side effect was that the US policy was making US tech less attractive and giving foreign competitors a leg up on them.
So while I agree with you about the risks of bad government policy, the big difference here is that the right to repair is a grass roots consumer driven movement, whereas weakening crypto was something that no consumers were asking for. It was literally about government control over the people, which is in stark difference to the right to repair being about protecting owner rights. Granted, the government may not take it up seriously. Unfortunately many governments are comprised of politicians siding with deep pocketed corporate interests and everyone else’s rights can take a back seat.
I meant right-to-repair regulation affecting the device design, seems obvious when typing it. But I hould have said “easy to repair” legislation on second thought.
So, let’s go again:
If the US or the EU had listened to the people who were complaining about sealed batteries in iPods and iPhones, and had passed an “easy to repair” bill since -say- 2006 (mandating user-replaceable batteries, or no glued-shut assembly, just screws, so the user can get to the battery easily), would we have gotten water-resistant phones, ever? How do you make a water-resistant phone with a replaceable battery? Can an “easy to repair” water-resistant phone even exist?
Regulation of design is very tricky can always come with unpredictable side-effects, such as stifling innovation (for example water-resistant phones).
If you want another example of well-intentioned regulation of design that has unpredictable side-effects, there is the example of the massive 5mph bumpers in US cars increasing the car’s weight (and reducing mileage) just in time for the oil crisis.
Regulation for right to repair regarding third-party access to OEM resources, manuals and tooling is always welcome obv.
kurkosdr,
I know what you are saying, but I kind of think innovation could find a way to do both with proper incentives.
Long overdue I say.
No, it wouldn’t have happened. Design can be held back by seemingly minor regulations of design. The 40-bit key length restriction making WiFi easily crackable was one case. Another case is the US mandating the use of dbx noise reduction encoding for the stereo subcarrier in analog TV broadcasts, which led to even expensive televisions in the US to not bother with stereo sound at all and be either monophonic or dual-mono, in order to avoid the dbx license costs. Some TVs extracted the stereo subcarrier without decoding the dbx, which led to awful sound (encoded dbx sounds awful) and most people just switched their TV to mono. Meanwhile European TVs had working stereo in all non-portable TVs. Another example is the EU mandating the use of DAB or DAB+ for radio broadcasts, which is based around the concept of the “multiplex”, just like DVB-T/T2 does. This means EU radio broadcasters are no longer owning any spectrum and instead have to pay a for-profit third-party for the privilege of being crammed into a low-bitrate multiplex. This is unfortunate but neccessary for TV channels, but silly for radio, which can run on top of FM or in simply without multiplexes.
So, don’t tell me we would have gotten waterproof phones. We wouldn’t have.
As an aside, someone has made a funny article about what would have happened if the government had “helpfully” regulated that all “power units” should be compatible with all “coaches”
https://jalopnik.com/what-if-cars-had-developed-with-the-horse-and-buggy-mod-1755995310
kurkosdr,
That’s still a bad example because crackable encryption was not a side effect, it was the goal. If your point was that bad goals yield bad legislation, then sure I agree with that. However it seems like you’re trying to paint right to repair with the same brush even though it isn’t comparable.
Obviously we don’t know what technologies we could have unlocked had we taken a different path. Waterproof electronics with replaceable batteries isn’t that far fetched. Someone could have innovated a nice way to do this. You dismiss what a little market incentive can do. I understand that some people hate any kind of government intervention and sometimes with good reason. However sometimes it really does work, specially in the absence of natural incentives.
A few times heard attempt seems to be better: If companies do not sell products but services. The service is “wash” and you get a washing machine from them. Now their interest is to make it as durable as possible and easy to repair.
Of course, this model needs to be very well thought about so that we do not end up in a mess as it is already in the computer and software industry. Where you “own” something, but actually others control it.
Anyway, I can just double cpcf: The manufactures should be forced to make their devices repairable. At least those which are fairly expensive.
Hope this works out better than that whole cookie consent farce they forced us into. Where users are forced to click away popups all day long and are presented with confusing dialogs that trick them into accepting all cookies.
At least something good came out of it: You can opt out of tracking if you look for it, for example in your Google account. But yeah those pop-ups are annoying. They are built that way so most people click away.