European Right to Repair resolution headed for vote European lawmakers are voting in plenary on a Right to Repair resolution today amid calls for the initiative to go even further. The draft motion for resolution [PDF] cited a survey that found 79 percent of EU citizens thought that manufacturers should make repairs easier, with 77 percent saying a repair would be preferable to …
>And that would be a bad thing how exactly?
Because a UK manufacturer would have to build to this standard if it wants to sell in Europe and apply this to all its products because the UK is a small market. But it is competing in its home market with cheaper imports that don't have to meet this standard
If only its home market were bigger, say the whole of the EU, and was protected from foreign imports that didn't comply.
Alternatively, the UK could duplicate the legislation locally. It would then receive the same protection from non-compliant imports and sell compliant products to the rest of the EU encumbered only by all the other complications of the EU now being an export market instead of an extended home market. Of course to do that means effectively accepting legislation that we had no input into.
Remind me again how freedom from EU legislation was going to enable us to take back control and make us more competitive.
Right of Repair ok... gotcha.
What if the maker refuses to sell you the parts and insists that only their repair centres carry out the work?
What if getting those parts is almost an impossibility even for the repair centre?
Hey Tesla... I'm looking at you.
It will be interesting to see if Elon resists this move or lets their owners actually buy parts for their cars.
If you are a Tesla fanboi then think about what happens when your precious Model 3 gets dinged and it is off the road for 3-6 months because the repair centre can't get the parts from the mothership. That happened to my Model S after I banged the front wing. 4 months to get it repaired.
>What if the maker refuses to sell you the parts and insists that only their repair centres carry out the work?
That would be totally illegal. Unless it was a safety requirement, or cybersecurity, or they license the software from a 3rd party (with coincidentally the same name) in Elbonia where the law doesn't apply.
"What if the maker refuses to sell you the parts and insists that only their repair centres carry out the work?"
The Block Exemption Regulations should prohibit this (they were enacted to prevent car manufacturers voiding warranties because a vehicle was serviced at a non-authorised dealer).
He's not quite correct.
The law in the UK and EU does indeed give us the right to repair (in that you can't make it illegal via some DCMA bull)
However, it doesn't force the manufacturers to make it easy for us.
So, no, you can't currently buy the needed unlocked parts, but you should be able to if this EU law goes through (though expect non-EU products to be made that don't work with EU destined parts!)
You're getting mixed up with the situation in the UK/EU versus the USA.
In the USA, in some cases, right-to-repair is illegal. The drive there is to change this.
In the UK and EU, the right to repair is legal already, but that doesn't mean manufacturers have to make it easy, or indeed, provide parts.
This is the goal of the EU proposal.
So, no, the UK is not way ahead of Europe - it's currently in parity, and simply because no companies have yet bribed the UK government to repeal the consumer laws.
Way ahead of Europe. Go look for yourself.
No, it's simply the UK implementation of EU legislation. The six year term refers to design flaws, in the UK and across the EU. Two years for faults in materials and workmanship is the rule here as well as in the EU. It is exactly the the same law at play, which we grandfathered in to our law on leaving.
"The six year term refers to design flaws, in the UK and across the EU. Two years for faults in materials and workmanship is the rule here as well as in the EU."
Not correct on the 2 year limit for faults in materials being a limit in the UK (having had a conversation with a solicitor recently relating to paintwork on a car not too long ago).
"I think you will find that in the U.K. there is a law that gives consumers a right of repair or replacement and in some instances their money back for up to 6 years."
Just before the car's warranty period expired the little plastic button on the handbrake leaver broke up. Clearly internal stresses - the fragments didn't quite fit back together. Oddly enough the dealer carrying out the last in-warranty service shortly after overlooked this despite being told.
Yes, I can but the part to repair it. The part to repair is isn't the plastic button. It's the entire handbrake assembly at £86 IIRC.
This is where the "reasonable expected lifetime" of a product comes into play in the UK at the least, may not in the EU, not sure about that. If a product fails during its lifetime, but outside of warranty, you may be entitled to a repair or replacement pro-rata based on age, parts likely free but probably charged for labour. It can be a bit of a grey area, but I think there's a gov.uk website listing various types of products and what is the "reasonable expected lifetime".
It's a smaller market than the EU. For a UK manufacturer it's a much smaller home market than they had pre-Brexit.
Being the Beeb they couldn't possibly quote names but I think a series of reports referred to the same business. Pre-Brexit he three directors were gung-ho for it. After it happened it turned out that they could no longer sell their product, cheese, to individual consumers in the EU as they used to do. At least they could but the paper-work involved in food products made it impractical when applied to individual orders for consumers. The remainder of the EU had been a significant part of their home market, if not the bulk of it. In the last report I read they were having to spend money they'd intended for a new factory at home on a distribution centre in the EU so they could ship in bulk. Along with a plaintive cry from one of them that this wasn't what they thought they'd voted for.
Cheese. Cheese. Cheese is the U.K. product that *you* think we are going to sell to France. And Italy. And Spain.
My U.K. winemaking business has been hit really hard by Brexit. The French used to be so keen on it. Couldn’t get enough of it. Particularly in Bordeaux, they’d all troop down to the marche fermier, buy their Kilo of Cathedral City, and ask the sommelier “which English wine does this pair best with”. And until Brexit, the sommelier would say “JustTheFacts sparkling Chardonnay is like Champagne, but so much better, and just perfect avec le Cheddar….and a smol side of foie gras just charges it up a gear”.
But then Brexit, and suddenly my wine has 3p/bottle tariff on it in France, and now they don’t buy! At all! It’s a travesty!
According to The Indy, one single cheese manufacture lost about £180,000 worth of exports in the aftermath of Brexit. The total across the industry was a 64% drop. I suspect there's not a lot of wine exports to the EU, but they were a major consumer of UK dairy products and that industry has been devastated by Brexit.
Ironically, prior to Brexit, almost every farmer interviewed about Brexit was in favour of it.
And all those "others" would have loved the access to the EU market, and rightly think the people who voted to leave are nuts.
You support the UK, yet call the EU a broken union? Typical English self-importance there. We can't wait to leave. NI and Wales will follow.
Are you saying right to repair is a bad thing? Should we have to buy new things when old things break rather than repair them? Who cares who wrote the rule we have to comply with. Your argument about cheap stuff from China holds no weight whatsoever as they will also have to comply with this rule if they want to sell to Europe. Fun Fact: We aren't some powerhouse of money where everyone is rich and we buy lots of stuff. We are now a nation of poverty. Not long before we lose our first world status However you voted for this so please enjoy it.
>Are you saying right to repair is a bad thing?
I'm saying that if the UK doesn't introduce the same right to repair standards as Eu ( because we have taken
back control to free us from oppressive Euro red tape ) then local makers are screwed having to meet higher standards for their export market while being undercut at home.
Hope this doesn't apply to a more important market than cell phones.
"then local makers are screwed having to meet higher standards for their export market while being undercut at home."
Please give me a moment. My violin is so small I can't see where I put it.
Seriously though. If you want to walk away from the EU because being in control is more important to you than having one set of red tape to access a market of three hundred million, with a government whose attitude to the concerns of business is "fuck business", then I'm afraid all of the calamity rests entirely on your head. Nothing to do with the EU, you aren't a part of that any more.
That being said, your local makers are screwed anyway. New red tape for each country (not EU wide). Tarifs to import parts. Tarifs to export products. Level playing field rules that no longer apply. That's the reality of it. But, hey, thanks to no longer being in the EU, I guess a maker can instead flog their wares to somewhere else, like the Ivory Coast or.... yeah, I'm struggling to find a viable alternative to the massive market that y'all just walked away from.
And those who did vote were almost equally split between leave and remain. Although the Brexiteers seem to insist that "we" voted for it - including those of who voted against. We said it was a stupid idea then and even if we're in the same boat now we're certainly not prepared to go along with the idea that we're willing passengers.
If you are an expat, of course you don’t get a vote in U.K. affairs. Nor do Chinese citizens. What were you expecting? Being “a citizen of the EU” is exactly what we were voting against. Of course the 350million non-U.K. citizens can’t vote for the U.K. to remain part of the EU.
Please can I vote for Macron against Le Pen? The whole world, not just the EU, certainly has a legitimate interest in France not becoming overtly fascist, surely we should be able to vote in those elections?
People like you are the problem.
The ability to vote is supposed to be an integral part of citizenship, regardless of country of residence. Asking if you can vote in the French elections is a strawman, unless you happen to hold French citizenship in which case, yes, you can. Even if you live in the UK.
France - https://www.demarches.interieur.gouv.fr/particuliers/vote-francais-installe-etranger
United States - https://www.americansabroad.org/faq-about-voting-from-abroad/
@heyrick “The ability to vote is supposed to be an integral part of citizenship, regardless of country of residence.”
It is not that black and white in the UK, as residency in the UK is normally required. You must be registered to vote which ties you to a constituency at national level and a ward at local level which requires a valid claim of residence. If you are not registered, you cannot vote.
In fact in certain circumstances non-UK nationals resident in the UK can register to vote (once they have met certain criteria such as length of residence). Normally they can only vote at the local level, which is what excluded EU citizens resident in the UK from voting in the referendum. Unless they were from the Republic of Ireland as they can also vote at the national level.
The ability to vote in the UK requires registration on the Electoral register. Registration requires a valid claim of residency in the UK. So fairly or unfairly that also applied to the referendum* meaning expats not being registered could not vote.
*But even that is not entirely true as the right to vote in the referendum included dependencies like Gibraltar.
"So fairly or unfairly that also applied to the referendum* meaning expats not being registered could not vote."
But it didn't have to work that way, a referendum is not an election. That was a choice made by the Government. eg the last Scottish "Should I stay or should I go" referendum, just as important as the Brexit vote, allowed for 16 & 17 year olds to vote despite not being eligible to vote in elections.
I suspect if the Brexit vote used the same voting eligibility criteria as the Scotxit, the result might have been different.
Here is the actual polling data for Macron versus Le Pen and Zemmour.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/fjg18u456t/France_Vote_Intention_07-Apr-2022_website_v2.pdf
Support for pro-EU Macron is almost non-existent amongst 18-24yr olds. The younger demographic favour Zemmour, the fascist on the right of Le Pen, whose main policies are leaving the EU and sending immigrants home.
So, “the young” in *France* are comprehensively anti-EU. Why didn’t you know that? Could there be….a gap in your understanding of the situation?
It's interesting looking at the current estimations that in second place is Le Pen and the far right, and the third place is Mélanchon and the far left. They're all (them and Macron) like a handful of percentage points between them.
The traditional parties? Les Républicains (Sarkozy etc) are doing terribly, and the Parti Socialiste (Hollande etc) are practically non existent, being beaten by the straight up hammer and sickle commies.
I think when Macron gets back to doing actual politics after the final result is made (and he wins else France is fucked), he might like to put his pension reforms on hold and take a good hard look at what the voters are saying, because this is kind of gonzo and doesn't bode well for 2027 if the votes that aren't for Macron are for one or other of the extremities.
Yeah, almost as if being a sovereign nation allowed you to set the rules within your national borders, so we don’t have to set the same rules as France. I guess you aren’t used to that.
But as to your rights as a citizen: my grandfather was a Hungarian citizen in ‘38. A Jew. The police stripped him of his citizenship. Later, he committed suicide in a police cell. By shooting himself in the back of the head. Twice. Over the past few years. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has systematically removed Jews from all positions in society, especially the media and universities, and has frozen the bank accounts of most.
But apparently, your rights to a shorter queue at the airport, even though you neither live, work nor pay taxes to the U.K., trump my rights not to have Viktor Orban as 1/27th of the body that sets the rules as to whether my life is at risk. Andrezj Duda is another 1/27th. Jorg Haider was another 1/27th. Orban is *going to hold the EU Presidency in 2024*. And if the timing of the presidency rota had been different, you would currently have Le Pen going to Putin to negotiate for your survival. Let that sink in.
You seem to think that “the rules” are the only things that matter. The uncomfortable reality is fascist regimes are nearly always democratically elected. Trump, as a recent example. I don’t have to live in one though.
You don’t live in the U.K. Fortunately, the law of the U.K. still protects us against those who don’t.
You're right, I don't live in the UK. But I am still a British citizen. It's as if the country as a whole learned absolutely nothing from The Boston Tea Party. Let it sink in what Britain could have been if it treated it's colonies with respect.
As to Le Pen going to Putin, yeah. Given the Russian origin of some of her party's funding, it does rather make one wonder what side she'd be on...
Just like the US/Chinese/Australian/Brazillian etc etc etc etc you get the idea
Leave the Chinese out of this argument because the Chinese government do not believe this law applies to them. The Chinese government believes foreign laws are a nuisance.
In this case the legislation is beneficial. The ability to maintain our own property is key to our freedom as much as the right to own it in the first place. The manufacturers may feel that taking hostages is a good business model for them the same as highway robbery is profitable until the law is enforced against it.
Of course it is. It's another idea beneficial to the populace that the EU is in favour of but the con-artists who now constitute HMG are against. As far as I can make out their main motivation seems to be that they found the EU's pro-individual, attitudes, especially the idea of a supra-national court protecting human rights, irksome. What does that tell you about their intentions?
If you couldn't work that out, note that they intend to repeal the Human Rights Act. Yes, they're going to replace it with a "Bill of Rights". That probably means they get the rights, we get the bill.
Just like the stupid MAGAs, the brexiteers don't mind those in charge removing rights, and attempting to control democracy, because they think the measures will only apply to the "others".
Do they really think Trump/The Tories love them? If their votes weren't needed, they'd be despised more than the "liberal left" they hate.
Trump doesn't "love the poorly educated". He loves that he can manipulate them. There's one thing right wingers hate more than lefties, and that's the poor.
MAGAs and Brexiteers - all the same - hateful, wilfully ignorant, and vote to make their own lives harder.
You can read more about what the Bill of Rights is, and is not, at this link. But it doesn’t remove any of the rights you want.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1040409/human-rights-reform-consultation.pdf
The EU supra-national court doesn’t *protect* human rights, it *determines* them. So long as you agree with its rulings, you are happy for it to supersede national courts. But when the core beliefs of regions of the EU diverge, it’s extremely problematic.
For example, in some Catholic regions “abortion is murder”, and in Hungary and Poland “LGBT theory and advocacy is destroying the right to family life”. These views are increasingly prevalent, and may well become dominant in the EU. You have no idea, because you don’t live in those areas. But if they do, both abortion and homosexuality will be outlawed in the whole of the EU, irrespective of national laws. Where then are your human rights?
Or consider these:
The European Human Rights Act doesn’t protect trial by jury. Because most European countries are based on Napoleonic code, they don’t think trial by jury is a fundamental human right.
Slavery isn’t included in the EU Human Rights Act, and isn’t actually against the law in most EU countries. Stunning, but true. That’s why the U.K. needs a Modern Slavery Act 2015.
The substantive issues of Reproductive rights are completely neutered in the EU HRA…..due mostly to the “old white men decide policy” problem.
https://repository.gchumanrights.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11825/449/Redolfi.pdf
"Slavery isn’t included in the EU Human Rights Act"
Oh for fuck's sake, did you actually ever read it?
EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, article 4 (page 7):
https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf
Quote:
Prohibition of slavery and forced labour
1. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.
2. No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
3. For the purpose of this Article the term “forced or compulsory labour” shall not include: [...list of exemptions for military work and labour in, for example, prisons...]
>This would screw up Android handset vendors, that's for sure...
Depends which ones.
The cheapest makers will just include Google's stock base android and rely on updates from Google, or even ship with Lineageos, that might give them an advantage over the likes of Samsung
I am a firm believer that tech companies should be made to publish expected lifetimes and pay compensation if they don't hit targets.
Reuse of the device for other purposes should count as lifetime, this would incentivise companies to make phones rootable after the original lifetime and they cease to support it themselves.
We need a way to track actual lifetimes, but for Internet connected devices this is pretty easy to do (if hard to detect fraud)
Consumers would have no incentive to commit the fraud, a hash chain of device Id plus timestamp would suffice and should be simple to set up and maintain.
I'd go as far as saying that to Sell products which rely on software they need to make the SDK's for the software available after their support lifetime has ended.
If the hardware is functioning why should I be effectively forced to throw it out because the OEM thinks it's too costly to support any longer?
Every device with a battery is required to include instructions with the product on how the user can change the battery. Also, the device may not block or limit batteries from third parties.
Every laptop, desktop, tablet, phone, and printer is required to have a service manual that is available free online, except for custom made devices built by independent repair shops.
All devices that can be updated must receive support for at least 5 years after the last device was made by the company. The manufacturer must replace devices at their full cost if an update damages the equipment no matter when the update was applied.
Mobile phone companies must allow devices that have the compatible hardware to use their network even if the device was not purchased from the company.
All desktops and laptops must have user-upgradable hard drives and user-upgradable memory slots.
A person can repair or upgrade their device without the permission or knowledge of the manufacturer and it may not void the warranty provided that the upgrade was done without damaging the hardware.
(Feel free to add to this wishlist.)
These things wouldn't be workable in practice. Law by it's nature needs to be both watertight and cover any conceivable application.
So you want upgradeable memory? What about the Apple M1 chips with on package memory? It comes at a price but that integration does enable better performance. Are you insisting that everyone should have poorly performing machines based solely on your own preference?
Laptops must have upgradable hard drives? I'll leave to one side whether that means sending them back ten years by mandating spinning rust - how exactly are you supposed to ”upgrade” the drive in any case? Remember you have said the hard drive needs to be upgradeable, not replaceable.
As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for ...
A bit of work would be required but an on board memory slot could be provided in addition to the on-chip memory.
There are new laptops available with upgradable and maintainable designs. What he means is the storage should be removable, readable in another system and replaceable with a higher capacity. The problem with soldered on storage is if the computer breaks the user can't access their data.
Modern laptops have the battery inside the case rather than plugged onto the back. This is a bit of a downgrade but does simplify the battery and case design and still allows for replacement with a screw driver.
I would suggest a bit of standardisation for the position on the keyboard connector. This could vastly cut down the number of different keyboards there are when they only differ in the position of the connector. Likewise with the battery which have become far more similar now they are just a bunch of cells wrapped in shrink plastic.
IBM set the standard with the PC AT in 1983 and it's been going ever since. One can argue that this standardisation was good for business.
Schematics of modern kit is a bit of a waste of time - it's just a collection of black boxes and a handful of resistors and capacitors.
The schematics of what's inside the "black boxes" would just be the functional blocks as a circuit diagram illustrating millions or billions of transistors might be a bit unwieldy for users without experience in integrated circuit design, which is almost everybody.
Modern computers are a little more complex than the venerable C64.
That's not to say a functional diagram showing what every connector, switch or jumper does shouldn't be included, it most certainly should.
Simply having a PCB layout with the actual value/voltage/polarity of the bloody capacitors on motherboards would help when the little bastards self destruct or leak everywhere. Most of the other devices plug into standard sockets and so can be evaluated separately - you can just plug them into another MB to find out if they're functional or causing a problem and then follow that path.
But capacitors mostly!
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