The products covered by the obligation to repair currently include:
- washing machines and washer-dryers
- dishwashers
- refrigerators
- electronic displays
- welding equipment
- servers and data storage products
- mobile phones, cordless phones and tablets
- tumble dryers
- e-bikes and e-scooters batteries (from 18 February 2027)
- local space heaters
Can’t wait to see what loopholes they will implement such that I can avoid repairing my shit and pay full price for a new one anyway because the repair costs just as much as a new one. God forbid replacing a single bearing instead of the whole wash drum, I hope the EU protects me from that like before.
I wonder if this will mean screwed split half washing machine drums, for example.
One of the most common failure points in washing machines is the drum bearing. Nowadays almost all makes are using drums where the halves of the drum are plastic, welded together, where they used to be screwed together. The welds prevent opening the drum, and make bearing replacement basically impossible. The makes will sell you a replacement of the whole assembly, but it will often cost like 2/3 of a new machine. This means that a bearing failure often results in chucking a machine that used to be repaired for a cost under a 100 € if done professionally, or tens if DIY.
I imagine the “whole assembly” concept will be used as one of the loopholes.
can we have this in America? Answer: No! in fact in America everything popular in other countries is banned unless it’s used in federal buildings because “security concerns”. yeah… sure… so very worried about “national security” that security risks can only be used in government buildings and not in private homes… yeah sure… that’s secure.
I love NOS met het oog op morgen, the dutch public broadcast podcast, they invite people over to talk about all sorts of different news topics, or about books they wrote, or songs they written or theater or art they made, but also about news and politics. Its really diverse and super interesting. And loooove this initiative, can’t wait to take my appliances apart so I can clean them better also lol.
There is no repair without firmware. All hardware needs to be documented and ship with source. It hasn’t been enough to be able to buy physical parts since perhaps the 80s or 90s. Everything is controlled by software. Without that right to repair is a joke. Meanwhile the surveillance industry and their well greased govt supporters are trying to lock down software. Can’t have it both ways.
Do cars next!!
I counter [email protected]
If only they could have done this with games.
Every program is open source
They pass dystopian chat control with one hand and does this with the other.
Makes you think, right? Almost as if the narrative about how dystopian chat control is and how evil EU is doesn’t really add up and it’s just people repeating some bullshit they read on a blog.
There is a lot of anti-EU propaganda, especially surrounding the Chat Control.
Yes, there are some authoritarian politicians trying to push it through. But there is a reason why it has failed so many times. Because most EU politicians are really not that bad.
The propaganda is being pushed by Russia to sow discontent in the EU. That is why you see on every positive EU story, there is someone in the comment going “What about Chat Control though?” As if that proves the EU is evil.
Well when you think about it this is just another form of control over businesses. That’s equally authoritarian.
If businesses were people that’d be a great point.
The EU is a complex organization with different power poles and a variety of different interests. Add to that members of parliament do not always understand everything they vote for. And yes: you get bad things, nonsensical rules, but also good things.
Overall, I would say it’s positive, but when it’s bad it can be brutal.
Edit: I forgot to mention lobbying! Brussels is full of lobbyists!
All those people in Brussels are out of touch. They live in their own world.
A world where there is right to repair.
Seriously, talk about major whiplash with how they do things lmao
Hopefully, malicious compliance loopholes will be fixed eventually
When the EU mandated USB-C, Apple included a bullshit adapter so they could keep their proprietary charger. But of course if someone with an iPhone was visiting my house they wouldn’t have an adapter with them. Eventually the EU bitch-slapped Apple over that nonsense and now iPhones have USB-C for charging.
So, companies will definitely try to weasel out of serving consumers, and the EU will eventually sort them out.
But not games…
Ah fuck boys, we enacted this landmark repairability legislation for daily use machines, but forgot to include video games.
For real though do you mean game consoles, the software?
They’re referencing the stop killing games initiative that was turned down recently. It is akin to this but the software version.
Games industry is somehow infinitely more corrupt.
I like this for a lot of obvious reasons.
I worry about corporate malicious compliance though where the cost of a replacement part costs as much as the unit or near it to make up for lost revenue from selling whole units.
They could even get to the printer ink model where they sell the initial device for cheap or at a lost with planned obsolescence of parts that almost guarantee a replacement rate.
With this though I think there is legal stance because prohibitively high prices can be used as grounds to say that a product “can’t be repaired”. The legal precedent is there, you can’t just say “technically we give you the option, it’s just $2m”.
I really hope you’re right about this. I’ve lost a lot of trust in legal arguments the last few years.
Started as a good idea to regulate industry for the benefit of consumers. Ends up with so many paid-for loopholes it’s mostly useless.
The cynic in me thinks the only reason the law was created from the start was to extort money from big companies.
This law still has a lot of good things in it. Calling it useless is what those companies would want you to do.
Unfortunately there are some exemptions. Flexible / folding displays are not covered. Fitness trackers and watches are not covered.
There is also a battery regulation coming in next year to require phone batteries to be replaceable with no tools but that has loop holes too - long life batteries aren’t covered, IP67 rated phones aren’t covered. So you can bet your boots those two reasons will be what makers use to bullshit their way out of it.
Those aren’t loopholes though, they’re part of the legislation. Phone makers don’t need to “bullshit” their way out of anything if they meet the criteria, which almost every mobile phone released these days does - making the regulation pretty pointless lol
Flexible / folding displays are not covered
So that’s why after almost a decade, only now Apple is ready to launch their foldable
Fitness trackers would be hard to make them easy repairable, when most of them is waterproof
Gaskets are a thing. Many, many, many watches would brag about their water resistance up to 10, 50, 100 meters depth. So I don’t think the excuse is credible.
Water resistance does not mean what people think. ISO 22810 says that a 3 bar (30m) water resistant is “Not suitable for showering, bathing, swimming, snorkeling, water related work, fishing, and diving.”
30m. Not. Suitable. for. showering.
Also, most really waterproof watches, 100m+, have small circular metal cases with metal backs that are screwed shut against a gasket. Some, like G-Shocks, have a proportionally thick stainless steel backplate screwed down, but the plate is what? 3 cm. Diagonal?
Doing so on a thin rectangular device with a reasonable cost is near impossible, too much flex.
Also software… I would love to have regulations that make it clear that the root of trust on all devices need to start by the owner of the device, not by the vendor… That would allow the end users to repair the software on their devices… Replacing it with whatever else they want. Next would be to provide hardware documentation to the owners to program their own devices… I don’t expect that to happen, but I can dream.
The root of trust can never be on the owner of the device for anything that requires actual security.
I disagree. For any actual security, the owner of the secrets is the only one that can be trusted. It is their secrets. Their own interest to keep them save.
Any company or government is a shifting entity, maybe now they are trustworthy, but maybe in some years they aren’t.
Owners are the only stabile point, because it is their data. They should be able to transfer the trust to a company or government to handle security, but they also need to be able to take away that trust and access, and either handle it themselves or transfer that trust to some other entity.
It is not okay for companies or government to hold the data of individuals hostage… That is not security, that is a business strategy.
If the only person that can verify the safety of your device is the owner, that device will and should be marked as insecure and not to be trusted in any instance where security matters.
Having those rules is much better than not having them. Also, IP rating is not enough, batteries also need to have sufficient load cycles. So if it forces them to use only long life batteries that reduces the need for battery repkacements and is already something.
Well it’s a start.
Why have a list?
Just make everything repairable.Some items, to safely repair, need a degree and training
Such as microwaves, which if you fuck up, you’ve either made a bomb or a radiation leak
Because not everything can be repairable. Design and manufacture often require choices to be made. And you seldom get all of the things you want.
Because they were paid a lot of money to exclude certain products.
