Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

consilium.europa.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 120 posts

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#61

Post by AndyMcConachie »

jll29 wrote: post #37

This is only phase one; the citizens of Europe must now petition their own countries to implement great "Right to Repair" laws. Important economic fact: If only one single European country (with sufficient population) implements a rather strict right to repair law, then likely all manufacturers in all countries will need to adhere to it, since tech companies don't like to have to build multiple product variants (per…

I saw a similar thing happen with ROHS and WEE. I was working for a hardware manufacturer when ROHS was implemented in the EU and we suddenly had to change all of our hardware to be ROHS compliant.

Because why maintain two manufacturing lines? Either we stop selling in the EU or we make all of our hardware ROHS compliant.

I suspect it really matters how big the market is that implements the regulation. The finance people come in and ask; Is it better to ignore this market or change our supply chain?

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#62

Post by 8372049 »

impossiblefork wrote: post #50
8372049 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? The core rule is usually that contracts are binding. In some cases they are void if exceptionally unreasonable. > While this proposal regulates certain business practices concerning repair in view of the sustainable consumption objective, >it safeguards contractual freedom Page 8

Well, since EULAs are straight-up invalid in Sweden, obviously it can't be done in an EULA. If it were allowed it have be part of an agreement with the company that is done before the sale, and which is an actual proper contract. Article 16 says only: Article 5(1) and (2) and Article 6 of this Directive shall not apply to contracts for the provision of repair services concluded before [24 months after the entry into…

> Article 16 says only

They are referring to Article 16 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the union, not this directive.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#63

Post by cromka »

gmerc wrote: post #32
jonatron wrote: post #4

Why is there gatekeeping of "professional" repairers and "repair services"? Why can't I as a consumer view a service manual and buy a part? If a washing machine costs £220, and a professional repair man costs £70 per hour, nobody will repair out of warranty.

Serious question, how do you think we keep unemployment from becoming catastrophic in this world ?

If your skills become common and accessible (YouTube) and the way to keep them profitable is through regulation, then something is wrong, wouldn’t you say?

We had many examples in history of gatekeeping a skill, most recently with taxi drivers.

Can you imagine similar restrictions imposed on software engineering jobs, say to require a computer science diploma? Not hard to imagine that in 10 years anyone with half a brain and ChatGPT and YouTube will be able to write general purpose, “does the job, good enough” software.

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#64

Post by viraptor »

pembrook wrote: post #57
blensor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying Louis Rossmann is fighting for the right to repair while trying to keep individuals from repairing their own devices is like saying Linus Torvalds created Linux to keep people from getting the idea to build their own operating system. Rossmann is fighting the good fight and also often doing videos showing how a repair actually works. Most famously a video where he showed that a certain type of common Macbook s…

I think the internet has broken people’s brains. Yes, he’s a really nice guy and likable and I enjoy his videos too. But you cannot ignore the fact that he’s highly financially incentivized to hold the positions he does, given he both owns a repair shop and probably makes even more money talking about repairing things on YouTube.

They're not just videos "about repairing". He's teaching people about defects, finding them, and how to repair them. He's selling tools used for repairs, even though someone can start a competing business. It's like you're being sceptical of teachers because they're getting paid.

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#65

Post by rlupi »

londons_explore wrote: post #15
lost_womble wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional repairs are the ones lobbying for right to repair laws? Do you have proof for this outlandish claim?

The most vocal person behind the right to repair movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npd_xDuNi9k Oh, and he runs a professional repair shop...

He is in US.

Thinking he has any influence lobbying the EU parliament on right to repair is bogus.

This EU initiative comes from the circular economy action plan, which started in 2015, more than the US or global consumers' right to repair actions. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/strategy/circular-economy-a...

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#66

Post by teekert »

jonatron wrote: post #4

Why is there gatekeeping of "professional" repairers and "repair services"? Why can't I as a consumer view a service manual and buy a part? If a washing machine costs £220, and a professional repair man costs £70 per hour, nobody will repair out of warranty.

Yeah, hate that. We also have all kinds of subsidies for insulating your house etc. I insulated my house. Only I did it myself and you’re supposed to let a professional do it. A professional that just charges you his usual fee + the subsidy. They are really helpful in filing the paper work for the subsidy (which is substantial) for just a small extra fee.

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#67

Post by dojitza1 »

jonatron wrote: post #4

Why is there gatekeeping of "professional" repairers and "repair services"? Why can't I as a consumer view a service manual and buy a part? If a washing machine costs £220, and a professional repair man costs £70 per hour, nobody will repair out of warranty.

I believe this is done partially to dissuade bad actors from gaining easy unverifiable access to hardware and software thus rendering anti theft technology ineffective. If you mandate all repairs to be done using a verifiable (and paid for) repair key which you supply to vetted people, it becomes that much harder to replace the anti theft module as a common thief. Even large scale operations would then be harder to run as they would require a fence of sorts to use as a repairman. Of course that fence would then risk their credentials and so on...

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#68

Post by arez »

jonatron wrote: post #4

Why is there gatekeeping of "professional" repairers and "repair services"? Why can't I as a consumer view a service manual and buy a part? If a washing machine costs £220, and a professional repair man costs £70 per hour, nobody will repair out of warranty.

Because not everything can be build to not be dangerous. The potential of electrocution, poisoning from a battery are all real. Not real for you because you're probably smart but you have to think about people who have no idea what they're doing and could get themselves gurt

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#69

Post by gmerc »

cromka wrote: post #63
gmerc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, how do you think we keep unemployment from becoming catastrophic in this world ?

If your skills become common and accessible (YouTube) and the way to keep them profitable is through regulation, then something is wrong, wouldn’t you say? We had many examples in history of gatekeeping a skill, most recently with taxi drivers. Can you imagine similar restrictions imposed on software engineering jobs, say to require a computer science diploma? Not hard to imagine that in 10 years anyone with half a b…

Plenty of counter examples like the German guild system ensuring quality of work, employment and education

Re: EU countries must implement right to repair laws within two years

#70

Post by pembrook »

Etheryte wrote: post #55
incognito124 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more probable outcome of a single country doing that is that new products won't be available there

Companies like to pretend like that's one possible outcome, but realistically that's never gonna happen. Can you imagine what a field day Samsung would have if Apple suddenly announced they're not gonna sell phones to Germany or w/e anymore?

Not Germany, France, etc.

But I absolutely can imagine them not re-working their entire product line for any of the smaller countries (baltics, balkans, Nordics, Eastern Europe, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, etc).

And for hardware startups? Forget about it. It’s already a nightmare to sell physical products throughout Europe given the intra-country shipping costs, multi-lingual requirements, and patchwork of localized distribution partners. You can expand to Europe once you’re big enough to deal with all the localization/regulation.

It’s funny, HN used to be a community of startup founders but nowadays you’ll see near-zero thought given toward startups in any discussions on HN. This is now a community of big tech worker bees who are hostile toward big tech companies, but who ironically support legal movements that entrench big tech.

Post reply on HN