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

81–90 of 120 posts

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

#81

Post by Pingk »

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.

Why do you think he set up repair.wiki? It's a free resource he started to provide diagnostic and repair guides for a wide range of electronics. He's very transparent about wanting people to be able to repair their own devices and his actions clearly back that up.

These are not the actions of someone being protective of their skills to make more money imo.

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

#83

Post by impossiblefork »

8372049 wrote: post #62
impossiblefork wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Ah, but

>The freedom to conduct a business in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices is recognised.

doesn't feel like it goes very far either.

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

#84

Post by Roark66 »

arez wrote: post #68
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

So what? Do all the knifes in the supermarket have rounded tips? What if someone stabs themselves with a knife with a sharp tip? Shouldn't we all give up normal knives to protect that one idiot that stabs himself? This is completely silly. No, the state is not your nanny to protect you from yourself.

Things use to come with schematics including devices like Crt TVs that had many thousands of volts with a potential to kill a person instantly.

This whole "omg, the potential of poisoning from a battery or electrocution" (how is it any different if you buy that same battery without the device - perhaps we should ban sales of parts too) is a convenient excuse for manufacturers to make things to be disposable. It has the opposite effect, because the useless device will be thrown into trash and then it will become E-waste with a far bigger potential for poisoning water in some third world country than it ever had by being opened by an "unqualified" person.

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

#85

Post by Roark66 »

sunaookami wrote: post #48

That's not "right to repair". Right to repair is: - I can repair it myself - with free access to schematics - with access to spare parts - without coupling between hardware and software The EU completely misunderstood what right to repair is and is now implementing something so that they can say that they have "right to repair". This will damage the RTR movement even further. I wonder who lobbied for this.

I would upvote you twice if I could. Sadly the EU is botching yet another thing.

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

#86

Post by Jnr »

pembrook wrote: post #70
Etheryte wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 loc…

Then it is good that they can not do it by law.

If they are selling products in other EU countries, especially digitally, they have to sell and ship it all across all EU.

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

#87

Post by impossiblefork »

8372049 wrote: post #56
impossiblefork wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I hope you're right, söta bror. > since EULAs are straight-up invalid in Sweden Is there anywhere I can read more about that? I didn't find anything with a quick search. Sources in Swedish are fine. This EU source says basically the same as I do: EULAs are in principle legal, unless they're unreasonable/unfair. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...

When I say EULA, I here mean additional license term for something that are 'agreed' to after the purchase.

I haven't heard of any agreements being permitted to bypass the konsumentköplag. That is, when dealing with consumers you can't get around the requirements to repair broken products etc., but entering into agreements with the consumer to that end.

These new repair things will probably be in implemented within existing consumer protection frameworks, and the whole point of these things is that you can't push complicated legal agreements on people.

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

#88

Post by Jnr »

theodric wrote: post #76
pembrook wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 loc…

And that isn't just some remote possibility, it's a likely outcome, because it's already a crapshoot with hardware/service availability across Europe. It was the case that for many years - might still be? - you couldn't buy Pixel phones in the Netherlands, which is how I ended up with a secondhand Verizon unit with a locked bootloader. In Switzerland, Digitec/Galaxus grey-markets many products which are otherwise not…

Switzerland is not in the EU. It is not part of the common market. They can not cut out Baltics, Netherlands, Sweden or any other members of the single market if they want to sell in any of the EU countries. That is the strength of the EU.

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

#89

Post by ho_schi »

sunaookami wrote: post #48

That's not "right to repair". Right to repair is: - I can repair it myself - with free access to schematics - with access to spare parts - without coupling between hardware and software The EU completely misunderstood what right to repair is and is now implementing something so that they can say that they have "right to repair". This will damage the RTR movement even further. I wonder who lobbied for this.

The problem of the European Union is that it is founded not on the concepts of a federation or union states. And finally merging into one nation.

The European Union is building up on the „ Montanunion (long version: European Coal and Steel Community) and that is the rational why they care mostly about economy and still believe in free-trade[1].

This causes friction between young people which want one entity of state and that cares about the people’s needs. The old just want subventions from the EU and that the economy flows easily.

The focus on free-trade is obsolete nowadays. There is no free-trade anywhere and no fair capitalism (the greed thing which harms our planet). Example: We had weird moments during COVID where we had to ask „if it is fair“ to rescue an otherwise healthy an needed airline? The question should have been if it is needed and sustainable. Of course it was! Where doing similar debates over machine equipment, chip factories, train factories…and the EU says „We can’t merge them because that would be unfair“. To whom? China? India? The US? Who cares. Free-trade is an idiotic concept by capitalists. The priority of every state should be the needs of the peoples.

Anyway. This is some improvement for the people in Europe :)

But how to solve the core issue? I complained a lot.

I think we need a core europe with the states which are willing to unite in long term (likely France, Germany, Benelux, Czech, Spain, Portugal, Poland - that is not an exclusion list). The desires of the population, social system and economy should be similar. So if the people in Slovakia or Hungary change their mind…welcome aboard.

[1] Weird for Americans. Since Reagan the economy (and especially the IT) is unregulated and shall dominate everything. China doesn’t care about free-trade at all, they will come with a list of requirements for an enterprise to build a company in China and transfer knowledge. The adapt the knowledge and kill your industry with state money and initially cheap products. Now your depend their industry. Partnership is something different?

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

#90

Post by cowl »

lnsru wrote: post #21

It’s another nail in the coffin of consumer hardware startups. In addition to CE and waste issues now comes a requirement for repairability. Only the big guys with departments of clerks can launch a product nowadays.

The requirement comes because you have to go out of your normal flow to make things not repairable.

Can you tell me one example on how this would make the life harder for startups? The mandate is to produce schematics which the startup obviusly would have and to make parts available. both things that any startup would need to consider as their part of the warranty/repair anayway but now they have to make this availble for third parties and not just themselves.

Post reply on HN