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Given that this whole thing was about forcing one bad player, Apple, to do the right thing, why not sunset these laws in five to ten years? That way, future inn
by realgeniushere 4y ago
Given that this whole thing was about forcing one bad player, Apple, to do the right thing, why not sunset these laws in five to ten years? That way, future innovators don’t have to first get this requirement repealed. USB-C is not the be-all end-all of charging ports. Note for example the female connector with the fragile plastic piece in the middle. Better alternatives will emerge but now they have to pass through Euro and Indian bureaucrats.
- victorvosk 4y agoBecause legislatures are incredibly short sighted and ignorant when it comes to technology. ("Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave")
- dmitriid 4y ago> Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave") Literally not what the law says.
- victorvosk 4y agoI wasn't attempting to be literal. The observed effect "in the wild" though is pretty obvious, and the overall experience of the internet is worse off for it.
- the8472 4y agoDon't blame the legislators for malicious compliance. Don't set cookies (which is the perfectly reasonable thing to do for read-only visitors of many sites) and no consent is required. And if the user registers for an account then they can be informed as part of the signup because it's a technical necessity to maintain a login, again no banner needed.
- dmitriid 4y agoYou can set cookies. You can store data that's required for your site to function. You are not required to ask anything when doing that. For storing more than that and especially for handing user data off to greedy advertisement leeches you must ask for user consent. When asking user for consent, opting out must be as easy as opting in. If the user opted out, the site must continue to provide functionality.
- mananaysiempre 4y agoThere are two pieces of law about two very different things. (IANAL.) - The ePrivacy Directive from 2002 (!) is (in its opt-in part) about sites storing stuff by whatever mechanism on the user’s computer (not just cookies, despite its nickname of “cookie law”). The explanatory text allows the “storage or GTFO” approach you are referring to. No mention is made of deletion of data, as the directive is purely about client-side storage, and the user can presumably delete that. Any storage technically required for the site to operate (e.g. login cookies) is specifically exempted, it need not even be mentioned. I would not say this turned out particularly useful, but, well, in 2002 Microsoft was publishing books on .NET thick clients with chapters on interoperability with COM+ distributed transactions and SOAP was the hot new thing not even in Recommendation status yet. Nobody can see the future all that well, large organizations especially. (I understand a more useful update to that has been stalled by GAFAM lobbying efforts for years now.) - The General Data Protection Regulation from 2016 (not a typo, there was a generous grace period) is about organizations tracking people through whatever means. The “tracking or GTFO” choice (or its close relative, “tracking, money, or GTFO”, as seen e.g. on French newspaper sites even today) is explicitly illegal, though of course showing ads with no tracking is not in scope. As the tracking data is stored by the organization, the user can demand that it be deleted. Any tracking technically required for the organization to operate (e.g. lists of customers who have used their free trial) is specifically exempted to the extent that the requirement exists (e.g. as long as the free trial is offered). This one is working out better, although there seem to be tricky international law issues (“directive” vs “regulation”, jurisdiction etc) that mean that enforcement is less efficient that it could have been (e.g. Google and Facebook have mainly been prosecuted via ePD, as the GDPR complaints have to be routed through the Irish authorities, who have jammed their fingers into their ears and gone “lalala can’t hear you”).
- kmlx 4y ago> one bad player, Apple, to do the right thing very strange reading this since i still buy electrical devices produced in 2022 with micro-usb, custom plugs, or whatever was cheapest when they assembled the device.
- realgeniushere 4y agoThe law does not apply to all electronic devices. The law only applies to consumer handhelds. That’s mobile phones, tablets, e-readers, earbuds, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers. And at a later date, laptops. It’s hard to think of any popular devices in those categories, aside from Apple’s phones and earbuds, that don’t ship with standard USB chargers.
- anony999 4y agoLaptops still ship with various power bricks/connectors.
- realgeniushere 4y agoFor high power laptops, the relevant USB-PD versions with sufficient wattage are too recent to have penetrated all product lines. But I haven’t seen a new laptop without usb-c charging in a long time. Even laptops that ship with their own bricks support slower usb-c charging as well (this will still be allowed by the EU law). Maybe you can identify a couple that don’t. I wonder how much market share they have and if they even matter.
- Havoc 4y agoIt won’t be permanent just like the old school usb micro one didn’t prevent usb-c from coming to be
- realgeniushere 4y agoThey are not remotely similar. The old micro usb policy could be complied with by shipping a little adapter with your product. This one cannot be.
- Havoc 4y agoAnd thank goodness for that. Nobody wants to deal with dongles everywhere
- realgeniushere 4y agoOkay but that doesn’t address my point or defend yours.
- Havoc 4y agoMostly because I can’t tell what you’re trying to say
- realgeniushere 4y agoMy whole point is that this requirement could suffocate innovation on ports by turning it into a mother-may-I regime in perpetuity. You said, but we had the regime before with micro usb yet still innovated to usb-c. My response was that the old requirement didn’t stifle innovation since it was satisfied by an adapter [requiring a minor logical step by the reader:] because you could still invent new ports as long as you bundled a micro USB adapter. Your response was, adapters bad. Do you see how that doesn’t address the argument at all?
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoBecause we already know what happens when a common port is not mandated. Seriously, before this law was put in place, Europe had been asking companies to agree on a common charging port for more than a decade. The first Memorandum of Understanding on the subject was signed in 2009. Amusingly Apple did sign it before deciding to simply ignore it. That was followed by a directive in 2014 and an impact assessment in 2018. Despite these repeated warnings, Apple spent the decade lobbying against a common port while collecting a tidy sum with the Made For Iphone initiative. The EU didn’t mandate by hubris. It just had to. We need a law because if we don’t have one there will always be companies reverting to proprietary ports. They just can’t resist the easy money.
- realgeniushere 4y agoI reckon it takes the market power of an Apple to hold out on proprietary charging ports. Only reason they held out is 1) keep their accessory licensing revenue stream and 2) introduce friction with Android users (see iMessage). Almost no one else has the kind of market power to do that without pissing users off to their detriment. Aside from Apple, the voluntary standards process was working. No one else was still resisting USB-C. Can you name some examples?
- anony999 4y agoThere are still laptops with various charger types not to mention digital cameras and other electronics that could use usb-c pd but refuse to adopt it. I think the law should be expanded to any kind of electronic device that whose power requirements can be satisfied by the usb-c specifications.
- makeitdouble 4y agoWhy is this “have to pass through bureaucrats” narrative pushed on every single discussion about this topic ? One one hand getting approval for a specific justifiable situation doesn’t seem like an issue for any company with enough means to design a better universal connector. On the other hand these “bureaucrats” are presently updating these laws as the previous one became obsolete and the situation isn’t improving organically. Here the bad player is Apple, why are we pointing the finger at the orgs actually making things move and keeping up to date with technology ?
- realgeniushere 4y agoBecause anyone with experience with the political process knows it’s an absolute nightmare and prone to being extremely slow to react to changes.
- makeitdouble 4y agoIs charging port technology something we want to be the wild wild west and have companies quickly push random designs ? Up until now the real nightmare has been every company coming up with their own crappy connector and sticking with it for decades.
- realgeniushere 4y agoUSB-C is not the final form of charger ports. I’d rather the debate on the next evolution happen within industry, and maybe even play out competitively in the market. If a clear victor emerged and there’s another large, abusive hold out like Apple, then just pass a similar time-limited law.
- makeitdouble 4y agoThis is way too dismissive of the govs attitude, which is to reevaluate the situation every X years, and way too optimistic toward the industry, which couldn’t converge to anything without getting forced to do it. The “clear victor” only emerged because of the law passed. For crying out loud, USB-C was created by Apple and look at the situation we’re still in.
- squarefoot 4y ago> why not sunset these laws in five to ten years? Because manufacturers would immediately resort to proprietary ones to squeeze some more money from customers for cables, chargers, adapters etc. If you look at them more as consumables than part of the product, just like printer cartridges, that makes more sense. Nobody is preventing future innovators from adding their own port with more features where space and cost would permit that.