5 ms·

It's about time we had legislation (at least in the EU) that mandated an option to be able to use physical products in an offline mode. Features that require a

by mmkos 3y ago

It's about time we had legislation (at least in the EU) that mandated an option to be able to use physical products in an offline mode. Features that require a connection to the Internet should only be an augmentation at most and not the core without which the product cannot work.

cush 3y ago
This is an incredible idea. It’s very much like mandating the recyclability of electronics but goes one step further - enforcing the reusability of electronics. It would be a game changer for consumer and environmental protection. Literal tonnes of e-wasted iPhones would instead become offline music/game devices.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fragmede 3y ago
Or some way to force opening up the software upon the product's death. The hardware is great and I'd love to pick one up for cheap for my home office to use for Zoom meetings.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  With the price these things were sold for and the type of companies that bought them, I expect someone to buy these things and hack them to work with Jitsi or some other open source solution not long after the cloud service shuts down. It may be worth tracking down if any stores still stock these things and what companies have invested in many of them, so you can try to get a deal on the hardware after the sunset date.
jeroenhd 3y ago
That would basically ban normal cell phones. You can't do calls without access to the network. Honestly, people buying these products should be smarter. They bought an expensive chalkboard that they knew depends on someone else's computers (unless they didn't even bother to look into how the products work), without any guaranteed server support period anywhere to be found. Anyone who cares about their purchases suddenly no longer working will simply avoid this hardware. The people who do purchase this stuff don't really care. They may act outraged in hopes of getting enough people worked up to start a class action lawsuit they can benefit from, but they failed to even consider "what if the servers shut down" before spending five grand on a glorified touchscreen and hooking themselves up to a $600 per year subscription. To make things worse, they bought this stuff from Google. Screw Google and their e-waste factories, but banning all online products seems like an unnecessary hampering for innovation to be honest. I suggest an alternative solution: for up to x years after a product is sold by retail stores, the servers must be up or the consumer must be able to get all of their money back from the sellers. This adds risk to the businesses launching and shutting down IoT stuff willy-nilly and helps consumers. Products sold in third party stores will have to be pretty reliable for stores to take the risk stocking this crap. In a perfect world, I'd like the law to mandate that online-only products like these must put their server source under escrow (to be opened when the service shuts down) and must provide the user with an option to pick an alternative server address. Sadly, I don't think that idea is going to survive even a single day of IT lobbying. With Availability as a critical part of the cybersecurity CIA acronym, I think it may just be possible that the EU's Cyber Resilience Act will include something to solve this problem.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > That would basically ban normal cell phones. You can't do calls without access to the network. I get your point but making calls is no longer the principal reason to own a smartphone. I have made no calls in the last two months and have received just one. But I have spent hours on Skype via WiFi, recorded tens of hours of video and taken hundreds of photographs, as well as read lots of books, sent and received money for goods that I have used the phone to list for sale online. Not to mention email and dozens of other applications. Almost none of my use needed the cellular network.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Skype needs servers, as does sending and receiving money, email, and dozens of other applications. The fact phones are barely used for calling these days only makes legislation for devices using online servers more difficult.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  It really doesn't feel that hard to write legislation that exempts uses that are definitionally network tied. But, to continue the phone analogy, if it somehow loses network access, I expet to be able to turn it on, take photos, run local software (that isn't network dependent), etc. Losing network access should not turn the device into a brick including non-network related functions.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    I agree, but "brick" is subjective. If Google turns off the jamboard servers and turns them into normal whiteboards, are they bricks? They were bought specifically with video calling in mind. Turning them into power hungry competitors for a slab of treated plastic sounds pretty bricky to me, like pushing firmware to a phone that turns it into a fancy front camera mirror. Even if Google just disables the software entirely and turns these smart panels into a big, rectangular light panel, they still serve some function. Ideally you'd write some sort of legislation that will ensure that products like these become open so that third parties like Zoom can integrate with them so that they remain functional. I can't think of a good way to describe that concept in legal terms, though, at least not without making it very hard to sell any connected device at all.

by mmkos 3y ago

cush 3y ago

This is an incredible idea. It’s very much like mandating the recyclability of electronics but goes one step further - enforcing the reusability of electronics. It would be a game changer for consumer and environmental protection. Literal tonnes of e-wasted iPhones would instead become offline music/game devices.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fragmede 3y ago

Or some way to force opening up the software upon the product's death. The hardware is great and I'd love to pick one up for cheap for my home office to use for Zoom meetings.

jeroenhd 3y ago
With the price these things were sold for and the type of companies that bought them, I expect someone to buy these things and hack them to work with Jitsi or some other open source solution not long after the cloud service shuts down. It may be worth tracking down if any stores still stock these things and what companies have invested in many of them, so you can try to get a deal on the hardware after the sunset date.

jeroenhd 3y ago

That would basically ban normal cell phones. You can't do calls without access to the network. Honestly, people buying these products should be smarter. They bought an expensive chalkboard that they knew depends on someone else's computers (unless they didn't even bother to look into how the products work), without any guaranteed server support period anywhere to be found. Anyone who cares about their purchases suddenly no longer working will simply avoid this hardware. The people who do purchase this stuff don't really care. They may act outraged in hopes of getting enough people worked up to start a class action lawsuit they can benefit from, but they failed to even consider "what if the servers shut down" before spending five grand on a glorified touchscreen and hooking themselves up to a $600 per year subscription. To make things worse, they bought this stuff from Google. Screw Google and their e-waste factories, but banning all online products seems like an unnecessary hampering for innovation to be honest. I suggest an alternative solution: for up to x years after a product is sold by retail stores, the servers must be up or the consumer must be able to get all of their money back from the sellers. This adds risk to the businesses launching and shutting down IoT stuff willy-nilly and helps consumers. Products sold in third party stores will have to be pretty reliable for stores to take the risk stocking this crap. In a perfect world, I'd like the law to mandate that online-only products like these must put their server source under escrow (to be opened when the service shuts down) and must provide the user with an option to pick an alternative server address. Sadly, I don't think that idea is going to survive even a single day of IT lobbying. With Availability as a critical part of the cybersecurity CIA acronym, I think it may just be possible that the EU's Cyber Resilience Act will include something to solve this problem.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
> That would basically ban normal cell phones. You can't do calls without access to the network. I get your point but making calls is no longer the principal reason to own a smartphone. I have made no calls in the last two months and have received just one. But I have spent hours on Skype via WiFi, recorded tens of hours of video and taken hundreds of photographs, as well as read lots of books, sent and received money for goods that I have used the phone to list for sale online. Not to mention email and dozens of other applications. Almost none of my use needed the cellular network.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Skype needs servers, as does sending and receiving money, email, and dozens of other applications. The fact phones are barely used for calling these days only makes legislation for devices using online servers more difficult.
MostlyStable 3y ago
It really doesn't feel that hard to write legislation that exempts uses that are definitionally network tied. But, to continue the phone analogy, if it somehow loses network access, I expet to be able to turn it on, take photos, run local software (that isn't network dependent), etc. Losing network access should not turn the device into a brick including non-network related functions.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I agree, but "brick" is subjective. If Google turns off the jamboard servers and turns them into normal whiteboards, are they bricks? They were bought specifically with video calling in mind. Turning them into power hungry competitors for a slab of treated plastic sounds pretty bricky to me, like pushing firmware to a phone that turns it into a fancy front camera mirror. Even if Google just disables the software entirely and turns these smart panels into a big, rectangular light panel, they still serve some function. Ideally you'd write some sort of legislation that will ensure that products like these become open so that third parties like Zoom can integrate with them so that they remain functional. I can't think of a good way to describe that concept in legal terms, though, at least not without making it very hard to sell any connected device at all.