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EU right to repair: Sellers liable for 1 year after products are fixed
- jonplackett 3y agoOn the one hand I’m sad we left EU since there are some good consumer things (and Brexit was moronic) But I’m also waiting to see how this is torn apart and made horrible by big corps just like cookies was
- InCityDreams 3y agoWhat's wrong with cookies? No tracking, no needed.
- CrLf 3y agoAlso, non-tracking cookies (e.g. load-balancing, settings selected by the user) don't require consent. Still, many websites put cookie popups in place for those, adding to the noise.
- lofaszvanitt 3y agoBecause everyone mindlessly copy everything they see on the net.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoPopups everywhere that waste people's time.
- mschuster91 3y agoThat's not the fault of the GDPR. The point of the GDPR was to force companies to expose just how much they sell your data, and thus incentivize people to vote with their wallet and choose services that value protecting your data. Unfortunately, corporate greed was too high, and the result are cookie banners listing sometimes >1k third-party entities.
- jstummbillig 3y agoThat is not unfortunate. That is bad design.
- ben_w 3y agoDeliberate bad design by the websites; I'm not sure how the law could be rewritten except to just say "you had your chance to do this right, now you're all just banned from collecting anything unless it's strictly necessary, just as if every user had said 'deny'."
- mcv 3y agoWell, it is informative to see to just how many entities they're going to sell my data. My big question with those banners is: what the hell does "legitimate interest" mean? The toggle for normal cookies is generally off by default or easy to turn off, but then there's another tab, or other toggles, listed as "legitimate interest", and it lists all the same stuff I don't want: ad personalisation, tracking, etc. What's the difference? Why do they consider that legitimate interest?
- mschuster91 3y agoThat's a GDPR term. "Legitimate interest" should only be what is necessary to provide the service to the user (e.g. load balancer cookies, session cookies for logins). Everything else is abusing the term and should be reported to the responsible data protection authority.
- jansan 3y agoThe popups make things even worse, because people automatically click on "Agree to all", which permits far more than would be permitted without a cookie banner.
- psychoslave 3y agoDo they? On my side, when Consent-O-Matic don’t deal with it all automatically, I look for the "deny all" button and just go elsewhere to find the information I need.
- cbeach 3y agoI'd love to install Consent-O-Matic but when I try, my browser warns me that the extension can read and change all my data on all websites. So, the EU makes laws that supposedly protect my privacy, and in order to deal with the awful practical consequences of those laws, I'd need to give an unknown third party access to all my data on all my websites?
- pipo234 3y agoI believe a German (?) court recently ruled that sending a do-not-track header in HTTP request is sufficient. So essentially, a website showing a cookie banner despite a visitor already expressing her/his preference using DNT, is a malfunctioning website. Now all we need is some carrots or sticks to nudge companies to fix their websites. Like fines or decreased search ranking.
- jansan 3y agoYes, they do. Maybe some nerds don't, but 90% of people do.
- piva00 3y agoThat's because the implementation is illegal, it should show "Agree to all" and "Refuse all" in the same context, the implementations have decided, as a strategy, to bury the refusal which goes against even the text of the law which states it should be as easy to give as to remove consent.
- chaoz_ 3y agoI think the idea is that after certain tech piece is getting regulated, giants will use this as opportunity to push for some replacement which they will get to influence. https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/20/23801435/google-chrome-privacy-sandbox-cookies-api-release-enabled https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/20/23801435/google-chrome-pr...
- pipo234 3y agoRegulation "failures" are mostly about the wording, the how; less about what and why. I guess rather than regulating cookies, they meant to regulate tracking. Or maybe even regulate targeting, rather than tracking. The cookie banners are mostly a tragedy, everyone agrees that modal, blocking cookie banners were never the intention. But the giants definitely had something to gain by suggesting they "were forced" to harass visitors.
- piva00 3y agoAnd the forced harassment is very likely illegal, the law is pretty clear that refusing/removing consent should be as easy as giving consent. Very few sites have both "refuse all" and "accept all" on the same pop-up, even worse are the "legitimate interest" ones which hide a second layer of refusal under that tab. I hope the EU cracks down on it at some point, the harassment is very much a strategy to manufacture discontent in the public about the regulation, and it works (as you can see in multiple replies anytime this topic shows up in HN), and the strategy is illegal.
- troupo 3y ago> I guess rather than regulating cookies, they meant to regulate tracking. Or maybe even regulate targeting, rather than tracking. When I see statements like this, I wonder: have people ever read anything besides what the industry feeds them? Or the echo chambers of HN and twitter? Here's GDPR's text: https://gdpr.eu/tag/gdpr/ https://gdpr.eu/tag/gdpr/ Please show me where exactly it talks about browsers. Or cookies. You could start with Subject Matter and Objectives: https://gdpr.eu/article-1-subject-matter-and-objectives-overview/ https://gdpr.eu/article-1-subject-matter-and-objectives-over... > But the giants definitely had something to gain by suggesting they "were forced" to harass visitors. Indeed. They redirected the ire from themselves to the law and the EU. Spreading FUD works.
- jonplackett 3y agoI mean the pop ups on every single site I visit now. I wish they’d just ban them rather than force the pop ups. My point is just that the corporations just find loopholes. Like how Apple have technically allowed out of app AppStore’s but mad it so horrible that no company would ever do it.
- cbeach 3y agoThe proliferation of irritating cookie consent popups on the web is ENTIRELY the fault of the EU "Cookie Law" 2009/136/EC (amendment to 2002/58/EC) I repeat - the cookie consent popups, and the resulting de-sensitisation of users to genuinely useful warning popups - that's ENTIRELY the fault of the technocratic leadership of the European Union. "Big corps" have to follow the rules or they will face hefty fines. --- Edit: the comments about the consent forms protecting against "spying" are disingenuous. Even functionality such as remembering user region, or allowing the website to improve performance and UX using simple analytics requires consent.
- littlestymaar 3y agoNo. In fact it's not a “cookie warning pop-up”, it's a cookie consent pop-up. And there's an easy way to get rid of that pop-up for companies (big or small BTW): stop using cookies that require user consent: that is, stop harvesting people's data.
- iteria 3y agoYou're missing the point. The law didn't take into consideration that people are awful and as a result not only didn't accomplish its aims of either reducing the amount of data collected or making users aware of data collection, it made the act of using the web worse. This is the problem with feel good laws like this. You always have to write laws assuming that those negatively effected will be bad actors that will try to subvert the law. That's just human nature. People want to keep doing what they're doing.
- vendiddy 3y agoYou might have seen this already, but this was "fun" for me to go through: https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/ https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/
- lofaszvanitt 3y agoThis is treasure.
- debok 3y agoIt's ironic that my password manager also added to the noise. The one thing I do control makes it even worse.
- stby 3y agoI haven't seen this before, that's awesome! But even there I feel like the cookie banner at least offers some benefit to me, whereas all the other modals asking to send me notifications, subscribe to stuff, register here, follow us there, are completely superfluous and we should push back against those first.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoAt least they're trying. You mention cookies but, for instance, the free phone roaming was a masterstroke. I could also talk about how it costs only 55 euros to apply for a residency visa for a family member, including your girlfriend/boyfriend , and is pretty easy to get. Compare that to the $8,000 application fee for a spousal visa in Aus. It's good having the EU as a counterpoint to the US in terms of regulation. It's not always going to work perfectly but it's worked fairly well over all.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago> The rules require spare parts to be available at reasonable prices, and product makers will be prohibited from using "contractual, hardware or software related barriers to repair, such as impeding the use of second-hand, compatible and 3D-printed spare parts by independent repairers," the Commission said. This sounds like it would stop Apple bricking phones when they are repaired using 3rd party parts (screens/cameras etc) but I wonder if they'll claim they are "Security related barriers" and therefore exempt?
- mrweasel 3y agoI take it to read that Apple has to provide 3rd party repair shops with parts, and not do some weird stuff to prevent them from replacing those parts, but I don't see it necessarily requiring Apple to allow 3rd party spare parts. The wording is weird, I can see the issue with second hand parts, but Apple will probably attempt to claim that a 3rd party part isn't compatible, due to the security features.
- arghwhat 3y agoThis is not the wording from the legislation, just a rough verbal summary. I do not see any direct requirement to allow third-party parts, but the document does require providing repair-shops with documentation and parts at publicly known (and presumably same) prices. It also requires repair service to be available as long as it is technically feasible. That is, if your screen is cracked, a third party shop will have original screens to install, and Apple will have to offer the service even if you have an unoriginal battery - which they otherwise use as excuse to not perform any service whatsoever. Maybe I'm missing the part he was referring to about allowing third-party parts as well.
- mrweasel 3y ago> It also requires repair service to be available as long as it is technically feasible. If that is to be taken as how most technically minded people read it, that is a LONG time. A repair may not be financially feasible for more than a few years, but it is technically feasible for a very long time. If a type of screen no longer produced is may still be technically feasible to start up a new production line. The normal way to deal with this is to have stock of spare parts, but that goes against everything Apple and Tim Cook believes in.
- CrLf 3y agoTwo year warranties after purchase are already common throughout the EU, and so are warranties upon repair. What this directive appears to do is make the former also cover replacement throughout the warranty period, and extend the latter to one year instead just a couple of months. "which would then come into force 20 days after it is published in the Official Journal of the European Union" One important detail... EU directives don't come into force until they are translated/incorporated as law in each member state, which can take years. This is unlike regulations (e.g. GDPR) which don't require local incorporation.
- PufPufPuf 3y agoIn EU, most items are under 2 year seller warranty. When the buyer makes a warranty claim, it may be resolved by repair, replacement, or refund. If I understand correctly, the article says that when the warranty claim is resolved by repair, and less then one year remains in the warranty period, the warranty period is prolonged to one year. Do I understand it correctly or does this cover also post-warranty repairs?
- sofixa 3y agoNope, it's specifically for repairs done during the warranty.
- pembrook 3y agoListen, I get it. It would be amazing if every product was of perfect quality, highly repairable, had an instantly available supply chain of spare parts, was 100% carbon neutral, had zero profit margins, could turn itself into gold, and was in fact free! Am I the only person who is skeptical of how this will turn out long term? Not every company is Apple with insane profit margins and insane economies of scale. The only rational outcome for this is increased prices, less choice, more corporates merging into giants, and less competition for EU consumers. You can’t change one side of the economic equation without affecting the other.
- piltdownman 3y agoCSR left to the altruism of companies motivated solely by their shareholder returns is a puerile fantasy. It's like that old adage from Upton Sinclair “It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." We've tried leaving it to private enterprise - and seen that the rational outcome is eWaste and planned obsolescence. Now we try it the EUs way - which is focused on Societal rather than Economic results, much to the dismay of many US Commentators - and which also has supporting legislation to ensure more rather than less competition for EU consumers. If a company can't manage their BOM and supply chain sufficient to offset the larger societal cost, then their business model is nonviable. We've already introduced the "Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)" act which enforces things like Retailers taking responsible for recycling eWaste on-demand from Consumers, and making it harder for exporters to disguise illegal shipments of WEEE. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-electrical-and-electronic-equipment-weee_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
- pembrook 3y agoYou're falling for the original sin of central planning..."if it reduces competition, we'll just create legislation to ensure more competition!" I'm sorry. It just doesn't work that way. I'd recommend looking into some of the classical failings of centrally planned economies. You don't even have to look beyond Europe, there's numerous "fun" examples of communist and/or dictator-driven central planning (USSR, Yugoslavia, Albania, Spain, etc).
- justinclift 3y ago> Rules also ban "contractual, hardware or software related barriers to repair." Wonder if that includes trains? ;)
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] / Related: New EU law sets to make repair more affordable for selected products https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252957