I think an awful lot of this could be solved by requiring the ports to export the information they get to the device, and requiring that if the devices can reas

I think an awful lot of this could be solved by requiring the ports to export the information they get to the device, and requiring that if the devices can reasonably be able to display the information that they do so. PCs, phones, tablets would all tell you about the cable and the connection. Things without screens and interfaces would not be required to add them, though. It's not that the cables support varying specs (which I actually have no problem with--you shouldn't have to pay for features you don't need, and some features trade off vs cable length), but that we have no easy way to find them out or test them.