This is addressed by product approvals and safety standards. Apple, Dell or BestBuy aren’t going to be selling knockoff chargers. If other stores are selling counterfeit products that don’t comply with approvals/standards they should face fines and criminal charges.

Interesting hypothesis, but it doesn't explain the pattern.

That's also true of a million other categories of dangerous equipment, and yet almost none of them lock out competitors by using proprietary interfaces. A shoddy saw blade could kill me, too, but I still can go buy any blade from any manufacturer and put it in any table saw, and it'll work.

OTOH, there are gratuitous incompatibilities galore as soon as you get into software. Network protocols, file formats, executable formats, and so on.

What could explain the situations where we see compatibility versus incompatibility? If it's obvious and visible, and Average Joe can make it fit (like with a hammer), they go ahead and make it compatible. If it's secret and internal and they can hide the differences in ways that Average Joe can't work around (like software), they feel free to make it as incompatible as possible.

So what does that have to do with DRM? That's what products liability suits are for. You sue the maker of the shoddy battery/charger. DRM can't protect you from that -- what happens when you buy the whole device from the shoddy vendor?

edit: Yes, of course some of the vendors will be gone or judgment proof. So don't buy from disreputable vendors. Which brings us back to the original problem -- if the user is willing to buy from them, they could just as easily be buying an entire laptop or a toaster for their kitchen. So solve it the way you solve those instead of stamping out competition, because you need to solve those anyway.

Or put it another way: If OEMs really wanted to solve this, they would stop overcharging so much for chargers and battery replacements so that people wouldn't have to play the Chinese equipment lottery to avoid paying a 1000% markup.

Attempting to sue the overseas manufacturer of your no-name third party AC adapter is pretty much the definition of futility.

> You sue

You may not get the chance. Some damage is irreversible and a lawsuit will probably only bring you some legal expenses. Preventing disasters is smarter and cheaper than inviting them and then clogging up a courtroom to complain that the perfectly preventable disaster actually happened after you invited it.

The product vendor stopped existed a week after you bought it from them.

USB-C is supposed to negotiate a voltage and current that are safe for both ends of the connection as well as for the cable itself. A "shoddy" charger can supply too little power, but it's not going to overcharge a battery.

A shoddy charger can supply mains power to your device. Example [0].

[0] http://www.righto.com/2014/05/a-look-inside-ipad-chargers-pr...

I blame Amazon and other reckless online marketplaces for this. Why are they not required to check all products they lost to conform with local safety standards? Would you buy something from a supermarket and take even a 0.01% (or whatever) chance that it literally blows up into your face?

Is eBay required to test every single product and sale, including the $150 used laptop that Grandma is trying to sell?

I recently bought a pair of Taotronics headphones from Amazon. They are a Chinese knockoff of more premium ANC noise cancelling headphones, at a quarter of the price.

The performance is incredible, and if you slapped a Bose brand on it, I could absolutely believe it's the real thing.

I would like to buy more "Taotronics-like" products from "reckless" marketplaces. For example, I'm looking at NASes. The top brand names like Synology are selling ~$40 worth of components BoM for $400. That's ridiculous!

Jeff Bezos is often quoted as 'Your margin is my opportunity'. As a consumer, I LOVE it.

> Is eBay required to test every single product and sale, including the $150 used laptop that Grandma is trying to sell?

Private sales are different than commercial sales.

I'd argue that any marketplace that allows other commercial sellers on its platform should be held accountable for anything safety and tax related their sellers do.

They should take necessary precautions to verify the sellers and routinely check the products. In Germany VAT dodging by Chinese companies selling on Amazon (let Amazon deliver with FBA and just don't pay taxes afterwards) got recently regulated so that Amazon is liable and the amount of Chinese crap dropped significantly.

That isn't drm but certification. E.g. if the device isn't certified then you shouldn't use it, but if you still want to use it, it is your choice.

You can’t tell.

Fake chargers and cables are very convincing.

How could it possibly be “your choice”?