Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

Re:Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair by macspoofing on Monday January 11, 2021 @10:33AM (#25730232)

If you follow the laptop/smart-phone repair community [1], the problems they run into is lack of access to technical manuals, diagnostic tools and in cases, being prevented from buying replacement parts by suppliers under the direction of Apple (for example). To me, it seems that this is where government or industry regulation would be helpful and provide most value with minimal impact on innovation and market disruption.

On the other hand, I am uneasy with regulators mandating specific designs (e.g. all phones must have replaceable batteries), or specific standards (e.g. all phones need to use USB-C) or doing things like forcing Apple to include a charge cable or headphones with their devices.

[1] I'm thinking of Jessa Jones and Louis Rossmann specifically.

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Re:Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair by tracnar on Monday January 11, 2021 @04:13PM (#25737111)

Europe imposed a standard for phone chargers and thanks to that you don't need a different charger per brand, or even per model, like it was 15 years ago. AFAIK they did not specify the exact standard, except that it has to be some common industry standard, so it did not prevent moving from micro-USB to USB-C (and whatever Apple is using).

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Re:Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair by macspoofing on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @08:24AM (#25746466)

>Europe imposed a standard for phone chargers and thanks to that you don't need a different charger per brand ...

The rest of the world didn't and yet I hadn't needed to get a different charger per brand for, I'd say, a decade or more.

What's the utility of creating a regulatory and enforcement framework for something that happened anyway?

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Re:Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair by Marrand on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @11:43AM (#25749357)

The rest of the world didn't have to because if the Brussels effect. When the EU legislates it is basically cheaper for companies to just fall in line rather than create separate production lines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

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Re:Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair by macspoofing on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @12:20PM (#25749994)

So the 'Brussels effect' has a time-travel based component? If not, I don't see how a July 2020 ruling affected my charger experience in 2012.

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