That’s not the disadvantage you may think it is. These laws are all focused on making competition and aftermarket repairs possible. They’re described vaguely, to be interpreted by a judge in case a company thinks they may have found a loophole.
If you specify a list of things that need to be accessible, companies will design their hardware to be excluded from that list. Fixing the loopholes takes another decade or two, and then the design standards change again.
The reasonably vague approach works much better. The battery law says that users have to be able to replace the batteries themselves without proprietary tools. No mention of battery type, battery safety systems, specific screw driver sizes, just “make sure the consumer can replace the battery”.
If the EU wanted, they could force companies to make all specs available, but they don’t. Such laws would hinder the competitive advantage of European companies and that’s obviously not something they’d want to happen.
That’s not the disadvantage you may think it is. These laws are all focused on making competition and aftermarket repairs possible. They’re described vaguely, to be interpreted by a judge in case a company thinks they may have found a loophole.
If you specify a list of things that need to be accessible, companies will design their hardware to be excluded from that list. Fixing the loopholes takes another decade or two, and then the design standards change again.
The reasonably vague approach works much better. The battery law says that users have to be able to replace the batteries themselves without proprietary tools. No mention of battery type, battery safety systems, specific screw driver sizes, just “make sure the consumer can replace the battery”.
If the EU wanted, they could force companies to make all specs available, but they don’t. Such laws would hinder the competitive advantage of European companies and that’s obviously not something they’d want to happen.