German government voting over mandatory updates for smart devices (Smartphones, TVs, smart appliances,...)

[NeuesTestament]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

That's quite an interesting difference. I would still expected that judges still look at past cases and rulings but it's just they those previous ones have no legal or judicial binding?

It's complicated. Formally the decisions by the higher courts are not binding. The German constitution clearly states that the deciding judge is indepent and only bound by the law. That means that on paper whatever decision had been made in the past don't matter and the judge can freely disregard them. However since that isn't practical (the higher court would just anull your decision anyways unless they for some reason changed their minds) in the vast majority of cases you just follow the precedent.

[StDragon]

This is a bad piece of legislation due to the ambiguity of it all. 

 

"during the period that the consumer can expect,"

[hishnash]

7 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Honestly, to me it sounds like insanity to have to check every single court decision backwards through the centuries in order to understand how a law is applied

Not to get into politics but the reason for case law is in nations (like the UK) were there has not been a reset of the legal system  since 1267. There are laws written in 1267 that still apply but naturally the need to adapt over time, by moving the adaptation to the legal system these laws can evolved. Most of the time you are not checking back `every single court decision backwards through the centuries` but rather just the latest few decision that are relevant to your case.  In 99% of cases your relevant case law is likely to be no more than a few years old if that, the same research happens in Germany as you mention it is much not something the judge is required to listen to.

Fundamentally case law systems assume that the first draft of the law as signed by the monarch is going to be full of issues, and even if you just ent it back to be re-written it would then just have more issues... the assumption is you can make a better law by testing it against real world situations and changing it (a little bit) so that it fits the current situations of the world through many 1000s of judgments over the years. In the UK it is also fundamentally what creates much of what you would consider the constitution, there are some written documents that make up bits of it but must of the constitution is make up out of precedent of how governments have interacted with the royal charter that they are granted. The checks and balances that in many nations attempt write down down into a single document are instead ingrained in 100s of years of precedent, this results in much more complex rules than any writen constitution for sure.

[Avocado Diaboli]

31 minutes ago, hishnash said:

the assumption is you can make a better law by testing it against real world situations and changing it (a little bit) so that it fits the current situations of the world through many 1000s of judgments over the years. In the UK it is also fundamentally what creates much of what you would consider the constitution, there are some written documents that make up bits of it but must of the constitution is make up out of precedent of how governments have interacted with the royal charter that they are granted. The checks and balances that in many nations attempt write down down into a single document are instead ingrained in 100s of years of precedent, this results in much more complex rules than any writen constitution for sure.

That's all well and good, but to my mind this violates separation of powers, when you basically give a court the right to rewrite a law instead of tasking the legislative with doing that, because that's supposed to be their job.

 

Maybe it's because I'm from Switzerland and I'm used to being able to participate in the political process to a greater degree on a national level than many other countries, since we have four votes every year on multiple referenda and popular initiatives on the national level, some of which actually mean that we change our constitution, which can be done at any time if a majority wishes it. The last big revision of our constitution has been in 1999 and we've changed the constitution between then and now 10 times thanks to popular initiatives. So the idea to let a court intervene in that process by interpreting a law through a judge's own personal political biases doesn't sit well with me.

[Bombastinator]

True.  Germany and great britian are a whole heckuva lot older than the new world countries.  Comparatively they’re just babies. I would have thought there would have been some sort of reset around world war 1 or world war 2 because the place basically got leveled twice and Germany isn’t a monarchy or the Austrian Hungarian empire any more. One can see in the German language what a reset can do though hochdeutch is a 15th century invention and is a whole heckuva lot more regular and modern than English. They don’t even HAVE a gendered case for informal.  Ther just never was one.  Everyone is “sie”. Gets glossed over because for some stupid reason the language is taught primarily in the informal “du” which English hasn’t even had for a long time.  When was the last time you use “thee” in a sentance? It messes things up badly. 

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

That's all well and good, but to my mind this violates separation of powers, when you basically give a court the right to rewrite a law instead of tasking the legislative with doing that, because that's supposed to be their job.

 

Maybe it's because I'm from Switzerland and I'm used to being able to participate in the political process to a greater degree on a national level than many other countries, since we have four votes every year on multiple referenda and popular initiatives on the national level, some of which actually mean that we change our constitution, which can be done at any time if a majority wishes it. The last big revision of our constitution has been in 1999 and we've changed the constitution between then and now 10 times thanks to popular initiatives. So the idea to let a court intervene in that process by interpreting a law through a judge's own personal political biases doesn't sit well with me.

This one is argued that way in the US as well.  Generally by the right.  It’s one of the bases of the argument against “activist” judges.  The thing is that in the US the judiciary is supposed to do just that.  It’s an effectively an attempt to remove one wing of government.  Destabilizes stuff.

[Avocado Diaboli]

8 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This one is argued that way in the US as well.  Generally by the right.  It’s one of the bases of the argument against “activist” judges.  The thing is that in the US the judiciary is supposed to do just that.  It’s an effectively an attempt to remove one wing of government.  Destabilizes stuff.

To be honest, a big part of the US political landscape makes absolutely no sense to me on a very fundamental level, so I'm not even going to pretend to know anything substantive about it beyond the very few things I've looked into, mostly regarding copyright issues, because that's what often seems influence international dealings. But I don't think courts not making laws is somehow a destabilization of government. But again, I don't live in a country with a de facto two party system (heck, we don't even have a single head of state, even that is a council made up of 7 members made up of political figures from 4 different parties), so maybe the US judicial branch needs this kind of power to act as a counterbalance. 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

To be honest, a big part of the US political landscape makes absolutely no sense to me on a very fundamental level, so I'm not even going to pretend to know anything substantive about it beyond the very few things I've looked into, mostly regarding copyright issues, because that's what often seems influence international dealings. But I don't think courts not making laws is somehow a destabilization of government. But again, I don't live in a country with a de facto two party system (heck, we don't even have a single head of state, even that is a council made up of 7 members made up of political figures from 4 different parties), so maybe the US judicial branch needs this kind of power to act as a counterbalance. 

I think we can agree that different governments work differently and the ramifications of various stuff isn’t immediately obvious.  There are smart people in every country taking close looks at how things work and attempting to do the best job possible though.  The issue in the US is the modification of law by the court is often needed in a sort of boots on the ground fashion.  It can be badly abused though.  The most famous one in the US is a major change in anti-trust law that changed the minimum number of companies in a field from 3 to 2 which has caused massive issues with duopoly stuff like is seen in the cpu and gpu space.  It’s intel and AMD or Nvidia and AMD because of a court decision rather than a congressional one. Apple actually predates that change which is one of the reasons they’re basically a maverick in modern computing.

[Anghammarad]

20 hours ago, DoctorNick said:

Get new wife

She died 5 years ago, but then she was right ^^ if something isn't broken and does all you want from the device, why get a new one...

 

And for getting a new wife, will never happen... staying like I am till the end.

[NeuesTestament]

14 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

That's all well and good, but to my mind this violates separation of powers, when you basically give a court the right to rewrite a law instead of tasking the legislative with doing that, because that's supposed to be their job.

I don't know about Switzerland specifically, but a lot of civil law countries also have "Judge law" especially in the civil law space. There is just no way to avoid it, because no legislator is capable or willing to keep everything updated. The difference is that in common law countries this "power" is formally integrated into the system.

[dragonfly43]

On 6/28/2021 at 7:27 AM, DoctorNick said:

Get new wife

Think of our poor planet now. Soon you cannot afford anything new.

Scientists predict 2050 as the max date, I won't live up to that date anyway.

[hishnash]

On 6/29/2021 at 7:41 AM, Avocado Diaboli said:

That's all well and good, but to my mind this violates separation of powers, when you basically give a court the right to rewrite a law instead of tasking the legislative with doing that, because that's supposed to be their job.

 

So I don't really trust elected officials to ever consider anything at more depth than is required to get them re-elected (aka not much depth at all). I feel it is much better to have the elected officials provide a direction (since this is something that they can get from the people) but have the experts who interact with people and situations who have issues (the judges) build out the detail over time.

Maybe it is my general support of having the queen as head of state but I have very little trust that any elected official is able to consider things that might be relevant in 30 years time, by that time they will be out of gov getting paid the $$ by companies for their access to the people who used to intern for them.  Having the large judicial system be there to fill in and update laws as needed means that the elected officials can focus on direction, but for a nation with laws going back 800 years if every time one of these laws needed updating it needed to go back into parliament they would get even less done than they currently get done (not much).

[ryao]

On 6/22/2021 at 3:48 PM, jonahadami said:

Summary

Germanys ruling coalition consisting of CDU/CSU and SPD agreed on a new law, that would make updates for smart devices mandatory for a "period that the consumer can expect" (translated citation from the text of the law). This would oblige companies that want to sell to German costumers (meaning most of them) to provide updates for their devices for an extended period which could impact the whole market. The bill will be voted on at the 24th of June and could come into effect in January 2022.

 

Quotes

This change to §475b BGB would add the following requirement for a sold device to be free from defects (italicised text is the new draft)

 

My thoughts

I hope and think that this bill passes on the 24th and following that manufacturers will need to lengthen the lifespan of their products by providing software updates for an extended period of time. Given that the options of manufacturers serving the German market are to either not sell their products anymore or provide updates for longer, I think that this could lengthen the software support for devices in general. Since, if you already develop updates for the German market, you can roll them out worldwide. 

 

 

Sources

Smartphones Software: Update-Pflicht für Smartphone-Verkäufer (handelsblatt.com)

Gesetz führt Update-Pflicht für smarte Geräte ein - PC-WELT (pcwelt.de)

Drucksache 19/27424 (bundestag.de) -  52 page long PDF about this law draft

 

This is my first news post and English is not my native language, so please be kind

Would the manufacturers be able to release updates that increment versions and do nothing else in response to this?

[mr moose]

On 6/28/2021 at 11:35 PM, StDragon said:

This is a bad piece of legislation due to the ambiguity of it all. 

 

"during the period that the consumer can expect,"

Quite a few laws around the world are built on that exact sentiment.  Australian consumer law especially because you cannot fairly dictate how long something should last when the market includes everything from throw away devices to industrial products.  Imagine trying to enforce a law that said a $200 chrome book should last as long as a $6000 military grade tough book.  

 

The most often  used terms in consumer law are "what the consumer can reasonably expect from" and "what is a reasonable life expectancy for a X product".  But with different countries having slightly different legal parlance the terms used in this law may well have an established meaning in German law.

 

 

[mr moose]

12 hours ago, ryao said:

Would the manufacturers be able to release updates that increment versions and do nothing else in response to this?

They could, but the consumer agency responsible for enforcing wouldn't have much trouble proving that's all that happened.  Given the law specifically requires updates that maintain product usability,  a simply version name change would not suffice.

[Senzelian]

Do people that own iPhones make use of their extended software support? Considering I haven't met a single person with an iPhone 8 yet, probably not...

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Do people that own iPhones make use of their extended software support? Considering I haven't met a single person with an iPhone 8 yet, probably not...

*read this on an iphone7+ but hasn’t bought AppleCare going on 20 years*

Edited July 3, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Senzelian]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

*read this on an iphone7+ but hasn’t bought AppleCare going on 20 years*

UNICORN! IT'S A UNICORN! 

[Avocado Diaboli]

17 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Do people that own iPhones make use of their extended software support? Considering I haven't met a single person with an iPhone 8 yet, probably not...

If this article is to be believed, iPhones 8 and older made up almost half of the devices that were still in use by the end of 2020. That probably has changed in the intervening time, since the statistic doesn't count the iPhone 12 models. But even then, it seems like a lot of people are still using older hardware. Just because you, your friends and your family have the disposable income (or are willing to accrue credit card debt or get a loan) to constantly buy new phones because you want a new one every one to two years doesn't mean everybody does that. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you live in a comparatively rich country, but don't expect everybody on the planet to just be able to whip out a couple of hundreds dollars every few years to get a new device. 

[Senzelian]

6 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

If this article is to be believed, iPhones 8 and older made up almost half of the devices that were still in use by the end of 2020. That probably has changed in the intervening time, since the statistic doesn't count the iPhone 12 models. But even then, it seems like a lot of people are still using older hardware. Just because you, your friends and your family have the disposable income (or are willing to accrue credit card debt or get a loan) to constantly buy new phones because you want a new one every one to two years doesn't mean everybody does that. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you live in a comparatively rich country, but don't expect everybody on the planet to just be able to whip out a couple of hundreds dollars every few years to get a new device. 

Fair enough.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

UNICORN! IT'S A UNICORN! 

My sister has a 2 lesbian unicorns having sex on a rainbow t-shirt.  It’s pink.  Does that count?

Edited July 4, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Bombastinator]

The deal with iPhones is even though they cost more, their amortized cost over time is lower because they last longer.  The result is theyre effectively cheaper.  I plan on going from a maxed out 7+ to a maxed out 13 when it comes out. A lot of 6s users went to a 10 or 12.  A lot of 8 users will likely go to a 13 as well. You generally want to switch before the thing goes EOL so it’s still worth something on the open market.  I suspect 6ses will eat the higher end beagle type market a bit because they have fast enough cpus and decent screens to boot. Means they’re effectively worth more than a low end board even if they’re EOL and can’t be phones anymore.  We’ll see what the used market does when the 13 comes out.

[NeuesTestament]

15 hours ago, Senzelian said:

Do people that own iPhones make use of their extended software support? Considering I haven't met a single person with an iPhone 8 yet, probably not...

My dad still uses an iPhone 8 and my mother has still an iPhone 5S as her private phone . So yes, they are some people out there in the wild that do.