I understand the reasoning behind this law, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea in the long term. Had the EU passed a similar law a decade ago, they would be stuck on mini or micro USB today. There will probably be some plug that is superior to USB-C at some point. How will the EU switch to it? Only the big players (Apple, Samsung, Sony, etc) have the power to lobby for a change.
If the goal of this law is to reduce electronic waste, it seems like a better solution would be to tax electronic waste. That would discourage other kinds of e-waste (like those adapters for micro SD cards) while still letting manufacturers to choose other connectors for niche use cases. It would also make it possible for companies to move to a new standard without waiting for the EU to allow it.
The EU didn't mandate micro USB. It was a voluntary standard and it considered a manufacturer to be in compliance if they shipped an adapter (which is what Apple did). The fact that it was voluntary and allowed adapters is why USB-C managed to take off. Also it took until 2021 before the EU decided they needed to change the standard.
Low-level EU Regulations like this take approximately 3 years to be drafted and adopted (validated).
A whole decade is often needed if the member states consider a new mandate is needed, typically a directive or regulation or treaty clause giving the EC authority and a framework to regulate something.
Any update to this regulation will have to wait at least 3 years after a new standard has been agreed on. And there will probably be a period for adoption by the industry, typically 2 years. So at least 5 years after everyone has agreed what is needed. It most probably won't be updated for the next 25 years.
Considering the number of stupid laws that haven’t been updated, and the conflicting interests every time an update is proposed, I answer that it can be safely assumed the law will never be updated in most circumstances.
The assumption that a law that directly influences millions of people daily lives and has close to 0 direct budget costs associated with it won't be updated when it becomes counterproductive is quite funny.
The EU's cookie law still requires a banner for everything except "strictly necessary cookies",[1] which means you must have a banner if you use cookies to save preferred language, default location, or any internal analytics data (such as New Relic, Datadog, etc).
So yes, I think updating the law will take a significant amount of time.
You do not need a banner, you need informed consent. I'm sure there are other ways of getting consent other than a half screen pop-up with a big red accept button on first visit, but they probably won't get 70% "opt in" rate.
Law: You have to get some form of affirmative consent if you want to do specific often-abused things.
Companies: We'll do it in the most obnoxious way possible ("here are our 853 technology partners... no, there's not a 'deselect all' option, have fun clicking") so people blame the law instead of the industry that didn't want to allow consent at all.
There's always a deselect all option (or rather, the equivalent "accept only the technically required ones"), because it's required by law. Sometimes the operator tries to hide the option. That, too, is illegal.
Selecting the language you want actually sounds like "functionality that has been explicitly requested by the user" who "did a positive action to request a service with a clearly defined perimeter". This is clearly allowed.
Section 3.6 says that UI customizations such as language preferences are only exempt if they last for a session (no more than a few hours). Anything longer requires a cookie notice, though they do claim that a less prominent notice than a modal is acceptable.
Page 8 of the PDF[1]: 3.6 UI customization cookies
> These customization functionalities are thus explicitly enabled by the user of an information society service (e.g. by clicking on button or ticking a box) although in the absence of additional information the intention of the user could not be interpreted as a preference to remember that choice for longer than a browser session (or no more than a few additional hours). As such only session (or short term) cookies storing such information are exempted under CRITERION B.
It specifically says that a consent notice is required for UI customization cookies that persist more than a few hours, and it gives an example of preferred language as one of those UI customizations.
> Page 8 of the PDF[1]: 3.6 UI customization cookies
What's "Opinion 04/2012 on Cookie Consent Exemption" adopted on 2012, 4 years before GDPR?
Edit On top of that, actual quote:
--- start quote ---
"They may be session cookies or have a lifespan counted in weeks or months, depending on their purpose
... addition of additional information in a prominent location (e.g. “uses cookies” written next to the flag) would constitute sufficient information for valid
consent to remember the user’s preference for a longer duration,
--- end quote ---
12 years since this opinion, 8 years since GDPR, and you still have no idea about either.
You're linking to a fake website made by the private company behind Proton Mail, that tries to present itself as an official EU site. What they claim will be in their own financial interest, and not what the GDPR law says.
From the horses mouth:
"GDPR.EU is a website operated by Proton Technologies AG, which is co-funded by Project REP-791727-1 of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. This is not an official EU Commission or Government resource. The europa.eu webpage concerning GDPR can be found here. Nothing found in this portal constitutes legal advice."
GDPR isn't the cookie law. It is a law regulating storage of personal data overall. The banners are a result of greed and incompetence. The companies made stupid amount of money by closely profiling every single individual using cookies and fingerprinting. They are in malicious compliance and if the behavior continues the regulation may become more stringent.
I never said the GDPR was the cookie law. I was just linking to a site that summarized the actual law. If storing preferred language in a cookie (without any uniquely identifying info) does not require a cookie banner, then I'd be happy to be corrected on that.
You don’t need an intrusive banner on page open. You just need consent.
If the user is saving a setting like a language preference, just put “by saving this preference you agree for us to store the setting” next to the option/OK button (it’s really implicit just like their shopping cart example, but this is if you want to be really paranoid)
Well, considering the messy state of the different charging ports, that would not have been a bad idea either. I do not think it would have stopped usb-c from taking over, in the same way that the current legislation does not prevent revising it.
Standardisation is a good thing over all, and, for good or for worse, it often requires governmental entities to move it forward. If anything, it also creates a leveling field that promotes innovation for what really matters. Only big tech love the alternative, as part of sustaining an oligopolic status.
> in the same way that the current legislation does not prevent revising it.
How would that work? USB-C became widespread because manufacturers gradually started adding it to their devices instead of micro-USB/whatever. As far as I understand that would be illegal now? So how could any new standard gain any traction?
Legislatures have limited bandwidth and they tend to consider a topic "closed" once they have passed a law. So flawed laws often stick around for decades.
That's why laws are written in broad strokes and redirect exact specification to regulations written by regulatory committees, at least in Continental Europe (i.e. Civil Law system). You don't need to make new laws just update regulatory text.
Regulations to address the ambiguities and gaps in legislation, or to update them within specifically legislated boundaries, happen often in common-law systems too.
The problem is that those regulatory committees always put some kind of idealistic nonplus ultra standards into the regulations without respecting the real world.
"Sorry kids, no kindergarden here for you because the regulator requires us to build parking space for SUVs and obeying this means we can't build enough parking space for all your parents which would break another rule. So we'll do nothing."
Parent was discussing systematic issues and I was answering to that. In fact, what I'm getting downvoted for (the problem of outsourced over-engineered regulations that frequently contradict each other) is openly discussed, at least in Germany.
Maybe you should check yourself in "seeing anti Europeans everywhere".
Sure, but here we have a concrete example of a regulatory committee making a rule that apparently doesn't do what you fear. So it seems like it's certainly possible for regulatory committees not to do what you described?
I get your point, but painting with such broad strokes honestly just poisons the discussion. If you're rejecting everything on principle by applying a slippery slope, why should people care about your position?
Lastly, I'm not sure I understand what "seeing anti Europeans everywhere" you're talking about, could you expand on that?
Not at all. E.g. Germany requires housing projects to build "enough parking lots" for newly built flats[0]. The result is that flats either don't get built at all or "green surfaces" (or playgrounds) get transformed into parking lots.
So the _real world_ result is, as a society, we favor parking lots over homelessness or green surfaces which is contradictory to pretty much everything else we're discussing. These laws are from times in which the legislator thought of them to be a good idea. Times have changed, the regulation hasn't and nobody is talking about exactly those issues. There's plenty more of those examples which can only lead you to the conclusion that most finely granular regulation is rather harmful than helpful.
It is more that they never get around to addressing many of them, as legislators/regulators have limited bandwidth. Tons of things just fall off the wagon.
Yes, indeed, some things about it are better and some worse. Which means it’s good for consumers to have a choice, and more importantly, for companies with a track record of good taste in designing high-quality smartphones to have a free hand.
I trust Apple to make decisions that lead to a phone I enjoy using a lot more than I trust the EU regulatory bureaucracy to do so.
Consumers don't have a choice, though. Up until recently, if you wanted an iPhone, you get Lightning, and that's it. That's great for you, since you believe it's the best cable/connector for you. But if someone wanted something different, they had no choice, unless they wanted a different kind of smartphone. And I don't think someone is going to make an iPhone -> Android switch simply because of the cable. That's a bit absurd.
There are a lot of laws and not all of them get updated, as regulatory bodies only have so much time, attention, and political capital. The EU's cookie law still requires a banner if your site uses a cookie to store something like preferred language or default location (even if it's not tied to a specific identity), as those aren't considered "strictly necessary" cookies. GDPR's right to be forgotten hasn't been updated to stop abuse by people who want to hide their past crimes or controversial behavior. The EU's laws on self-driving vehicles still restrict maximum lateral acceleration and lane change behavior, forcing vehicle manufacturers to gimp their software in the EU.
The new USB-C law could be improved significantly if it was a tax instead of a mandate. There is a dollar value associated with the cost of recycling proprietary chargers. Taxing that would be a source of revenue for the EU and allow other chargers for purposes that we can't predict today. The current law is purely a cost center for both governments and manufacturers. And since everyone agrees it will need to be updated at some point, it's the law equivalent of tech debt.
I'm surprised at the responses I've gotten considering how I didn't say I was against this law. I just said I'm not sure if it's a good idea in the long term. And so far, the replies haven't engaged with most of my points. The EU's mandate helps big companies at the expense of small ones, does nothing to discourage electronic waste unrelated to chargers, and makes it harder to switch to whatever will come after USB-C. Yes it's possible for the EU to change the law, but considering they've started with a flawed law and they haven't updated quite a few other laws, I would bet against this law getting updated promptly.
>The EU's cookie law still requires a banner if your site uses a cookie to store something like preferred language or default location (even if it's not tied to a specific identity), as those aren't considered "strictly necessary" cookies.
This simply isn't true, and your source for this is biased as another commenter has stated.
I'm happy to be corrected on this, but your source says nothing about the kind of cookies I mentioned. Examples of strictly necessary cookies are auth sessions and shopping cart contents, not preferred language or default location. Paragraph 25 of the law states[1]:
> Where such devices, for instance cookies, are intended for a legitimate purpose, such as to facilitate the provision of information society services, their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using. Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment.
Is storing preferred language or default location strictly necessary, or just a legitimate purpose (and thus requires consent)? The EU has had since 2009 to clarify this, but many sites (including the news article about the USB-C law) interpret it to mean that consent is required, and thus have cookie banners for these things.
If you can't agree that the cookie law is a bad law that either needs to be repealed, clarified, or made more strict, then I don't know what to tell you. It's a perfect example of a well-intended law that causes more problems than it solves. And it's a perfect example of the EU failing to update a law with clear flaws. I don't know if the USB-C law will have a similar outcome, but considering the EU's track record, I'm not confident it will be a good thing in the long term.
It says that simply telling the user that the language setting uses a cookie is enough to obtain consent in this case. Not that you need a full blown banner. The CNIL even says you don't need consent to do it.
1) no one will invest in new charging technology because it’s an uphill battle to be approved
2) entrenched charger organizations with political connections will resist change. Their existence depends on it. You will only see change as they use regulations to starve upstarts and acquire their tech Pennie’s on the dollar.
But the good news is Europe invents almost nothing today so they can just have a friendly debate on which American or Asian tech to standardize on.
What Europe does is to educate talent, then that talent goes to America and works hard. Then their inventions come to Europe to get standardized. Meanwhile, Europe is making good money by investing in America, without the mess of being an experimental zone.
Notice how there are barely any names like John or Henry on those research papers or patents. It’s even a hot topic lately, acknowledged by the tech titans. As they say, Americans don’t do much and even if the legal entity is in the US, the capital and the talent is actually from Europe, China and India.
Unfortunately, it appears that with the rise of Maga Europe will eventually have to provide its talent a place to experiment things but the techies are fighting hard to prevent that.
This is a pretty obvious and desperate attempt to comfort yourself. Take the intellectually honest road and question why Europe (I’m European myself) has gotten itself into this sorry state and then try to do something about it.
In what way is Europe not in the mess of the experiment that is AI? It seems to me that it has all the exact same problems, without any of the benefits (the jobs, experience and money) that comes with it.
What you are claiming is as dumb as saying that Europe fixed climate change by blocking drilling in Europe and buying oil and gas from the Saudis instead.
It's just a swing into a recent hot topic and talking points around it, don't read too much into it. Everybody knows that US and EU are both way behind Asia and this EU is lagging behind USA due to regulations is just a meme, not more relevant than if Poutine is healthier than french fries.
The problem is misrepresented in online discussion. For example, typical argument is that EU doesn't have TOP10 companies by market cap and US has half of it but when you think about it market cap doesn't mean much and even if it did it would have ment capital concentration which is not a good thing by European culture. We don't want to have some ultra rich giant companies when everyone else tries to survive by the scraps, we actively try to redistribute wealth and are proud of our better gini coefficient. Europe is so not into this stuff that the "startup guys" of Europe on social media who are raving for accelerationism are just small businesses with a revenue of a restaurant on a high street but they think that they are early stages of Musk or Bezos. They just don't get it.
IMHO just look at the stuff you care about and forget using proxies like GDP or market value etc. For example, US has the largest companies by market cap but they are excited to have Taiwan opening a plant in USA that will produce chips on a few years old tech when Taiwan and Korea have the cutting edge stuff.
Examples are numerous, it goes above and beyond everything. China is not behind US in AI, in fact in some areas US is already trying to catch up. Tesla has enormous market cap but Chinese brands already displaced them in actual product sales. Americans think that self driving cars will be ready to go mainstream soon when China already has those disrupting their taxi sector.
Apple is about to become $4T company but Chinese and Koreans have all the cutting edge tech and Apple is faltering.
In military front USA boosts about how much money they spend on military only to find out that they are just paying more than they should and can't match Russia on ammunition.
While I may disagree on the overall trajectory and importance of some of these topics. I really appreciate your response, in spite of my semi-aggressive earlier responses.
I think it’s false to think that the value of these companies is just their salary. It’s about experience. Many of today’s businesses exist because their founders were given the chance to gain experience somewhere else. I can’t expect the next Volkswagen to come from a country where entrepreneurship is constrained to starting a bistro.
> We don't want to have some ultra rich giant companies when everyone else tries to survive by the scraps,
So we’d rather have nothing at all?
The extremely low salaries for tech workers is one of the best indicators. There is just not enough demand in Europe because there is no growth and very few companies doing anything innovative.
> capital concentration which is not a good thing by European culture.
Higher disposable incomes are also bot good for European culture, right?
Europe had 0 growth 2 years in a row and is in the middle of a second lost decade. Couple that with the replacement rate. Demographics are destiny. It’s over sadly. Had a good run.
Despite what people think. Lightning port survived way longer than usb-c ports do. I’ve seen phones with the usb-c port with broken middle bit. Go wobbly and lost contact on the board in the phone.
Let’s not even get into the terrible standard of usb-c where no 2 cables are the same. Some cables work on some devices…
> Lightning port survived way longer than usb-c ports do
Apple's manufactoring is usually more robust than most, so I doubt this is due to usb-c itself of the manufacturer. Personally I have seen bad usb-a port but never usb-c (and usb-c ports are supports to last for at least 10000 insert cycles, as per the standard).
> no 2 cables are the same
We can either have a single port supporting a variety of protocols, or, roughly, a port for each protocol. Considering the mostly hierarchical relationship between protocols, I very much prefer the former. Two usb-c cables are not be the same in order to sustain low prices for the lowest end of the protocols, else every cable would have to be a thunderbolt 5 cable costing 100$ or whatever. The problem is not the existence of the protocols, but the companies that make confusing marketing and the fact that the usb standards namings of the protocols is bad (see usb3.1 gen 2) (probably intended so by the same companies, but do not have any evidence or anything). Otherwise things are not that complicated.
I would much rather have different connectors for different underlying protocols: HDMI and USB-C are both really annoying in that the cable can silently be the limiting factor.
It has a nice click when plugging in even on my 4 yo device. Lasts forever. Every cable feels the same and fits perfectly because they are all made to a standard.
I have USB-C cables that are too loose or too tight. I have USB-C cables that click and that are so mushy I sometimes need to double check if they are in. USB-C wiggles in the port more than Lightning does. Lightning was a great connector both by design and because of the strict control Apple had over it. Am I sad it’s gone? Not really, but it was nice to have it when everyone else was stuck with micro usb <vomits>.
If the goal of this law is to reduce electronic waste, it seems like a better solution would be to tax electronic waste. That would discourage other kinds of e-waste (like those adapters for micro SD cards) while still letting manufacturers to choose other connectors for niche use cases. It would also make it possible for companies to move to a new standard without waiting for the EU to allow it.