EU law mandating universal chargers for devices comes into force

www.france24.com /en/europe/20241228-eu-law-mandating-universal-chargers-for-devices-comes-into-force

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www.france24.com /en/europe/20241228-eu-law-mandating-universal-chargers-for-devices-comes-into-force

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EU law mandating universal chargers for devices comes into force

www.france24.com /en/europe/20241228-eu-law-mandating-universal-chargers-for-devices-comes-into-force

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uh huh and when the company is sued into oblivion proving their tech is better then what? the problem with laws like this (and I generally support it) is that they give bad actors ways to club others to stifle competition.
- What would they be sued with?
  There is no requirement to prove that a different connector is better. They simply have to provide it and then it can be better by obvious design. Although it's irrelevant anyway because no company is going to come up with a better adapter than the USB consortium. Practically every manufacturer is already in it.
  
  tell me you've never interacted or looked into the legal system without telling me you never interacted with or looked into how the legal system works.
  the lawsuits don't need to be reasonable just make filing the suit and then dragging it out as much as possible is effective enough.
  Don't get me wrong I like the standardization towards USB-C. but ignoring the implications of laws like this and how they can be abused is silly.
  
  If that was actually how the legal system works (which it’s not, you need standing), then this law wouldn’t matter anyways because you could “sue” for any reason just to waste everyone’s time and money.
  
  you could “sue” for any reason just to waste everyone’s time and money.
  this is literally what happens today, all the fing time. examples of it as a legal strategy appear all over the place.
  I've addressed the 'standing' nonsense in plenty of places. standing isn't a thing that is set in stone. examples of lack of standing cases going to court and case that should have standing being denied are everywhere. you just need to find a willing judge either ideologically or bribable.
  off the top of my head: student loan relief was challenged by companies who managed the payments process as contractors for the government, widely agreed upon by legal experts to not actually have standing. cases involving abortion being tossed out due to lack of standing due to the birth or death of the fetus. Obviously US examples, but if i bothered looking into the EU id find examples there too.
  
  SLAPPs are a problem in the EU, but not to the same degree as in the US. Unlike the US, there are bloc-wide rules protecting against them that saw the number of cases decrease this year. You’d have a stronger argument if you based this on the EU instead of just assuming that it’s a carbon copy of the US.
  
  I literally said the environments are different. please read. What my entire point is about is that these problems are systemic and unsolvable due to human nature. SLAPPs were just a single example of the systemic issue. The primary way (IIRC) the EU addressed SLAPPs is by allowing for financial recovery for the defendant from the accuser after winning the case, this is only useful if the defendant can actually afford to run the trial to completion.
  You literally cannot have a legal system that prevents the point I'm making because if you did you'd have a legal system that prevents redressing actual harm, which is fundamentally the point of a functioning legal system.
  Any system that presupposes no harm is being done and rejects cases out of hand will result in unaddressed harms. Any system that actually prevents harm must have a way for a party to prove their position of harm being done. Any system that allows for a party to prove their position of harm inherently allows for the system to be abused by parties who can sink money into forcing discovery, etc.
  These are just facts about the legal system that literally cannot be avoided no matter how much you try to hand wave them away with nonsense about 'standing' or trying to assert one geopolitical area vs another.
  Either you have a legal system that allows for redressing harm or you have a legal system that is for punishment and protecting the state (i.e. were sovereign immunity comes from).
  Since ostensibly both judicial systems in this conversation allow for a discovery phase, which often is incredibly expensive for the defending party, my original point stands that these types of laws can be abused to financially drain competition.
  Again I have nothing against this law in particular beyond the problems inherent in such a policy. which in this case are minor and would not prevent me from supporting it in general; but we should be aware of the harm potential.
  
  You obviously care very strongly about this, but you should actually look up what the EU’s recent actions are before writing a short novel on Lemmy. In 2024 the EU implemented new rules that allow defendants of potential SLAPP suits to request early dismissal, requiring the plaintiff to prove plausibility of their claims prior to court proceedings, financial, legal, and emotional aid to defendants, requiring of the plaintiff to pay for the proceedings, and rules restricting plaintiffs from selecting jurisdictions more sympathetic to their cause, including those outside the EU. Obviously no solution is perfect, but at the same time the EU is taking reasonable measures to prevent the outcomes you are baselessly fear mongering about. Stop assuming the rest of the world’s governments are as evil and useless as in the US before making unfounded accusations, and actually look up the facts before you make yourself look foolish.
  
  I actually dont. you're all just dense on what I'm telling you. congrats the EU has implemented a patch that still will not prevent the issue from occurring. putting more red tape in the way of slapp lawsuits won't prevent them, just make them more expensive. which was never the problem in the first place, since you know, wealthy people are the ones driving them.
  secondly, I was using slapp lawsuits were an example of the fundamental problem with using the legal system to address issues.
  Stop assuming the rest of the world’s governments are as evil and useless as in the US before making unfounded accusations
  never made a single accusation. project much? I said the law will have a chilling effect on innovation. which is perfectly okay its a god damn power cord.
  you're the ones who have decided that I'm spouting nonsense and that it doesnt apply in your region despite me literally handing you the evidence that:
  it does apply to your region.
  the effects im pointing to are literally things you cannot legislate away,
  the slapp law your referencing as proof isnt actually proof because (see report) and its been tried before. it helps but doesnt prevent the issues im describing and using as an example.
  it doesnt apply to laws around corpo regulations which as i've been pointing out suffer from the same fundamental ability to be weaponized.
  finally I actually think the EU has been doing good fucking work on holding companies to account. however it doesnt mean we have to ignore the potential side effects and dismiss them.
  
  Ah yes of course, everyone else is dense. My bad I didn’t realize I was speaking with a higher being.
  
  lawsuits don't need to be reasonable just make filing the suit and then dragging it out as much as possible is effective enough.
  Okay so firstly that's not true. If a lawsuit isn't reasonable it can be filed but it won't make it to court. The courts are backed up enough, they don't want their time wasting with irrelevant nonsense.
  Secondly even if that was the case it wouldn't make any difference because you could also sue companies for not following rules.
  Thirdly please look up the actual law. There's no requirement to use a particular port you simply have to include whatever the currently recommended standard is, if the recommended standard changes the law changes automatically without any lawmakers needing to do anything.
  
  Okay so firstly that’s not true. If a lawsuit isn’t reasonable it can be filed but it won’t make it to court.
  yes it can and will. someone hasnt been paying attention to literally the entire trump presidency and general behavior of republican AGs i see. How much time was wasted in courts on the election steal nonsense. All you need is to find a judge who will hear the case and you can bribe one for that. Now obviously that example doesn't directly apply to the EU but im sure if i go looking I'll find examples of everything i've said in EU jurisdictions.
  Secondly even if that was the case it wouldn’t make any difference because you could also sue companies for not following rules.
  remember the issue here is the money that is wasted on lawyers and courts preventing low capital groups from getting traction. they literally wouldnt have the money to do that.
  The behavior i'm describing is a extremely well known strategy. It comes in a number of forms.
  Thirdly please look up the actual law. There’s no requirement to use a particular port you simply have to include whatever the currently recommended standard is
  I did look up the law and I'm aware of this. Please learn some ability to connect the dots. developing a new standard -> costs money. ensuring the new standard is interoperable with the old one such that it can do this -> costs money. low capital groups lack money. Therefor by definition there will be a chilling effect on new development due to this law.
  Finally, Im in favor of this law. I just don't deny the side effects it will have and how it'll potentially be abused by companies. The only way it doesnt have the effect I've described is if it carves out exceptions for individuals and small revenue companies.
  
  Wow you are arrogant without any justification to be so.
  What the hell has your weird president got to do with European Union law. The United States isn't even affected by this law, Apple could if they wanted continue to use lightning cable in the United States. They won't of course because that doesn't make economic sense but that's not the European union's problem that's apples.
  In Europe you cannot sue someone just because you feel like it, the courts won't allow the case to go forward if it has no merit.
  The fact that you claim to have done research on this law is laughable, since you haven't even noticed what countries it applies to.
  
  okay champ, People dont need to go to your towns lake to know that its just as wet as their lake.
  literally took me 5 seconds to find that slapp problems still exist in the EU,just like i said it would. you know why? because as i explained to someone else there are two types of legal systems, ones that redress harms and ones that protect those in power by punishment. In the ones that redress harms (which is fairly debatable if these even exist) the legal system MUST allow the abuse I described to occur in some form.
  Its literally just a property of how legal systems must function. it doesn't matter what jurisdiction, or guardrails you've put in place. it will continue to happen because otherwise you don't have a legal system that actually allows harms to be addressed if you prevent people from making their case about the harm being done; and part of doing that is a discovery process, which costs a shit ton of money/time for the defendent.
  I was using trumps nonsense as a fucking example because its a shared contextual of the problem that even you in the EU (or anywhere) would have likely heard about, but you'd have to actually think for a second to see how it applies. Another trumpy example of this phenomena is not paying people for their work. which then requires them to sue him. which he'd then proceed to drag the process out as long as possible, again draining their financial resources while its just a fixed ongoing cost for him. there are a million ways to abuse the legal system effectively.
  but yes, I'm the arrogant one for actually knowing my shit vs you who apparently can't even make basic logical deductions and then gets in a tiff when its pointed out. shrug Now stop wasting peoples time with your nonsense.
- Sued for following the law and making sure the required connector is present and functional? Unless I'm missing something, the law doesn't require the port be exclusive. I mean, if it did, they'd have to stop including wireless charging, and I don't see that happening.
  
  Yes, its additional cost which acts as a moat by increasing development costs. now you need to design your new connector and make sure its compatible with the existing standard.
  If I'm a company who builds widgets and this new startup will have a better design you damn well bet i'm going to sue them to increase costs and decrease the likely hood they'll succeed.
  
  And it would be tossed out for lack of standing before any arguments are heard or considered.
  
  standing isnt some mythical unambiguous concept. in fact its almost entirely a legal fiction. times when standing should be granted its not and times when it shouldnt be it is. trying to make an argument that standing invalidates my point is fairly silly, since the very existence of this law has a chilling effect. denying that is foolish.

274 comments