Companies Might Soon Have to Tell You When Their Products Will Die

Through the proposed law, companies must disclose an “reasonable” support frame for the packaging of a product and online where it is sold, and the users know how long they can expect that a device has access to these connected functions. It would also require companies to notify customers if their devices approach the end of their support life and inform them about the functions.

Finally, there is the cyber security angle, in which internet providers remove broadband routers from consumer houses and exchanged when they reach their end of life.

“The cybersecurity piece really melts the requirement that internet service providers who connected intelligent devices or sell to their customers take responsibility for the management of devices at the end of their life in their networks,” says Paul Roberts, President of Secure Resilient Future Foundation, a non-profit law firm that focuses on cybersecurity.

If the router-specific thing feels a little outside the left field, this is because Roberts says that it is a deliberate two-track approach. “These are two different problems, but they are all part of the bigger problem,” says Roberts. There are rules for the manufacturers that you have to adhere to if you want to sell an intelligent product. It is not the wild west. “

Roberts hopes that the law, if the law is supported by the legislator and ultimately becomes real laws, will create market incentives for companies that want to produce safe software products, similar to that in motor vehicles.

However, it is less clear whether this legislation in a political climate that is willfully dominated is ever prompted at the federal level at the federal level. Whirlwind deregulation. While the European Union has led to regulating the repair of the products and the treatment of life for vehicles and the treatment of life and the end of life E-WASTE RecyclingThe United States has not undertaken any similar movements.

“We are in a place where the FTC and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will not do anything that a consumer is,” says Ansel Sag, main analyst at Moor Insights and Strategies. “I don’t see any real appetite for regulation.”

Sag also believes that there is the possibility that such legislation has the potential to dampen the thirst for innovation that drives startups. If companies know that they have to support a product for a fixed time, this can restrict the type of risks they want to enter into.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing,” says Sag. “I just think that there are many startups that are not willing to take this risk. And I think that’s why it could hinder innovation in a way. “

Higginbotham is far less concerned about it. She refers to her huge collection of dead devices that makes a real stack of e-waste.

“I don’t know if this is really considered innovation,” says Higginbotham. “We have to calibrate our standard setting based on the past decades and a half of experience. Maybe you don’t just have to throw a few things into the ether and see what sticks. “