Germany’s parliament (Bundestag) recently passed a landmark Ecodesign Act which is a major victory for the non-commercial repair movement**. For the first time, members of volunteer repair initiatives obtain a legal right to spare parts and repair information that manufacturers need to make available to “professional repairers”.** Thanks in part to the persistence of Runder Tisch Reparatur, member of the Steering Group of the Right to Repair Coalition, the law requires remarkably little bureaucracy to verify eligibility. However, a significant regulatory gap remains unresolved despite vocal criticism.
Epson is going on trial. Yes, you read it right. In a historical first step, the printer manufacturer has been summoned before the criminal court in France on charges of planned obsolescence and misleading commercial practices.
Our Steering Group member HOP filed a complaint in September 2017. And, after more than eight years of investigation by the DGCCRF (France’s consumer protection authority), Epson will have its first procedural hearing this Thursday, July 2nd in the Nanterre Criminal Court.
By blocking printing when ink cartridges are not yet empty, and by prematurely shortening the lifespan of ink pads, the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office considered that Epson had “used techniques deliberately designed to reduce the lifespan of a product in order to increase its replacement rate.” These practices forced consumers into repurchasing, as the artificial signals effectively prevented printing or scanning.
This decision carries particular weight as it represents the first legal action in France, and indeed in the world, based on the offence of planned obsolescence, introduced into French law by the Energy Transition Act of 2015. The decision by the Public Prosecutor to bring charges sends a powerful signal: the fight against planned obsolescence is no longer mere wishful thinking. In France now we have a genuine legal tool, available to both public authorities and citizens, to pursue companies that drive the accelerated replacement of products.
Fairphone picking a little fight (on Instagram and Facebook) with Nothing:
“Click here” leads to the Fairphone Shop page for the Fairphone 6.
According to Tugatech (
Portuguese), the upcoming Nothing Phone 4b will feature purely decorative screws sealed by a plastic layer (and thus hardly accessible for consumers).
the discussion on reddit was a bit heated but I would say gained a bit of popularity/visibility