The proposed law requires companies to reveal a “reasonable” support period in the packaging of a product and online where it is sold, allowing users to know how long they can expect a device to access those connected features. Companies also need customers to inform customers when their devices are approaching the end of their support and notify them of what features are eliminated.
Finally, there is a cyber security angle, which requires Internet providers to remove and exchange the company’s broadband routers from consumer homes when they reach the end of their lives.
“Cyber security is really responsible for managing the end -of -life devices on their networks,” said Paul Roberts, head of the future Safe Foundation Future Future Future Future Future, a non -profit support focusing on cyberattack security.
If the router feels a little bit from the left field, it is because Roberts says this is a deliberate bilateral approach. “These two issues are somewhat distinct, but they are all part of the bigger problem,” says Roberts. By telling manufacturers, if you want to sell a smart product connected, there are rules that you must follow. This is not the wild West. “
Roberts hopes that if the law is supported by lawmakers and eventually becomes real law, it will create market incentives for companies seeking safer software products, such as how to accept seat belts and airbags in motor vehicles.
However, it is less clear that the law will never be at the federal level in the United States in an unwanted, vortex vortex, at the federal level in the United States. While the European Union has led the way to regulate product restoration and end life treatment for vehicles and e -waste recycling, the United States has not made similar movements.
“We are in a place where the FTC and the Consumer Financial Support Office can’t really do something that is a consumer supporter,” says Anhel Sag, a main analyst at Moor Insights and Strategies. “I see no real appetite for the regulations.”
SAG also feels that such a law can undermine the thirst for innovation that begins to work. If companies know that they have to support a product for a specified period, it can limit the type of risks they want.
“I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing,” says Sag. “I just think there are so many setups there that is not willing to be a danger. And I think, that’s why, in some ways, can be prevented from innovation.”
Higginbotham is far less concerned about this. He goes back to his extensive collection of his dead devices-what has reached a real candle of electronic waste.
“I don’t know if this is really innovation,” says Haggenbotam. “We need to re -evaluate our default settings based on decades and a half of experience,” he said.
