EU brings product liability rules in line with digital age and circular economy
Today [2024-10-10] the Council adopted a directive to update the EU’s civil liability law. The new liability rules better take into account that nowadays many products have digital features and that the economy is becoming increasingly circular.
Given other comments in this thread and the reactions I've seen on mastodon, people are freaking out, but I just don't understand why. Can someone more intelligent please take the time to ELI5?
My understanding is that this would allow for lawsuits along the lines of "Your poorly written software caused [our business to lose this giant contract|thousands of consumers left with bricked devices|my washing machine to eat my dog]. Now pay up!"
Essentially, software vendors (vendor being the operative word here) would become liable for damage caused by their faulty products, just like manufacturers of air compressors or toys or fireworks.
I must admit that I can't think of any examples of this ever being a problem though. It might also be because I'm just so used to crappy software breaking things that I've just come to accept it as normal
Given other comments in this thread and the reactions I've seen on mastodon, people are freaking out, but I just don't understand why. Can someone more intelligent please take the time to ELI5?
My understanding is that this would allow for lawsuits along the lines of "Your poorly written software caused [our business to lose this giant contract|thousands of consumers left with bricked devices|my washing machine to eat my dog]. Now pay up!"
Essentially, software vendors (vendor being the operative word here) would become liable for damage caused by their faulty products, just like manufacturers of air compressors or toys or fireworks.
That sounds like a good thing.
I must admit that I can't think of any examples of this ever being a problem though. It might also be because I'm just so used to crappy software breaking things that I've just come to accept it as normal