"The tech lobbyists blocked the first couple of attempts, but eventually in 2019 the European Parliament updated consumer law to cover software maintenance.
28.5.1 The Sales of Goods Directive
This Directive passed the European Parliament in May 2019 [656] and will take effect from 2021. Thereafter, firms selling goods ‘with digital elements’ must maintain those elements for a reasonable service life."
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"The wording is designed to cover software in the goods themselves, online services to which the goods are connected, and apps which may communicate with the goods either via the services or directly. They must be maintained for a minimum of two years after sale, and for a longer period if that is a reasonable expectation of the customer. What might that mean in practice?"
(Ross Anderson, "#SecurityEngineering — Third Edition", PDF-Preview 2020-05-16)
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