Planned Obsolescence, like any intentional scam on consumers, needs to be illegal with real legal consequences.

[TagliatelliMonster]

Planned Obsolescence - Should Be an Offense Punishable like Any Deception - HG.org

Planned obsolescence occurs when a product designer creates a design that is meant to phase out after a certain period of time. This makes the product have a

www.hg.org

Fortunately a number of countries are waking up to this con man's racket and are taking steps to protect consumers from shady planned obsolescence scams where a product is intentionally designed to fail.

Planned Obsolescence: A Strategy in Search of Legal Rules - IIC - International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law

link.springer.com

Only France has such laws in place to actually punish those with fines and prison who intentionslly implements fails and design flaws into their products in order to force consumers to pay more for new replacements or upgrades.

Good for France!

At face value, I agree.

However, I also think there is a grey area here where it will be extremely difficult to enforce such laws.
I think the key aspect should be if the manufacturer is honest about the lifespan or not.

Especially in ICT products, this is a bit problematic. Literally as good as every product shipped is doomed to be fased out. And many times, that fasing out is planned well before hand.

An example that comes to mind is EA's FIFA game franchise.
There is a new version of the game at the beginning of every new soccer season. There's this game mode called "Ultimate Team". It is really only playable during that year's season. That's when you can get the upgrades of players etc. Once the season ends, the influx of top players dies out and many simply go extinct, especially after they transfer in real-life to another club since new team selections are no longer updated once the season ends.
And after 3 to 4 years, the online servers of that version of FIFA are simply shut down and you can't even access the game mode anymore.
This happened a few weeks ago with FIFA 18 till 21.

On FIFA 18, I literally spend hours upon hours building an epic team. Now I can't even access it anymore to even only play offline.
But I knew this when I bought the game.

Just to say, in essence I have no issues at all with products that have an "expiration date" - not even if that expiration is arbitrary on the part of the manufacturer - as long as it is known and honestly communicated up front, so that you know what you are buying into.

 

[Brickjectivity]

@Heyo 's idea can work in the usa. We need some way for it to be affordable without subsidies. A good start would be to require it of anyone who produces batteries, lcd screens, solar panels and packaging such as chip bags.