![]() It has long been understood that product liability could not be completely waived by open source licenses in Europe. There are numerous legal summaries of the PLD available, but this one from the law firm Baker Mackenzie provides a nice overview, as does this one from the law firm Cooley. The proposed revision explicitly expands the scope of no fault liability to cover software and artificial intelligence, and adds “loss or corruption of data” as a harm that could be suffered by a consumer. One of the key features of the PLD is its “no fault liability” model where injured parties can seek redress without demonstrating any error or fault on the part of the product manufacturer. The specific intent of these revisions are to update the PLD of 1985 to address issues related to the modern digital economy. As a Directive, the PLD will be interpreted by each member state of the European Union and applied to updates of the local laws in each country. The European Commission presented a draft of the revisions to the PLD last September, and it is going through the process of being adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. So strictly speaking, my assertion in my previous blog posts that the CRA will break the limited liability obligations that underpins free software was incorrect. The purpose of the PLD is to establish which parties are liable for defects which cause harm to individuals or their property. But at the same time, it is important to ensure that the consumer liability obligations are borne by the economic actors who deliver products and services to consumers, and not by the open source community which enables so much benefit to society by providing free software but does not share in the profits of the delivery.Īs I understand it, the purpose of the CRA is to establish which parties are responsible for ensuring the quality of software products, particularly as it relates to cybersecurity. No one can argue that the time has come to protect consumers from poor software. In this post we will examine the potential impact of the proposed changes to the European Product Liability Directive (“PLD”) on the open source community and ecosystem.Īs in previous discussions I think it is important to note that the intentions of the PLD are good. But the CRA needs to be understood as part of a larger legislative framework. In my previous two blog posts I discussed concerns with the European Cyber Resilience Act (“CRA”) which we believe will harm both the open source community and the innovation economy in Europe.
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