In which the EU completely misses the point on headphones

The European Commission is calling for a suggested maximum volume to be set on MP3 players, to protect users’ hearing

reports the BBC. One proposal is to have a limit of 85 dB, which can be overridden as far as 100 dB. This is a bit daft for three reasons.

Firstly, it’s a bad idea. If someone really wants to listen to music at an unsafely loud volume – say the front row of a rock concert – that’s their choice. If I want to listen, in my own home, to a popular beat combo at a high volume, but not inflict it on my family and neighbours, that’s my shout. You cannot listen to the Eroica quietly.

See what I mean?

Secondly, it won’t work. It will not be hard to simply remove the offending piece of technology – it’s really not that hard to join bits of wire together. Moreover, the 3.5mm plug is universal. One of its joys is that headphones bought in Taiwan will work on a CD player bought in Tennessee in my living room. This is eBay, currently listing over twenty thousand results for a search within ‘consumer electronics’ for ‘headphones’. In any case, it will just make people who do want to listen to loud music buy portable speakers.

Thirdly, it misses the point. Instead of going after people for damaging themselves, they should do something about annoying others. Specifically, by doing something to stop people playing bad music on bad speakers or bad headphones on the upstairs of the bus or on the train home. It’s really annoying. Encouraging them to go out and buy speakers to they can listen to loud (often shit, often SouljaBoy) music and stick it to the man is just dumb.

They’d have a lot more success if they just put a leaflet in with every pair of headphones sold – prominently, not folded in with the guarantee – saying that listening to loud music can damage your hearing and annoy people around you and here’s a link to the RNID’s Don’t Lose the Music webpage.

xD.