The ColorHug adds a remote disable "feature"

I don't agree with the hostility to "these sorts of laws" - terminology that suggests a problem with regulation in general - but it's clear that honest retailers and sellers have significant problems with fraudsters to whom the law in question has given a substantial amount of room to profit without any serious repercussions.

Try buying stuff from UK retailers on the Internet from outside the UK: it has become increasingly difficult to use non-UK payment cards, and frequently a UK address has to be provided. Given that the UK is in recession, you'd think that moderately trustworthy foreign spending would be welcome, so this actually hurts the UK economy, too.

In fact, this whole business seems to reflect the "car boot sale" mentality that is pervasive in the UK: try to buy things for next to nothing; if they don't work properly then just try and sell them on to some unsuspecting "punter"; or claim that the thing you just bought was broken and demand your money back even though it works perfectly. Either way, the supposedly unintentional consequences of badly written laws like this are that it's every man for himself, and the more selfish you are the more you gain.

No wonder eBay is so popular in the UK.