> People can and should be educated -- and expected -- to make their own decisions about things like whether they need ECC RAM.

So you think its realistic to expect the average consumer to assess the pros and cons of using ECC RAM?

We could solve this by better information which addresses your concerns about it being nanny statism. We would need it to be something that consumers understand - e.g. We could require all computers without ECC RAM to have a warning label saying something like "this computer uses cheap memory so is prone to crashing and losing your data". I strongly suspect the impact of that would be very similar to that of just banning non-ECC RAM.

I would also argue that having reliable RAM is a reasonable extension of existing legal requirements for consumer products: e.g. that they are of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose (to use the current UK terminology).