Not a lawyer, but 99.9999% sure this violates the CFAA. Correct me if I’m wrong? Would t even matter if they included it in EULA or something, ‘no reasonable person…’
This has class action lawsuit written all over it.
There will certainly be many lawsuits about it, no doubt. They e shot themselves in the foot for no reason here. What a dumb move.
Outrage over ticking a checkbox? Was anything in the updated TOS worth being pissed about or are people just that fucking lazy? The article not having the exact wording of the changes but talking about the dispute resolution arbitration–that’s in every TOS for pretty much everything ever isn’t mandatory and doesn’t say you can’t sue–is a bit suspicious.
Dude already had to update the article because he misunderstood one thing already. This reads like the knee jerk reaction of a random person which belongs on a blog, and not a news article that belongs on a news outlet site.
if there was actual choice involved you might have a point but it doesn’t really matter what changes when you don’t have the ability to decline.
but for the record I believe this update removed your right to legal recourse and forces you through binding arbitration, so yes, this one does have something worth being pissed about.
If you can’t see that the issue is that the TOS could include anything the company wants and that disagreeing means the device I already paid for is intentionally bricked then I don’t know what to tell you.
I have a great business idea - sell a roku-like device for half the price and a .99 cent subscription fee. Then when I’ve captured the market I force them to accept draconian new terms that cost way more or I brick the device. By then it’s too late and I can suck all the money out of it from the people that can’t switch.
And if they don’t like it? Too bad; they signed away their rights to sue.
It’s a foolproof plan! As long as I don’t get shot in the street but justifiably angry customers.
They’ve always been able to do that; it’s often the very first fucking paragraph of a TOS. If you’re just now noticing it I don’t know what to tell you.
What flavor is that boot you’re licking? Must be pretty tasty.
I don’t agree with the practice; but at this point it’s not like you can do shit about it unless you’re building your own devices. Not that anything illegal added to a TOS would be upheld in court anyway… I’d love to see someone actually sue on this issue, but nobody upset about it seems to have the money or willingness to do so, considering it’s been a thing for decades.
Besides: that wasn’t the point the article was making, either, which is what I have issue with; The shoddy journalism.
but at this point it’s not like you can do shit about it *except not buy products that do it and tell other people about it so they can do the same just like we’re doing in this thread you defeatist weiner
except not buy products that do it
Good luck with that. Everything but food does it. Naive idealist who thinks doing too little, way too late is gonna change a damn thing.
Is there a FOSS option to turn something like a pi zero into streaming device? My assumption is a flavor of Android is required?
Edit: referring to streaming services such as Netflix. I’m aware of that home plex and jellyfin servers exist
do you want to pir8 stuff or watch streaming apps (Netflix, Hulu, HBO max?)
I’ve been looking for a couple of days. It looks like Kodi is probably the way to go.
You can use any of a number of remote controls, or even a modern cell phone.
Unless your media server is up to the full task of transcoding it needs to have a little bit of horsepower to do transcoding on the client.
That’s more absurd than my ex, who began wearing full-coverage panties to bed, until I consented to give her the credit card without monitoring her spending. In fairness to my ex, this made mixing 50 ounces of stryctnine into her spaghetti far more appealing than it had been prior
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
This guy was defending rape earlier today. He really hates women it appears.
“Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about”
Definitely not Danny or Joey. The former has been dinner for the worms since '22, and the latter’s career has been dead for decades longer than that
When are we gonna finally nail companies for using underhanded and coercive tactics with consumers?
Oh, never? Okay then.
Europe is doing it. Look at Apple vs Spotify, as well as Apple forced to open their app stores to 3rd parties. Those are consumer oriented laws. In the USA, lobbying prevent those from happening.
And until the EU starts playing hardball, they’ll continue to engage in malicious compliance (literally how they’ve responded to the DMA so far). Time will tell if the EU actually has the balls for this.
Tbh I don’t see why we would need much balls for this. There are plenty of alternatives in case Apple or whoever decides to pull out. Besides slight inconvenience there’s not that much reason to keep dancing to the fiddle of foreign companies.
The DMA took effect since yesterday I think and the fine for it was like up to 20% of global revenue if I remember correctly. The EU has enforced GDPR very well so far so I don’t doubt them enforcing this.
US: best we can do is a other corporate tax cut
Tbf Biden is currently campaigning on raising corporate taxes and the top tax bracket. To actually get anything done though, Democrats would have to take back the house.
When we make lobbying illegal in
this countrythe United States
Shit happened to me yesterday. Pissed me off. Bought this TV years ago and suddenly I can’t use it until I accept their new arbitration shit. I’m building a stream box and disabling the internet on this thing. I’m sick of ads anyway.
Do it, its worth the effort
Build a Plex/Jellyfin server while you’re at it
The devices those users paid for? That should be illegal.
I’m pretty sure this won’t fly in court because this is a significant change to a product long after the product was purchased, which could potentially fly in the face of false advertising laws, since this “feature” was not advertised, and they’re not being denied access to a product they purchased. It’s clearly coercive.
However, this is the USA and stupider shit has happened. Judges here love to gargle corporate balls. See: Clearance Thomas.
Also how would they prove the owner even saw the notice they supposedly agreed to? This is probably them testing the waters for something worse.
We have a couple of Rokus, but I haven’t seen the prompt yet. I’m thinking my 8 year old clicked through it. I wonder what situation that creates.
You didn’t consent and your child can’t.
In general, those terms and conditions are not enforceable, but that’s not why they exist. Roku knows that if they are challenged, they will probably not win in court, but it creates that first hurdle. It costs money to go to court and hire lawyers to make those arguments. And Roku is willing to pay more for lawyers, so maybe they do win. So for you, the little guy, how much can you afford to spend on a case where you might lose?
The point is that few have the money to prove this.
Clearance Thomas.
Please do NOT change this. It is both accurate and delightful.
-chef’s kiss-
“Roger Rodger”
“we’ve got clearance Clarence”
“What’s our vector victor?”From the movie airplane.
Oh, to be fair, I stole that from someone else. Similar story, don’t know if it was on purpose or on accident (didn’t ask). It’s fucking gold. Anyway, it was a random reddit comment deep in a thread, sorry I can’t credit them since I don’t recall their name.
Props for not claiming it anyways
My in-laws have all Roku tvs. I had to go over and “fix” the TV’s for them cause they didn’t understand what the hell this was. I straight up just gave them my modded Nvidia shields and bought myself some more. Fuck that shit. We need a better open source tv like interface. I’ve used plasma big screen but it’s not ready for normal people with not Linux but fixing experience.
What does a moded Nvidia shield give you? Is it rooted or something else. I’m curious because I have been looking at them as a replace for Chromecast android tv
Maybe modded is the wrong word. They’re rooted with a different launcher and my pihole does it’s best to block telemetry. Getting rid of the Google launcher with ads on it is a major improvement.
Ah, that’s awesome. If you have any howtos to share i would be ever so greatful.
I have pihole also doing its best to block everything it can
My kid consented. I think. Can she make binding contracts that she doesn’t tell me about because she’s looking for Blues Clues, or am I responsible for every OK she checks when I’m not present?
“Am I legally liable or is logic to be applied here”
Oh c’mon, apply some logic, you know logic won’t be applied, money will.
I let my cat step on the remote. Fucker doesn’t pull his weight, so if the lawyers come after him he’s on his own.
If his name is Fritz, I suspect he’ll navigate any hassles skillfully
Why not? The Vatican has believed that kids as young 6 are capable of consenting to sodomy since at least The 11th Century, and for the most part, the courts and cops have tacitly agreed with them. If anything, Roku is finally catching up with the rest of humanity
Between this and Amazon’s recent nonsense with Firetv I think next time I’ll just buy a generic Android box or something, maybe even a mini PC.
I spend the last couple weeks looking Into modded boxes and anti ad options and I came to the conclusion that a mini pc with wireless keyboard and mouse is the way to go. No special nonsense required. It’s super easy to just find whatever I wanna watch online for free anyways and I don’t need any special program or knowledge.
Now my next issue is between finding a dumb TV or a solid affordable projector. I mostly use the TV for movie nights anyways, I game on my pc and watch most stuff on my pc too.
The main problem with a mini PC is a lot of streaming services won’t serve you 4k content. Not an issue if you get your content from other sources though.
😎😉
I have no idea how US contract law works. Even if you agree to something that says “we can alter the deal at any time”, when a change happens to the deal, don’t both sides have to benefit, rather than “agree to this change so that you can keep the same thing you had before”?
But don’t you see, the consumer surely benefits. After agreeing they get to continue using their tv under our new and wonderful terms of service. /s
I honestly think a lot of these terms of service agreements are legally unenforceable, but they don’t get contested in court very often.
Like if they say “you consented to the arbitration agreement” I could just argue I never physically signed anything and it was actually my 5 year old who agreed so he could watch TV.
Hadn’t actually thought about this but it’s a good point, they are varying the T&Cs with no consideration here.
You know what. Pirate everything.
With jod as my witness, I will download a tv.
There is no doubt I would download a tv/car/house if I could.
There should be a law that any change of T&C after the purchase of a product gives the customer the option to refuse the terms and get a full refund of that product, no matter how old it is.
I have a smart light switch I can’t use anymore because they updated the app to force you to make an account to use it and I refused since it worked fine for the last 3 years without them needing to sell my data.
If the firmware on the switch hasn’t been updated to not function with old versions of the app why not just snag an old APK and use the old app version?
At least as long as you own the thing, worth a shot
Easier to replace the light switch at that point
It’s… really not that hard.
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Uninstall the new app, download the old app from https://www.apkmirror.com/ (which is basically an archive of most apps downloadable from Google Play).
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Use an app like APK signer to change the app’s “signature” so it doesn’t automatically update.
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Install it.
It takes like 10 minutes at most.
I did exactly this with the Discord app last year when they suddenly changed the app’s entire layout.
I love discord’s new layout, did you give it a chance?
What I’m talking about was when they changed the Android app to behave more like the iOS app. It was a buggy mess when it first launched. It’s much better now, though. I’ve since updated my app to the current version.
-
I do believe it was. It was a TP Link smart switch and it routinely needed updates or else it wouldn’t work. The app was finicky as hell before and I don’t really care anymore for it since it’s main use was to turn on the bedroom lights automatically. But now I work 2nd shift so the sun is up anyway when I wake up. It works as a normal switch now.
Well, my next tv won’t have a Roku in it. I was just about to buy one, and if anyone here has any advice on a dumb TV with no built-in smart features, I would really appreciate some suggestions. They’re surprisingly difficult to find nowadays. I’m looking for some thing 43 inches or smaller, 4K or 1080, and nothing special. Preferably very cheap.(I’m poor)
My setup is a Samsung that doesn’t have WiFi setup. It supports HDMI CEC, as does my game console and streaming box, so I basically never touch the TV remote. It’s effectively a dumb monitor.
I mostly stream via my Xbox and AppleTV since they’re performant systems.
It’s effectively a dumb monitor.
I may be old-fashioned but that’s the only thing a TV is supposed to be. You choose how to use it by its periphery.
Smart TVs are usually sold at a loss because they expect to make the money back through ads, so if you never connect one to the internet in the first place, you get a cheap decent TV and you cost these cockroaches money
I have heard that you can’t just choose to not connect it, you actually have to route it to a dead end like a pihole. Supposedly some of these smart TVs will make you think you were allowed to bypass completely but have just connected to the nearest unsecured network.
Not an issue for people who have no neighbors, but people who live in a suburb or city?
I’m not sure about generally, but on Roku specifically, the first step is to kick it off your network. I Mac address banned mine because it was connected to wireless. Then I could use the menus. I used them to factory reset the TV. During the reset process you hit “do this later” on anything that is trying to get you to connect to the Internet. Afterwards, you’ve got a plain dumb TV.
Thank you so much for this walk through.
I’ve heard that too. I’ve also verified that the only unsecured network in range is my own mobile hotspot, and never once seen my TV (or anyone else’s in my apartment building) connect to it. We really need to stop saying that this is a thing that’s happening when the only evidence for it is “someone somewhere said it once”
Most LGs can be set up without internet at all.
My fucking Samsung Refrigerator refused to cool until I paired it to a mobile app. It wasn’t even one of those fancy tablet screen ones. It beeped at me for hours until I had the time to figure out wtf was wrong with it.
That’s insane. I know it’s a ball ache to move them but I’d have taken that thing right back and gotten a refund.
Yeah, I would have to if I had chosen it, but it was probably the cheapest stainless steel they carried in that size. Landlord replacement when the last fridge crapped out
Any TV is dumb, if you don’t connect it to the net
Unfortunately I’ve seen a few recent TVs that constantly pester you to connect it to the internet. TV makers are trying to crush that.
Maybe just buy a monitor, particularly if you only need streaming.
I use my “smart” tv as a monitor to stream. It has never connected to the internet and it does not pester me.
This is the real answer. If you don’t have any benefit from connecting it to the Internet, don’t. Use a separate device for streaming, if you have to. I guess Apple TV or NVIDIA Shield, or Chromecast? I need to look into the benefits, but I don’t want to support Roku anymore…
Enshittification continues. I used to evangelize roku bc I want a dumb TV. I guess that’s no longer valid.
Dude it’s a terms of service update, it’s not like watching ads on a subscription you already pay for.
The terms of service update made you sign away your rights to sue the company if they refused to honour the warranty, that’s what people are upset about
I know, I read it, and those words mean absolutely nothing. You and I will never be affected by it. It’s like a random passerby waving sage at you and telling you they’ve disturbed your aura.
I promise you practically every TOS you’ve ever blindly clicked through said something very similar.
You are downvoted, but you are right that at least some do this
ToS are generally not binding as it’s not expected for the average person to actually read through the dense language. There is precedent for this
