See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn’t use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don’t agree to their terms, then I don’t get access to their new products. That sucks, but fine - I don’t use their services except for the TV itself, and honestly, I’d rather by a dumb TV with a streaming box anyway, but I can’t find those anymore.
Anyway, the new terms are about waiving your right to a class action lawsuit. It’s weird to me because I’d never considered filing a class action lawsuit against Roku until this. They shouldn’t be able to hold my physical device hostage until I agree to new terms that I didn’t agree at the time of purchase or initial setup.
I wish Roku TVs weren’t cheap walmart brand sh*t. Someone with some actual money might sue them and sort this out…
EDIT: Shout out to @testfactor@lemmy.world for recommending the brand “Sceptre” when buying my next (dumb) TV.
EDIT2: Shout out to @0110010001100010@lemmy.world for recommending LG smart TVs as a dumb-TV stand in. They apparently do require an agreement at startup, which is certainly NOT ideal, but the setup can be completed without an internet connection and it remembers input selection on powerup. So, once you have it setup, you’re good to rock and roll.
IANAL, and not that it really makes this bullshit any better but…
It’s unlikely that agreeing to terms of service that claim you waive rights to any class action lawsuit would actually hold up as legally binding in court. Many of these agreements aren’t reply binding are already legally gray… Plus, universally vaguely signing your legal rights away in any contract doesn’t hold any water either.
I highly doubt you’d actually lose any rights to a check box that’s bound to “you can’t ever sue us”.
IANAL either, but I’m pretty sure you are correct. I put it in another comment somewhere, but I’m more upset about not being given a choice to refuse the change rather than the actual change itself. I don’t mind signing the waiver at amusement parks, or to buy a car with no warranty. I just want to know what I’m agreeing to, and I don’t like folks pulling the rug out from under me or changing the deal.
The situation feels like if I were to drop out of college, I would be given electroshocks until I’d forgotten anything learned in class.
IANAL either, but from my understanding of contract law, not only are terms waiving your rights not legal, a contract necessarily entails mutual agreement followed by an exchange of a thing of value. In this case, they are holding a thing that you own (which they made and designed to work in this manner no less) hostage until you agree.
I don’t think that counts as an “exchange of a thing of value”. There’s no exchange there, so it doesn’t even qualify as a contract. Even if they’re supposedly adding features along with the update, if you didn’t agree to the features being added then that can’t be considered forming a contract either. Also it’s not free agreement on your part, so it fails on a number of levels.
In fact this behaviour sounds like it’s arguably illegal to me. It could even be the subject of a class action lawsuit. I imagine the courts would be especially unfavourable to the idea that they were doing this specifically to ask you to waive your right to do so.
The legal term is “consideration”. To form a contract you must have three elements: Offer, consideration, and acceptance.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure it would help here. They would argue their consideration is whatever online services are tied to the product, but even without that, the contract isn’t being formed at this point (unless someone is going through first setup, at which point they can still return it). The contract was already formed and this is an amendment to those terms that the original wording likely has weasel words to permit.That’s not to say the consumer has no recourse, consumer rights are probably the best bet. If the previous terms don’t expressly grant them the right to take away access to all features in circumstances like this, it may be possible to find them in breach, but unfortunately EULAs are usually pretty toothless when it comes to penalising the vendor.
I would like to know how much of this has been tested in court, and how much has just been insinuated by the sheer volume of corporate lawyers insisting that they’re allowed to pull this crap. Because you can just write any old junk down, but lawyers don’t make the law.
Like, on the basic level of what a contract is, how can one party reserve the right to unilaterally change the terms? How can an EULA be binding when the exchange has already happened and no agreement was made except the delivery of a product? How can consideration be forced on one party while their property is held ransom? And esepcially how can a fundamental legal right be waived in such a manner?
If this happened in any other sphere it would be understood as some kind of vandalism, theft extortion, or something. Like your builder just shows up one day, “Hey, I installed a new sink in your kitchen! You can’t use your house until you agree I’m not liable for anything that happens to your house from this point forward. No, you can’t read it, just sign it. This is a real contract because I gave you something of value.” I suspect this isn’t happening because it’s perfectly legal, but because the internet of things hasn’t matured enough to have strong legal precedents established and there hasn’t yet been a big public backlash against it.
I think the more they try to pull this garbage the more people will start to realise that this is bullshit and do something about it.
People might not like this suggestion but I got an AppleTV when my Roku TV started showing ads. Like everything with Apple, it cost money but at least there’s no fucking ads. (I have a Raspberry Pi running Kodi for my “DVD rips” but for streaming services, the Apple TV is great. It’s got HDR and Dolby support and they don’t fuck up the user experience on purpose. I know it’s making a deal with the devil but it does just work. I usually am a DIY person but when I sit down to watch TV, I just want to relax.)
How could I get it to show my 4K HDR files?
By the Apple TV 4K version…
And then…
Your Apple TV will connect to your computer’s iTunes Library via Home Sharing if you want it to, and then you can add whatever you like to your own iTunes Library, if that’s what you were wondering.
This. I used a large-screen, dumb tv as a computer monitor for streaming for several years. My kid got his first real job and bought us a smart TV. It is so much worse…
Sucks this happened to you. If it is still under warranty, you should return it for a replacement or store credit. Complain that it has ceased to function.
A good set of advice is to never connect your TV to the internet. A cheap streaming box or HTPC does the same function, and doesn’t open you up to issues like this. Your TV is also almost certainly selling your viewing data if you have it connected to the internet.
While it’s good advice to never intentionally connect TV to internet, some devices bypass you if they can. I think it was samsung that would connect to any other samsung product and through them to the internet, even if the other product was in your neighbor’s living room.
This is disturbing. I wanted to know more so I googled it but I found nothing. Where did you hear this?
Not sure of Samsung’s offering but it sounds very similar to Amazon Alexa’s sidewalk “feature”
Sounds like Windows “Delivery Optimization” for Microsoft updates as well.
I reached out to Roku support regarding this. The rep told me “why are you complaining. You are the only one.” He then disconnected the chat. I’ve reached out to my state’s AG to report this. No action so far but waiting. If there are enough complaints, that might help move the needle.
What Roku is doing should be completely illegal - bricking the product after purchasing it for full price if you don’t agree to waiving your rights.
Report Roku to the FBI for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by hacking into and sabotaging your property.
That’s a sincere suggestion, by the way. This shit should literally be a crime.
Don’t do this. This just creates more work for the FBI and you know that report is going straight into the rubbish bin. That is just wasting public resources.
Piss off. You’re not even an American. Don’t tell us what to do with our FBI.
I am American.
Imposter! No Murcan would use “rubbish bin”.
“Offence” as opposed to offense, and “behaviour” instead of behavior are also non-standard for American English.
So I looked at his post history, and sure enough, there are multiple instances of “cheque” instead of check, “centralised” instead of centralized, and other obvious uses of British or Asian English.
Maybe NateNate60 is American by citizenship, but doesn’t appear to be a native American English speaker.
It’s almost as if being American and speaking languages are separate things!
Always has been two different things. America is a melting pot and the number of people here with English as a second language here is very high, perhaps higher than anywhere else, I don’t know. It’s great for me because I’ve picked up a lot of language that way. Also, I used to be able to write and spell words better than I do now, but non-American English still sticks out to me for whatever reason.
But with the amount of trolling going on, especially by people pretending to be American leading up to the next election, it’s always a good idea to take a second look at claims of citizenship when someone’s credibility in a thread rests on their statement, “I am an American!”
