5 ms·

Sale of goods act (and similar consumer protection laws in so many countries around the world)?

Silhouette 9y ago
That was my first thought as well. It's clearly not reasonable to assume a customer bought a product without any knowledge of arbitrary future changes in the legal terms but understood that the product could cease to provide the same functionality they bought it for later if they didn't accept those unrelated changes. This ought to be grounds for returning these devices to vendors as unfit for purpose and demanding that either they are fixed to continue working properly or some fair level of compensation is paid. Also, since we're getting some new data protection laws across the EU next year that are heavily weighted against organisations that process data, someone who is upset by this could probably annoy Sonos by doing things like accepting the policy, getting whatever updates they need to keep their device running, and then immediately giving notice that they withdraw their consent for processing any personal data. In the long term, I think consumer education may be the best solution to the problem of normal devices depending on fragile remote facilities. It is illegal to sell cigarettes in my country without showing very obvious warnings about how smoking is harmful to your health. Perhaps it's time that any software or electronic devices that rely on someone else's servers or remote hardware to function have to have 1/3 of their packaging (including 1/3 of the total screen area for any web pages or app purchase screens) used for a big statement that this may cause the software or device to stop functioning at any time, or to give an actionable guarantee about how long such support will be provided for as a minimum, and that any advertising for such things has to describe the "purchase" in terms of being a rental rather than buying something.
- crummy 9y ago
  Isn't Sonos just saying, if you don't accept the new privacy policy you won't get updates? I highly doubt they're going to deliberately (somehow) break devices for users that refuse to update.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    The reporting here implies that devices for customers who don't accept the new terms may "cease to function". Does the mechanism for how that happens matter? The bottom line is that either the product continues to provide whatever functionality it was purchased for, or it's now broken. Typically under consumer protection laws in places like Europe, a product that ceases to work properly unreasonably quickly after it is purchased will trigger certain rights for the purchaser, such as getting the device repaired or replaced so it works again, or getting a full or partial refund as compensation. Importantly, there is typically no exception to this principle just because the product in question involves software or depends on remote services. In fact, the EU strengthened consumer protections on digital purchases not so long ago, so the direction of the legal currents is very clear. I suppose you could say there has been some sort of informal understanding that because it's so hard to write software with no bugs or security flaws, it's reasonable for the suppliers of products with software components to supply software updates post-sale to keep things working properly without falling foul of the basic "it no longer works" trap if users don't then apply those updates. But the sorts of shenanigans we've seen recently with software developers bundling unrelated and possibly unwanted changes in with their bug fixes and security patches are stretching good faith here, and at some point I suspect something has got to give. The same principle applies to products with dependencies on remote services that don't necessarily last as long as the product itself, whether that's a server for a multiplayer game, or a DRM scheme with remote authorisation, or a provider of audio data that makes a speaker system useful.
    - X86BSD 9y ago
      I think Sonos just lost me to Apple on yet another device. HomePod here I come. Seriously this is just another insane digital slavery drive.
      - stock_toaster 9y ago
        This does seem like a weird move, given: a) the high price of Sonos equipment b) the HomePod coming out sometime in the near future c) other competitors that are starting to be more competitive (eg. "smart speakers", bluetooth speakers, etc)

That was my first thought as well. It's clearly not reasonable to assume a customer bought a product without any knowledge of arbitrary future changes in the legal terms but understood that the product could cease to provide the same functionality they bought it for later if they didn't accept those unrelated changes. This ought to be grounds for returning these devices to vendors as unfit for purpose and demanding that either they are fixed to continue working properly or some fair level of compensation is paid. Also, since we're getting some new data protection laws across the EU next year that are heavily weighted against organisations that process data, someone who is upset by this could probably annoy Sonos by doing things like accepting the policy, getting whatever updates they need to keep their device running, and then immediately giving notice that they withdraw their consent for processing any personal data. In the long term, I think consumer education may be the best solution to the problem of normal devices depending on fragile remote facilities. It is illegal to sell cigarettes in my country without showing very obvious warnings about how smoking is harmful to your health. Perhaps it's time that any software or electronic devices that rely on someone else's servers or remote hardware to function have to have 1/3 of their packaging (including 1/3 of the total screen area for any web pages or app purchase screens) used for a big statement that this may cause the software or device to stop functioning at any time, or to give an actionable guarantee about how long such support will be provided for as a minimum, and that any advertising for such things has to describe the "purchase" in terms of being a rental rather than buying something.

crummy 9y ago
Isn't Sonos just saying, if you don't accept the new privacy policy you won't get updates? I highly doubt they're going to deliberately (somehow) break devices for users that refuse to update.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  The reporting here implies that devices for customers who don't accept the new terms may "cease to function". Does the mechanism for how that happens matter? The bottom line is that either the product continues to provide whatever functionality it was purchased for, or it's now broken. Typically under consumer protection laws in places like Europe, a product that ceases to work properly unreasonably quickly after it is purchased will trigger certain rights for the purchaser, such as getting the device repaired or replaced so it works again, or getting a full or partial refund as compensation. Importantly, there is typically no exception to this principle just because the product in question involves software or depends on remote services. In fact, the EU strengthened consumer protections on digital purchases not so long ago, so the direction of the legal currents is very clear. I suppose you could say there has been some sort of informal understanding that because it's so hard to write software with no bugs or security flaws, it's reasonable for the suppliers of products with software components to supply software updates post-sale to keep things working properly without falling foul of the basic "it no longer works" trap if users don't then apply those updates. But the sorts of shenanigans we've seen recently with software developers bundling unrelated and possibly unwanted changes in with their bug fixes and security patches are stretching good faith here, and at some point I suspect something has got to give. The same principle applies to products with dependencies on remote services that don't necessarily last as long as the product itself, whether that's a server for a multiplayer game, or a DRM scheme with remote authorisation, or a provider of audio data that makes a speaker system useful.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    I think Sonos just lost me to Apple on yet another device. HomePod here I come. Seriously this is just another insane digital slavery drive.
    - stock_toaster 9y ago
      This does seem like a weird move, given: a) the high price of Sonos equipment b) the HomePod coming out sometime in the near future c) other competitors that are starting to be more competitive (eg. "smart speakers", bluetooth speakers, etc)