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The difference here is that the illegal part requires active ongoing support from Amazon. If these devices all communicated with a central hub located in the ho

The difference here is that the illegal part requires active ongoing support from Amazon. If these devices all communicated with a central hub located in the home that was owned and controlled by the user, I think this would be viewed very differently. Similarly, I don't think a car mod company could plausibly argue their mods weren't for street use if they had cloud support and GPS access but didn't make any effort to go into a street-legal mode when driving on public roads.

sokoloff 7y ago
“Legal in California only for off-highway use” is a dodge of the law (at least in the intent of the law, though perhaps not in the fact) for at least 95% of products so labeled.
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  My point is that the dodge wouldn't work if the company had to actively assist in making the product work on a highway and had enough data to determine that the product was being used on a highway. The dodge relies on customers being in control of whether the law is broken. You can buy any of these products and use them only in a car that you tow between locations where it's legal to use. The dodge works because the company can't tell whether that's what you're doing.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    It goes further than that though. People mostly don't have a requirement to police each other's behavior, and by extension companies mostly don't either. It's reasonable to assume that your users use your product in compliance with the law. A cloud storage provider isn't required to ensure that their users aren't storing illegal data like stolen government secrets or child porn. It's certainly within their power to check if the stored data is illegal to possess, but they don't have to, and they're not on the hook to do anything more than turn it over to authorities if the user gets busted.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      People providing services that are restricted for children generally do have a duty to make at least a nominal effort to ensure that children aren't using the service. You check ID when selling someone alcohol. You have people indicate that they're 13 or 18 when using your website. If you don't do these simple things, you can be on the hook. The Alexa version of this is that Amazon says they won't record children without consent. The lawsuit is about whether they're doing this.

sokoloff 7y ago

“Legal in California only for off-highway use” is a dodge of the law (at least in the intent of the law, though perhaps not in the fact) for at least 95% of products so labeled.

daveFNbuck 7y ago
My point is that the dodge wouldn't work if the company had to actively assist in making the product work on a highway and had enough data to determine that the product was being used on a highway. The dodge relies on customers being in control of whether the law is broken. You can buy any of these products and use them only in a car that you tow between locations where it's legal to use. The dodge works because the company can't tell whether that's what you're doing.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  It goes further than that though. People mostly don't have a requirement to police each other's behavior, and by extension companies mostly don't either. It's reasonable to assume that your users use your product in compliance with the law. A cloud storage provider isn't required to ensure that their users aren't storing illegal data like stolen government secrets or child porn. It's certainly within their power to check if the stored data is illegal to possess, but they don't have to, and they're not on the hook to do anything more than turn it over to authorities if the user gets busted.
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    People providing services that are restricted for children generally do have a duty to make at least a nominal effort to ensure that children aren't using the service. You check ID when selling someone alcohol. You have people indicate that they're 13 or 18 when using your website. If you don't do these simple things, you can be on the hook. The Alexa version of this is that Amazon says they won't record children without consent. The lawsuit is about whether they're doing this.