7 ms·

Ring used video captured on Halloween for PR

130 points by robbya 7y ago

godelski 7y ago
> Mashable asked Ring whether the people featured in the videos gave their consent to be used in a publicity stunt. Ring did not immediately respond, and we'll update this story if they do. That seems like a clear answer... > "The company is able to do this thanks to a broad terms of service agreement that grants it the perpetual right to use footage shared with it for 'any purpose' it chooses," BuzzFeed wrote. I always find this odd. Lots of people tell me that they make these TOS to "cover their asses" with the assumption that everyone sues left and right over everything. So do these people realize that that's not exactly what's happening? Do people think of this usage of footage as abuse of the TOS? Because I sure do. I'm not sure how it is really different from copying someone's art and claiming it as your own and (successfully) selling it.
- xmprt 7y ago
  Even worse, while recording people in public is legal, I think there are specific protections for children under 13 which are the people featured in this Halloween video.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    Even for adults, there’s separate restrictions on publishing the video for commercial purposes than for recording it in the first place. I don’t think Ring’s TOS can protect them from claims from the people who aren’t Ring customers themselves. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > while recording people in public is legal ...in the US. In other places the laws can be different, especially if the camera hasn't been registered.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    A science outreach job I had (in Australia) took special care to ask for consent for photos for their media page. If no consent forms were received, then they got a fluoro yellow sticker to wear so that photos were not taken. I was told that the reason for this is that some children are hidden from their bio-parents because said parents were bad people. We didn't want to risk the stalkers/bad parents from finding vulnerable children so no photos without a consent form. I think this is the implication that should be considered in this situation and I think this makes Ring either very stupid or very greedy (or both).
- lixtra 7y ago
  It could also be completely staged. By keeping the mystery for some time it’s more likely to go viral.
  - cryptica 7y ago
    But the real reason why it would go viral is because of the underlying data privacy issue. This is not a great long term strategy. I don't know why anyone would want any kind of internet recording device from Amazon in or around their home. Why are people willingly enslaving themselves to corporations? I don't see what the incentive is for people.
    - lixtra 7y ago
      > But the real reason why it would go viral is because of the underlying data privacy issue. This is not a great long term strategy. Many of us would love if it wasn’t a good long term strategy. But fb, google, tinder, uber and others point in the direction that the market doesn’t care.
    - mic47 7y ago
      Or it's just another example of ridiculous journalists expectations: they make inquiry during weekend / Friday evening and expect you to respond immediately. But you know, even people at Ring have lives.... Generally whenever journalist post sensational article, where they clearly didn't give other party enough time to respond, I see it more as an example of shitty journalism, because clearly journalist is more interested in flashy headline and breaking news, than the truth.
- watertom 7y ago
  Go read the terms for Grammerly. They own the rights to everything you type into a browser that has their plug-in installed. If you types a novel in google docs using a bowser they actually own the rights to that novel. They capture everything that comes into the browser, everything. After having a 2 hour call with Grammerly and their lawyers, it was pretty clear that they believe they own in perpetuity everything you type, bu they look at everything that is sent to the browser. If you work for a healthcare company Or a financial services company Grammerly is seeing all of your data, they think they own it, and can sell it.
  - MobileVet 7y ago
    This needs more attention... thanks for bringing it up.
    - MobileVet 7y ago
      So... why did I get downvoted for thanking someone for their post??
  - ossworkerrights 7y ago
    This should be a post on its own!
  - asxd 7y ago
    I’d be interested to hear more about why this 2 hour call happened, if you’re willing to share.
    - brobdingnagians 7y ago
      Not the OP, but I'm assuming it was due diligence for a company interested in using the product and that read the ToS, then called to clarify. With my current job, I've come to appreciate that there are quite a few large companies that thoroughly read the ToS and take issue with them.
  - sinstein 7y ago
    Is this true? I opened up Grammarly TOS and found this: Ownership All intellectual property rights in and to the User Content are and shall remain your property, and Grammarly shall acquire no right of ownership with respect to your User Content. Link - https://www.grammarly.com/terms#ownership https://www.grammarly.com/terms#ownership
- ThePadawan 7y ago
  Just to counter your cynicism with my own: I've made the experience that unless they can make profit off you, you threaten to sue them, or take them to the union/board/bureau/cops, no company is ever going to "get back to you immediately".
Zod666 7y ago
I like the idea of ring and other home security solutions, but I do not want companies having access like this. I'd like a service where you pay for remote storage but it's encrypted and they have no access. Are there any alternatives that would meet those requirements?
- chuckietwo 7y ago
  Smartvue
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    > Smartvue I don’t understand the difference. It appears you are just trading AWS for Tyco / Johnson Controls cloud.
- alexgaribay 7y ago
  I don’t have specific devices but that’s Apple’s goal with HomeKit Secure Video. The video is stored in your iCloud storage and processed locally in your network on an AppleTV or other device.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  I LIKED the idea of Ring. Until I owned one. Turns out I don’t like staring at a camera every time I come and go. And it’s obviously intentional it’s a cloud only product for a reason, they absolutely could do local storage but the model is mining and storage. Took me about 3 days to figure out this was a bad purchase.
- stevenjohns 7y ago
  I don't own a Ring, nor have I used one, so perhaps I don't really understand what makes it so special. Using Home Assistant[0], you can use the motion detection found in many IP cameras to trigger various events[1]. This includes recording video or sending you notifications[2] about it so you can watch it live. If you don't have motion detection in your camera, you can buy a motion detection module for about $10. The cost of setup is the price of the camera and a machine (such as an R.Pi) to run Home Assistant on, or perhaps a Zigbee base station as well (about ~$30) depending on what you want to do. I had a fairly decent-sized setup, including sensors on every door and window, temperature/pressure/humidity sensors in every room + outside, every single lightbulb (exc. bathrooms) was RGB and network connected, as well as light and motion sensors across different parts of my house. I had wireless buttons connected that would do various things depending on how they're interacted with and an IR-emitter that I eventually used to start programming my fan and to interact with my TV. I think I spent about $200 in total on all of it. [0] https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/camera/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/camera/ [2] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/notify/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/notify/
dangus 7y ago
In the end the promotional weirdness isn’t Amazon’s fault. The majority of their potential customers who just see the ads on their social media feeds don’t know or care where the images came from, and Amazon is legally in the clear. As long as the ads bring out the intended emotion it’ll sell Ring doorbells. The actual culprit is that we in the USA don’t have sufficient laws that force companies to clearly explain the kinds of rights people sign away by using various services. Making terms and conditions long, boring, and often not automatically expanded or viewed is all a part of the scam. It should be mandatory for things like this to be opt-in instead of opt-out. It should be mandatory for the terms to be summarized in a clear fashion in about a sentence or two. It should be mandatory for services like this to provide a convenient alternative if the service gives up a defined amount of rights. So in this case, my proposal would be, if the sharing features require giving up copyright protections like this, Ring should be forced to provide an alternative social media sharing function that does not give up those rights. If the sharing function didn’t give up those rights, then Ring wouldn’t have to provide this alternative under this hypothetical law. In any event, with all this said, it’s a commercial. It’s staged. Why go through the effort of finding all these clips, making sure they’re not only entertaining but recorded with decent video quality, if you can just spend an afternoon with nearly-free child actors making the commercial in ideal filming conditions. The only reason Ring is not being forthcoming about the video source is that they don’t want to admit it’s staged (not that they want to confirm or deny that they got permission to use some home footage).
scarejunba 7y ago
It would be so easy to ask. Most people would just say yes. That would be enough.
hinkley 7y ago
Are we as an industry really so socially awkward that we can’t ask people to cooperate in market research? Is it really easier for us to creep around spying on people like some stalker or peeping Tom? Maybe we should sort this out, before someone does it for us.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  i doubt it is a social awkwardness issue. Sucking up data is just profitable. Market research is expensive, and honestly would just be outsourced anyway.
ahbyb 7y ago
I think it's a great and funny publicity stunt, I don't know what exactly I should be mad about? Or the "won't someone think of the children" argument doesn't work both ways?
- nabdab 7y ago
  > The videos are pretty innocent, but it's creepy as hell that Ring decided to use video captured on Halloween as a PR stunt to show that, uh, Ring is always watching.
  - ahbyb 7y ago
    Of course Ring is always watching, that's why people buy those. I mean if I was a customer I would be pissed to know they are not watching
    - mattigames 7y ago
      The product description says is for YOU (the buyer) to watch the cameras footage from anywhere, not for the company called ring or their employees; btw this stunt means they had to check a lot of cameras until they found outdoor ones (so the employees probably saw a lot of internal cameras inside childrens rooms among others)
- DanBC 7y ago
  People are annoyed that footage from their home was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. People are annoyed that footage from their family trick-or-treat session was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. People are annoyed that millions of unregistered surveillance cameras are being installed with few protections or oversight. They're realising that creating a panopticon might also need to include some protection for how the data is used.
  - ahbyb 7y ago
    >People are annoyed that footage from their home was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. People are annoyed that footage from their family trick-or-treat session was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. They should have read the terms of service. Really I'm tired of this argument. "X service should not exist because nobody reads the terms of service"? What about the people who read them? Why should they be deprived of using this service? >People are annoyed that millions of unregistered surveillance cameras are being installed with few protections or oversight. They're realising that creating a panopticon might also need to include some protection for how the data is used. People should be able to put whatever they want in their lawns. Anyway I'm sceptical about this being actual footage from Ring; I'd say they recorded it with actors.
elif 7y ago
Oh no, CHILDREN dressed up for public display to strangers will be publicaly displayed to strangers! All moral decency is lost. America seems to go crazy when kids are involved.
- mattigames 7y ago
  You realize employees had to watch a lot of cameras footages (internal and external) until they found the ones at doors right?
  - elif 7y ago
    No, I didn't know that ring made internal cameras nor that those products have no differentiation.. though your account appears to be supposition to me. Based on the low quality of their selections, I would postulate about 20.

130 points by robbya 7y ago

> Mashable asked Ring whether the people featured in the videos gave their consent to be used in a publicity stunt. Ring did not immediately respond, and we'll update this story if they do. That seems like a clear answer... > "The company is able to do this thanks to a broad terms of service agreement that grants it the perpetual right to use footage shared with it for 'any purpose' it chooses," BuzzFeed wrote. I always find this odd. Lots of people tell me that they make these TOS to "cover their asses" with the assumption that everyone sues left and right over everything. So do these people realize that that's not exactly what's happening? Do people think of this usage of footage as abuse of the TOS? Because I sure do. I'm not sure how it is really different from copying someone's art and claiming it as your own and (successfully) selling it.

xmprt 7y ago
Even worse, while recording people in public is legal, I think there are specific protections for children under 13 which are the people featured in this Halloween video.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  Even for adults, there’s separate restrictions on publishing the video for commercial purposes than for recording it in the first place. I don’t think Ring’s TOS can protect them from claims from the people who aren’t Ring customers themselves. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release
- DanBC 7y ago
  > while recording people in public is legal ...in the US. In other places the laws can be different, especially if the camera hasn't been registered.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  A science outreach job I had (in Australia) took special care to ask for consent for photos for their media page. If no consent forms were received, then they got a fluoro yellow sticker to wear so that photos were not taken. I was told that the reason for this is that some children are hidden from their bio-parents because said parents were bad people. We didn't want to risk the stalkers/bad parents from finding vulnerable children so no photos without a consent form. I think this is the implication that should be considered in this situation and I think this makes Ring either very stupid or very greedy (or both).
lixtra 7y ago
It could also be completely staged. By keeping the mystery for some time it’s more likely to go viral.
- cryptica 7y ago
  But the real reason why it would go viral is because of the underlying data privacy issue. This is not a great long term strategy. I don't know why anyone would want any kind of internet recording device from Amazon in or around their home. Why are people willingly enslaving themselves to corporations? I don't see what the incentive is for people.
  - lixtra 7y ago
    > But the real reason why it would go viral is because of the underlying data privacy issue. This is not a great long term strategy. Many of us would love if it wasn’t a good long term strategy. But fb, google, tinder, uber and others point in the direction that the market doesn’t care.
  - mic47 7y ago
    Or it's just another example of ridiculous journalists expectations: they make inquiry during weekend / Friday evening and expect you to respond immediately. But you know, even people at Ring have lives.... Generally whenever journalist post sensational article, where they clearly didn't give other party enough time to respond, I see it more as an example of shitty journalism, because clearly journalist is more interested in flashy headline and breaking news, than the truth.
watertom 7y ago
Go read the terms for Grammerly. They own the rights to everything you type into a browser that has their plug-in installed. If you types a novel in google docs using a bowser they actually own the rights to that novel. They capture everything that comes into the browser, everything. After having a 2 hour call with Grammerly and their lawyers, it was pretty clear that they believe they own in perpetuity everything you type, bu they look at everything that is sent to the browser. If you work for a healthcare company Or a financial services company Grammerly is seeing all of your data, they think they own it, and can sell it.
- MobileVet 7y ago
  This needs more attention... thanks for bringing it up.
  - MobileVet 7y ago
    So... why did I get downvoted for thanking someone for their post??
- ossworkerrights 7y ago
  This should be a post on its own!
- asxd 7y ago
  I’d be interested to hear more about why this 2 hour call happened, if you’re willing to share.
  - brobdingnagians 7y ago
    Not the OP, but I'm assuming it was due diligence for a company interested in using the product and that read the ToS, then called to clarify. With my current job, I've come to appreciate that there are quite a few large companies that thoroughly read the ToS and take issue with them.
- sinstein 7y ago
  Is this true? I opened up Grammarly TOS and found this: Ownership All intellectual property rights in and to the User Content are and shall remain your property, and Grammarly shall acquire no right of ownership with respect to your User Content. Link - https://www.grammarly.com/terms#ownership https://www.grammarly.com/terms#ownership
ThePadawan 7y ago
Just to counter your cynicism with my own: I've made the experience that unless they can make profit off you, you threaten to sue them, or take them to the union/board/bureau/cops, no company is ever going to "get back to you immediately".

Zod666 7y ago

I like the idea of ring and other home security solutions, but I do not want companies having access like this. I'd like a service where you pay for remote storage but it's encrypted and they have no access. Are there any alternatives that would meet those requirements?

chuckietwo 7y ago
Smartvue
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  > Smartvue I don’t understand the difference. It appears you are just trading AWS for Tyco / Johnson Controls cloud.
alexgaribay 7y ago
I don’t have specific devices but that’s Apple’s goal with HomeKit Secure Video. The video is stored in your iCloud storage and processed locally in your network on an AppleTV or other device.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I LIKED the idea of Ring. Until I owned one. Turns out I don’t like staring at a camera every time I come and go. And it’s obviously intentional it’s a cloud only product for a reason, they absolutely could do local storage but the model is mining and storage. Took me about 3 days to figure out this was a bad purchase.
stevenjohns 7y ago
I don't own a Ring, nor have I used one, so perhaps I don't really understand what makes it so special. Using Home Assistant[0], you can use the motion detection found in many IP cameras to trigger various events[1]. This includes recording video or sending you notifications[2] about it so you can watch it live. If you don't have motion detection in your camera, you can buy a motion detection module for about $10. The cost of setup is the price of the camera and a machine (such as an R.Pi) to run Home Assistant on, or perhaps a Zigbee base station as well (about ~$30) depending on what you want to do. I had a fairly decent-sized setup, including sensors on every door and window, temperature/pressure/humidity sensors in every room + outside, every single lightbulb (exc. bathrooms) was RGB and network connected, as well as light and motion sensors across different parts of my house. I had wireless buttons connected that would do various things depending on how they're interacted with and an IR-emitter that I eventually used to start programming my fan and to interact with my TV. I think I spent about $200 in total on all of it. [0] https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/camera/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/camera/ [2] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/notify/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/notify/

dangus 7y ago

In the end the promotional weirdness isn’t Amazon’s fault. The majority of their potential customers who just see the ads on their social media feeds don’t know or care where the images came from, and Amazon is legally in the clear. As long as the ads bring out the intended emotion it’ll sell Ring doorbells. The actual culprit is that we in the USA don’t have sufficient laws that force companies to clearly explain the kinds of rights people sign away by using various services. Making terms and conditions long, boring, and often not automatically expanded or viewed is all a part of the scam. It should be mandatory for things like this to be opt-in instead of opt-out. It should be mandatory for the terms to be summarized in a clear fashion in about a sentence or two. It should be mandatory for services like this to provide a convenient alternative if the service gives up a defined amount of rights. So in this case, my proposal would be, if the sharing features require giving up copyright protections like this, Ring should be forced to provide an alternative social media sharing function that does not give up those rights. If the sharing function didn’t give up those rights, then Ring wouldn’t have to provide this alternative under this hypothetical law. In any event, with all this said, it’s a commercial. It’s staged. Why go through the effort of finding all these clips, making sure they’re not only entertaining but recorded with decent video quality, if you can just spend an afternoon with nearly-free child actors making the commercial in ideal filming conditions. The only reason Ring is not being forthcoming about the video source is that they don’t want to admit it’s staged (not that they want to confirm or deny that they got permission to use some home footage).

scarejunba 7y ago

It would be so easy to ask. Most people would just say yes. That would be enough.

hinkley 7y ago

Are we as an industry really so socially awkward that we can’t ask people to cooperate in market research? Is it really easier for us to creep around spying on people like some stalker or peeping Tom? Maybe we should sort this out, before someone does it for us.

quickthrower2 7y ago
i doubt it is a social awkwardness issue. Sucking up data is just profitable. Market research is expensive, and honestly would just be outsourced anyway.

ahbyb 7y ago

I think it's a great and funny publicity stunt, I don't know what exactly I should be mad about? Or the "won't someone think of the children" argument doesn't work both ways?

nabdab 7y ago
> The videos are pretty innocent, but it's creepy as hell that Ring decided to use video captured on Halloween as a PR stunt to show that, uh, Ring is always watching.
- ahbyb 7y ago
  Of course Ring is always watching, that's why people buy those. I mean if I was a customer I would be pissed to know they are not watching
  - mattigames 7y ago
    The product description says is for YOU (the buyer) to watch the cameras footage from anywhere, not for the company called ring or their employees; btw this stunt means they had to check a lot of cameras until they found outdoor ones (so the employees probably saw a lot of internal cameras inside childrens rooms among others)
DanBC 7y ago
People are annoyed that footage from their home was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. People are annoyed that footage from their family trick-or-treat session was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. People are annoyed that millions of unregistered surveillance cameras are being installed with few protections or oversight. They're realising that creating a panopticon might also need to include some protection for how the data is used.
- ahbyb 7y ago
  >People are annoyed that footage from their home was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. People are annoyed that footage from their family trick-or-treat session was used, without their permission or any payment to them, by Ring for adverts. They should have read the terms of service. Really I'm tired of this argument. "X service should not exist because nobody reads the terms of service"? What about the people who read them? Why should they be deprived of using this service? >People are annoyed that millions of unregistered surveillance cameras are being installed with few protections or oversight. They're realising that creating a panopticon might also need to include some protection for how the data is used. People should be able to put whatever they want in their lawns. Anyway I'm sceptical about this being actual footage from Ring; I'd say they recorded it with actors.

elif 7y ago

Oh no, CHILDREN dressed up for public display to strangers will be publicaly displayed to strangers! All moral decency is lost. America seems to go crazy when kids are involved.

mattigames 7y ago
You realize employees had to watch a lot of cameras footages (internal and external) until they found the ones at doors right?
- elif 7y ago
  No, I didn't know that ring made internal cameras nor that those products have no differentiation.. though your account appears to be supposition to me. Based on the low quality of their selections, I would postulate about 20.