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If a physical device is tied to a company's service and can only be used with that company's service, it's very reasonable. What the company should do is rent
by tenebrisalietum 6y ago
If a physical device is tied to a company's service and can only be used with that company's service, it's very reasonable.
What the company should do is rent you the physical device--not sell it to you. Cable companies operate on this model.
I'm not familiar if Slingbox's devices fall in this category as I've never used them though.
- kube-system 6y agoI don’t think the engineering of the device necessarily has any relevance to this problem. At its core, this is a consumer law problem, not an engineering problem. We have laws to protect consumer because they have a right not to be cheated out of their money. We don’t make it the job of lawyers and legislators to make decisions about which engineering architectures are right or wrong. If we decide that consumers should be able to reasonably expect their widgets to last X duration of time, then that right shouldn’t be predicated on an engineering decision the consumer knows nothing about or has no power to choose.