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"unauthorized users". They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. The company I work for has a policy where we don't block third p

"unauthorized users". They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. The company I work for has a policy where we don't block third party clients, as long as they use a uniquely identifiable user agent and API key that we provide to them. That way we can easily monitor if they're calling endpoints excessively and make sure that our alarms don't go off when they did something wrong, but still offer power users flexibility. Power users are the users you can get good feedback from, and they spread the word more than a regular user would. If keeping them happy doesn't require active effort, it would be silly to start a cat-and-mouse game just to keep them busy and angry with you.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> The company I work for has a policy.. [lists some sound policies] Just a blind guess but is your company free of control by shareholders, venture capitalists and private equity?
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > is your company free of control by shareholders A company is by definition controlled by its shareholders.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > A company is by definition... company: noun kʌm.pə.ni an organization that sells goods or services in order to make money: - OED
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      The definition that matters is not the OED, but the laws that govern companies.
      - vineyardmike 3y ago
        There’s no real law to maximize profits. Just greed and a court precedent, which has way more nuance than people realize. No body of legislation ever said that companies needed to maximize profits.
        Karellen 3y ago
        > There’s no real law to maximize profits. Just greed and a court precedent, I thought that in Common Law countries, court precedents are "real law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law > In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions. (emphasis mine)
        dingnuts 3y ago
        Y'all are arguing about a specific class of corporation while using the word "company". A company could be one guy with an LLC, and that one guy is obligated by no law or person to earn a profit as long as he can sustain the costs of the business. A great example of a company that appears to be operating at a loss for a very long time because of the beliefs of the founder/owner is Canonical. If he cannot sustain the costs of the business then I guess you can argue that there's a law of nature in play saying that the proprietor has to earn some amount of profit just to exist, but if you're shaking your fist at Nature demanding that we produce the value that we intend to consume, well, good luck. You may as well be upset about the existence of gravity, or that food must be grown or hunted in order to be eaten.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        No law requires companies to have shareholders, unless they're corporations. And even then, a corporation can have a single shareholder.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - 3y ago
  - qzw 3y ago
    Pedantic: A corporation is controlled by its shareholders. Other forms of ownership can be sole proprietorships, partnerships, professional associations, etc.
    - abduhl 3y ago
      Pedantic: a corporation is controlled by its Board of Directors. Shareholders ostensibly elect the directors but they do not control them.
    - mminer237 3y ago
      I wouldn't call a sole proprietorships a company. Professional associations are still controlled by their shareholders. You can substitute "partners" for partnerships and "members" for LLCs since they're essentially all the same thing.
- dylan604 3y ago
  In their “list some sound policies”, they did not mention gather as much data about the user, store that data, analyze that data for earning money from ad sales. If those policies were not left out for convenience and it truly does not happen, then I’d venture the answer to your question is no.
eddieroger 3y ago
I'm not here to defend Chamberlain, mostly because I'm a pissed off user, but you are able to control your door still with RF products and buttons. Use of their API is separate, and they are able to authorize or not users to their API, which then also talks to your garage door. A lame nuance. We never own the API, we (sorta) own the product.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > …you are able to control your door still with RF products and buttons. This isn’t relevant since that’s not why I bought a Chamberlain product. I bought it specifically for the capability that they arbitrarily killed.
  - eddieroger 3y ago
    You should probably read that EULA that none of us read. We don't own their service. Never have. Downvotes don't make it less true.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, but thank you! Yes, I understand that they’re legally protected, and I’m out hundreds of dollars for a replacement and its installation.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    I filed an FTC complaint, you should too. I don't need the resources to fight Chamberlain on this, I'm going to let the federal government do it. https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      Great advice, thank you!
  - djbusby 3y ago
    Could small claims them too maybe? I'm glad they pulled this now, was just looking to upgrade our two openers for something connected to my HA.
michaelmior 3y ago
> They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. Chamberlain doesn't get to authorize people to open your door, but they do get to decide who uses their API. While I think it's a very poor decision, they certainly can decide that any use of their API they don't like is unauthorized. That said, I would love to see legislation that ends this kind of vendor lock-in.
- Hydraulix989 3y ago
  It's true, under our current legal framework, the free market is supposed to allow customers to choose to buy more user-friendly alternatives sold by competitors if they aren't happy that one offering is DRMed to hell and back. In practice, how well does that work?
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    It doesn't in the USA, because antitrust laws are seldom enforced. Hence "inflation" and shit like this.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Antitrust law doesn't help when "fucking over the customer" is a local minimum for the whole market. Everyone will independently arrive at the "solution", and outcompete those who won't.
      - lazide 3y ago
        And unfortunately, that is the local minima for most markets.
    - michaelmior 3y ago
      Antitrust is also difficult to enforce. I would rather see laws that require manufactures to provide a reasonable amount of local control for devices. Aside from avoiding situations like this, it also avoids bricking devices when services are shut down. It also seems perhaps easier to enforce although defining what constitutes a reasonable level of local control could prove difficult.
dheera 3y ago
I just connected my garage door opener to Home Assistant by taking apart the remote and wiring the button to a Zigbee relay. They can't stop me, no part of this is connected to their cloud. In any case, smart home stuff should never rely on the cloud. https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Funny you should mention that. I stayed at an AirBnB a while back that I selected precisely because the listing mentioned that a garage was available. It turned out that yes, you could use the garage, but the remote was not provided by the host. So I had to disengage the door and lift it manually, then close it behind me when I left every morning. "Fuck that," I said to myself, as any self-respecting hacker would. "I'll just hook a $20 remote key fob switch from Home Depot up to the button on the garage wall." That's when I found that they actually DRM'ed the button. The usual pair of wires was there, but I couldn't open the door by simply shorting them together. There were several ICs on a PC board inside the button housing doing Woz knows what. So, back to lifting the door manually. This is only going to get worse. It will get worse because we let them go this far.
  - publicmail 3y ago
    I don’t really think it’s DRM. I think it’s because a lot of garage door buttons have a few functionalities, like controlling the lights as well as the door, but it works over two wires. So it probably necessitates some more complicated logic.
    - ArchOversight 3y ago
      It's Security+ or Security+ 2.0, it is literally obfuscated serial traffic over two wires. It is DRM. You can't just get any random button to open/close the garage.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      This one didn't. It was literally just a featureless button, engineered with intelligence it couldn't possibly need except as a means of locking out third-party hardware.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> The company I work for has a policy.. [lists some sound policies] Just a blind guess but is your company free of control by shareholders, venture capitalists and private equity?

nordsieck 3y ago
> is your company free of control by shareholders A company is by definition controlled by its shareholders.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > A company is by definition... company: noun kʌm.pə.ni an organization that sells goods or services in order to make money: - OED
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    The definition that matters is not the OED, but the laws that govern companies.
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      There’s no real law to maximize profits. Just greed and a court precedent, which has way more nuance than people realize. No body of legislation ever said that companies needed to maximize profits.
      - Karellen 3y ago
        > There’s no real law to maximize profits. Just greed and a court precedent, I thought that in Common Law countries, court precedents are "real law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law > In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions. (emphasis mine)
        dingnuts 3y ago
        Y'all are arguing about a specific class of corporation while using the word "company". A company could be one guy with an LLC, and that one guy is obligated by no law or person to earn a profit as long as he can sustain the costs of the business. A great example of a company that appears to be operating at a loss for a very long time because of the beliefs of the founder/owner is Canonical. If he cannot sustain the costs of the business then I guess you can argue that there's a law of nature in play saying that the proprietor has to earn some amount of profit just to exist, but if you're shaking your fist at Nature demanding that we produce the value that we intend to consume, well, good luck. You may as well be upset about the existence of gravity, or that food must be grown or hunted in order to be eaten.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      No law requires companies to have shareholders, unless they're corporations. And even then, a corporation can have a single shareholder.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3y ago
- qzw 3y ago
  Pedantic: A corporation is controlled by its shareholders. Other forms of ownership can be sole proprietorships, partnerships, professional associations, etc.
  - abduhl 3y ago
    Pedantic: a corporation is controlled by its Board of Directors. Shareholders ostensibly elect the directors but they do not control them.
  - mminer237 3y ago
    I wouldn't call a sole proprietorships a company. Professional associations are still controlled by their shareholders. You can substitute "partners" for partnerships and "members" for LLCs since they're essentially all the same thing.
dylan604 3y ago
In their “list some sound policies”, they did not mention gather as much data about the user, store that data, analyze that data for earning money from ad sales. If those policies were not left out for convenience and it truly does not happen, then I’d venture the answer to your question is no.

eddieroger 3y ago

I'm not here to defend Chamberlain, mostly because I'm a pissed off user, but you are able to control your door still with RF products and buttons. Use of their API is separate, and they are able to authorize or not users to their API, which then also talks to your garage door. A lame nuance. We never own the API, we (sorta) own the product.

CharlesW 3y ago
> …you are able to control your door still with RF products and buttons. This isn’t relevant since that’s not why I bought a Chamberlain product. I bought it specifically for the capability that they arbitrarily killed.
- eddieroger 3y ago
  You should probably read that EULA that none of us read. We don't own their service. Never have. Downvotes don't make it less true.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, but thank you! Yes, I understand that they’re legally protected, and I’m out hundreds of dollars for a replacement and its installation.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  I filed an FTC complaint, you should too. I don't need the resources to fight Chamberlain on this, I'm going to let the federal government do it. https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    Great advice, thank you!
- djbusby 3y ago
  Could small claims them too maybe? I'm glad they pulled this now, was just looking to upgrade our two openers for something connected to my HA.

michaelmior 3y ago

> They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. Chamberlain doesn't get to authorize people to open your door, but they do get to decide who uses their API. While I think it's a very poor decision, they certainly can decide that any use of their API they don't like is unauthorized. That said, I would love to see legislation that ends this kind of vendor lock-in.

Hydraulix989 3y ago
It's true, under our current legal framework, the free market is supposed to allow customers to choose to buy more user-friendly alternatives sold by competitors if they aren't happy that one offering is DRMed to hell and back. In practice, how well does that work?
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  It doesn't in the USA, because antitrust laws are seldom enforced. Hence "inflation" and shit like this.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Antitrust law doesn't help when "fucking over the customer" is a local minimum for the whole market. Everyone will independently arrive at the "solution", and outcompete those who won't.
    - lazide 3y ago
      And unfortunately, that is the local minima for most markets.
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    Antitrust is also difficult to enforce. I would rather see laws that require manufactures to provide a reasonable amount of local control for devices. Aside from avoiding situations like this, it also avoids bricking devices when services are shut down. It also seems perhaps easier to enforce although defining what constitutes a reasonable level of local control could prove difficult.

dheera 3y ago

I just connected my garage door opener to Home Assistant by taking apart the remote and wiring the button to a Zigbee relay. They can't stop me, no part of this is connected to their cloud. In any case, smart home stuff should never rely on the cloud. https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg

CamperBob2 3y ago
Funny you should mention that. I stayed at an AirBnB a while back that I selected precisely because the listing mentioned that a garage was available. It turned out that yes, you could use the garage, but the remote was not provided by the host. So I had to disengage the door and lift it manually, then close it behind me when I left every morning. "Fuck that," I said to myself, as any self-respecting hacker would. "I'll just hook a $20 remote key fob switch from Home Depot up to the button on the garage wall." That's when I found that they actually DRM'ed the button. The usual pair of wires was there, but I couldn't open the door by simply shorting them together. There were several ICs on a PC board inside the button housing doing Woz knows what. So, back to lifting the door manually. This is only going to get worse. It will get worse because we let them go this far.
- publicmail 3y ago
  I don’t really think it’s DRM. I think it’s because a lot of garage door buttons have a few functionalities, like controlling the lights as well as the door, but it works over two wires. So it probably necessitates some more complicated logic.
  - ArchOversight 3y ago
    It's Security+ or Security+ 2.0, it is literally obfuscated serial traffic over two wires. It is DRM. You can't just get any random button to open/close the garage.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    This one didn't. It was literally just a featureless button, engineered with intelligence it couldn't possibly need except as a means of locking out third-party hardware.