14 ms·

Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

175 points by linker3000 3y ago

sokoloff 3y ago
The two subject repos are: https://github.com/Andre0512/hon https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn Make whatever use of that information you will before the takedown occurs.
- ActionHank 3y ago
  If people fork the repo, would they also be sent a takedown?
  - EspadaV9 3y ago
    If people are forking it, it would probably be worth mirroring it to GitLab, Sourcehut, Codeberg, or some other place that isn't GitHub, since they could likely very easily remove all the forks at once if asked.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    If you fork it, do a proper git clone and git push. Github can and has DMCAed direct forks in the past.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      At the risk of asking a dumb question, what does a git push do for you there? (Fully agree on the clone locally point.)
      - pc86 3y ago
        Not the GP but at that point it's available and more discoverable for at least a little while longer for others (and no guarantee you'd get hit with a takedown as well).
        sokoloff 3y ago
        Thank you! I was considering a different/lesser form of "keep it privately available" (as I suspected that keeping it widely/anonymously publicly available was never going to work.)
        hooverd 3y ago
        Don't rely on GH alone. Save a local copy. Host it somewhere that isn't so centralized and discoverable. One upside of increasing centralization is that people who you don't want finding things are awful at finding said things that exist outside it.
      - jeroenhd 3y ago
        If Github doesn't realise you forked the project, it doesn't appear in the list of forks, which a lot of companies use when sending an actual DMCA notice to Github. I'm not sure what you'd need to do to disconnect your fork, but clicking the "fork" button will often get your repo automatically taken down if the parent repository gets DMCA'd. If the commit history is different (say, because you rebased the project onto a slightly different initial state), Github won't auto-detect the fork as easily, so the lawyers would need to find your project and include it in their takedown notice.
        sokoloff 3y ago
        When I read ‘git clone’, I assumed “on the command line of a machine you control, run git clone” not “use GitHub’s repo fork web interface action”.
      - nostrademons 3y ago
        It's not marked as a fork in their systems. Instead, it's as if you'd written a bunch of code in a local repository and then pushed it to GitHub. It could still be identified as the same codebase by eg. comparing commit hashes or content hashes, but that's harder. If you really want to be sure, clone the repository, make a few local edits to files (eg. adding a comment to each file), copy the full source repository to a new directory in the filesystem, git init that as a new repository, commit changes, and push. That blows away all the existing history of commits, and ensures that each file has a different hash. It's still technically possible to detect it as a dupe, but would require an extremely expensive shingling or filesystem diff on every repository in GitHub.
        aaomidi 3y ago
        Find the first commit and overwrite it :P
        bspammer 3y ago
        That could still be fairly easily detected by looking at the tree and blob ids.
        xeromal 3y ago
        I never use squash but couldn't you squash all the commits into a new one for a new history?
        penteract 3y ago
        > It's still technically possible to detect it as a dupe, but would require an extremely expensive shingling or filesystem diff on every repository in GitHub. Wouldn't a GitHub search still find it pretty easily? As I understand it, they put significant effort into supporting search; but since that's being done anyway, it doesn't have a very high marginal cost.
    - tzs 3y ago
      This doesn't appear to be a DMCA takedown request, so I doubt Github would care. This appears to be the company contacting the developer directly to ask that they withdraw the code.
      - detaro 3y ago
        because a company asking for a takedown would never file a takedown request afterwards?
        tzs 3y ago
        In this case probably not. DMCA takedown requests are only for alleged copyright infringement. The allegation here is that the software is using an API on a company server in violation of the terms of use.
elkos 3y ago
I wish there would be an appliance manufacturer that would actually hire developers to create and maintain Home Assistant.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  Hardware companies don't understand how software works. To them, it's just something you pay a low-wage grunt to produce to an exacting specification written by an EE. Doing what you suggest would require them to respect software enough to bring it in as a discipline alongside mechanical and electrical engineering.
- agilob 3y ago
  Tuya started this trend in 2020, but it didn't last long. They developed lots of local-APIs, but quickly stopped contributing to GH repo.
- r0ckarong 3y ago
  Ah hell naw. Walled garden much? If anyone dumps significant enough money into the project they're going to expect "a return".
- supergeek133 3y ago
  Home Assistant users are small minority of many of these companies user bases (including ours), and these integrations being locally focused often poll HEAVILY causing an upside down ratio in API traffic compared to all other users. The solution is to allow local interfaces (matter, HTTP, etc) but most company cybersecurity teams just freak out at this. Oh, and the reason we don't have a full time team managing HA is like I said.. addressable market versus FAANG/Samsung. It takes a full time person (persons) to manage Alexa, Google, Samsung, etc.
  - redeeman 3y ago
    > but most company cybersecurity teams just freak out at this. Yeah, and we can see(in general) how good they are. is there any such shitty consumer thing that doesnt have atrocious security?
agilob 3y ago
>"Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company." Except lots of people wouldn't buy your shit if not for the addon.
- pc86 3y ago
  It should be a requirement that companies include a good-faith estimate of actual economic damages in a DMCA, or an excellent reason why they cannot come up with such an estimate, and if there is a lawsuit stemming from this later be on the hook for those estimates actually being in good faith and not just "let's assume everyone in the country would have bought our dehumidifer if not for this GitHub repo existing ..."
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    I don't think anyone should have to estimate damages for DMCA. Damages are not an issue, it's still your copyright. Instead, this seems like a completely bullshit copyright claim. That's what the ideal fix should be. There's zero incentive to not do DMCA takedown notices, what are the consequences of getting it wrong? It's a great tool to intimidate anyone doing something you don't like. Haier has a legal team, this developer has nobody.
hansihe 3y ago
> We are writing to inform you that we have discovered two Home Assistant integration plug-ins developed by you [...] that are in violation of our terms of service > Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company. > We take the protection of our intellectual property very seriously and demand that you immediately cease and desist all illegal activities related to the development and distribution of these plug-ins. They seem to be threatening legal action because he is violating their terms of service? This doesn't make much sense to me
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  IANAL, but this sounds like bullshit intended at scaring people into compliance. An individual cannot afford legal fees against a corporation no matter what. The usual.
- tzs 3y ago
  It looks like it is using a service running on Haier's servers, which is probably what brings terms of service into this.
Tomte 3y ago
Never heard of them. May the Streisanding commence.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  You may not have heard of Haier but I'm pretty sure you've heard of GE Appliance and Hoover. >Haier is a multinational home appliances and consumer electronics corporation selling a wide range of products under the brands General Electric Appliances, Hotpoint, Hoover, Fisher & Paykel, and Candy.
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago
  One of the largest consumer appliance companies in the world... the own GE Appliances, for instance. They do about $30 billion a year in revenue.
- wlonkly 3y ago
  "According to data released by Euromonitor, Haier was the number one brand globally in major appliances for 10 consecutive years from 2009 to 2018." (from their wikipedia article)
  - Tomte 3y ago
    Yes, but I suppose the name is rather unknown in Germany. I only know some brands enumerated in other comments (Hoover etc.) from American TV series.
ShakataGaNai 3y ago
This is stupid and just like Chamberlain with their MyQ snafu [1]. Assuming the developer did not steal the code, then this sort of work should be protected. If you have a public API, people should be legally allowed to use it and work against it. If you as a company don't like that, then make it harder for 3rd parties. If the open source code is abusive, then use a freaking WAF to protect yourself. But unless they are hacking yours system, stealing code, or being intentionally abusive there should be no legal recourse here. Or... better yet, engage with these clearly VERY passionate customers. This is someone who not only bought your product but has donated hundreds or thousands of hours of their free time to making your product better. Better how? Because its works in a way your customers want that you don't otherwise offer. Instead of demanding take down, file a bug report with them to explain how the code is misbehaving. Bugs happen, maybe the developer didn't include an exponential fall off for outages. Whatever. Let them know and they'll probably fix it. Heck, you could use one of the in house developers to file a pull request to fix it yourself. That's how you be the good guys. Instead of stomping on small projects of passionate customers, you engage with them. Make them even more a fan of your product, rather than a lifetime hater. [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq-integration/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq...
smolder 3y ago
This is like suing somebody for using chopsticks to eat a meal you sold them. Where is the financial damage? Do they sell their own automation products? Even if that's the case, and they're fork-sellers on the side in my analogy, there's absolutely no good to come from suppressing these plugins.
- agilob 3y ago
  >Where is the financial damage? They offered API that they don't want people to use. Maintaining APIs and uptime costs, but they only wanted their API to be used by their apps that collect data about you.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    > They offered API that they don't want people to use. I wonder how this would play out if instead of serving responses for nonhuman consumption (i.e., an API), it was serving responses for human consumption (i.e, HTML documents). In that scenario, if a subset of requests were of a high-frequency nonhuman nature (i.e., polling and scraping), would a court find it equally abusive or materially different?
    - agilob 3y ago
      HTLM documents evolve much more frequently and there were dozens of HA addons that simply gave up updating their regexes extracting certain information from HTML and emails.
      - quotemstr 3y ago
        Ah, but now we have LLMs that can understand human interfaces without manual tweaking!
MostlyStable 3y ago
Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and open integrations getting taken down, and none of the examples where this hasn't happened have existed long enough for us to say anything besides "so far". If you want smart functionality, it had better run entirely locally, or else you should not care about or depend on that functionality. -edit- I also had to learn this lesson (somewhat) painfully. I chose the EVSE that I did for 2 reasons: it was on the list of devices my power company would help pay for and it had an HA integration. less than 6 months after I bought it, the company killed the API that the HA integration relied on. Luckily for me, the HA integration wasn't that big of a deal, more of "nice to have", but I learned my lesson to never use non-local cloud functionality as a selling point.
- Tomte 3y ago
  Philips Hue did run locally, and now they are rolling out updates where a cloud account is required.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    Yeah the second rule is: for anything that runs locally and for which your use doesn't require an internet connection: put it on a separate network without WAN access. I also had to learn that lesson painfully when my network connected Brother printer got a (unasked for and unapproved) firmware update that disabled the 3rd party toner cartridge it was using. It's now blocked from the internet in my router, but it's unfortunately a case of shutting the barn door after the cows are gone.
  - joshvm 3y ago
    Hue bulbs and strips run fine on HA. For a couple of reasons, I have a completely offline system running in a Docker container with a ZigBee dongle (mainly I have no control over my LAN). I don't use the bridge any more. You don't get some of the scenes and other functionality that the bridge offers, but 90% of the functionality is there. The bridge already has some weird requirements like refusing to work unless you connect an ethernet cable. As far as I know the update is to force you to use an account with the app, but the devices should still be compliant with other controllers.
Havoc 3y ago
Another brand to add to the shit list
- mike_ivanov 3y ago
  It's been there for a long time. The quality of their products is awful.
  - albert180 3y ago
    I've once read an article in Harvard Business Review about how this company works, it's also awful. It's like they are all "self employed" and can associate with other employees to form a mini company inside Haier. They are all competing against each other, the fluctuation between the teams is very high and of course if their mini companie is successful, the company takes the profits and credits for it, if you don't make your money worth you get canned quite quickly
jitl 3y ago
Unfortunate. I'm not directly affected by this takedown, but I just started using Home Assistant with my GE (owned by Haier) washer and dryer via this repo: https://github.com/simbaja/ha_gehome https://github.com/simbaja/ha_gehome I often forget to take clothes out of the dryer in the garage, so I'm working on an automation to flash the lights by my desk with increasing urgency the longer clothes are left in. I'm very surprised how well Home Assistant works for its kind of hobby project, it's matured quite a bit from when I looked into it a few years back. It's not a huge win if all your devices are already HomeKit and programmable via Shortcuts, but it's that it can bridge my non-Homekit Nest, ECOVACS, and GE devices into HomeKit land, and offer unified WebSocket & REST APIs to program against. I can see why companies would send the takedown notices if their API service implementation is low quality. The HomeAssistant user has to be a super-expert, the sort of person to set up a Google Cloud project to create OAuth credentials so you can connect your calendar. There can't be a lot of those people, and the integrations are probably quite spammy with API polling.
Arn_Thor 3y ago
Just bought a convection heater today. I was willing to spend more for a “smart” one, but on the one condition that I was confident it would work with Home Assistant. Certainly not opening my wallet for the likes of Haier until they change their tune.
- clintfred 3y ago
  Would you be willing to share the one you ended up getting?
  - Arn_Thor 3y ago
    Yes! I was a bit cagey because I hadn’t tested it so didn’t know if it worked. It’s a Mill smart convection heater. Their smart stuff works both with their app and with a Home Assistant integration (and via HASS with HomeKit as well). Really neat to use when it’s all set up. What impressed me particularly is that the generation 3 smart heaters (which is my version) lets you specify to NOT connect to the cloud when it joins WiFi, and instead is accessible only locally—in my case via home assistant. (But I did have to create an account on the first-time setup to update the firmware) The fact their newest products offer this kind of functionality gives me some faith in the future.
jameshilliard 3y ago
I noticed a potential licensing issue Home Assistant may have when it comes to relying only on an external package source host like pypi and complying with a plugin takedown request. If home-assistant receives a GPL source code request(for example due to many of the python libraries in the home-assistant docker images being GPL licensed) wouldn’t the source code to all library dependencies(including the source for historical dependencies like any plugin taken down after a release) need to be provided for 3 years(due to the combined home-assistant application effectively falling under GPL requirements) from the date of last distribution of the home-assistant docker image?
- Ilijlmnuvw 3y ago
  No, why do you think that? Have you actually read the GPL?
H8crilA 3y ago
The takedown notice says that the "plug-ins are in violation of the terms of service". This is super odd. So what would happen if I never bought their product and hosted this repo - while not being a party to the terms of service?
- pxmpxm 3y ago
  Probably this: https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/main/pyhon/const.py https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/main/pyhon/const.py
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Sounds like the company could just invalidate that API key and break the integration themselves whenever they want.
  - adapiz 3y ago
    Initially I had the same thought: I'm not using their services, how can I break TOS? But this explains it. If a device cannot be controlled locally and need their cloud connection to work, it's in a high risk of becoming e-waste at some point of time. That's why I would never pick such devices.
ur-whale 3y ago
So, and assuming it is true, we now know which company not to buy appliances from.
jp191919 3y ago
I guess I'm not buying that GE washer/dryer combo now...
hooverd 3y ago
I hate home automation! I hate home automation! I have a Hubitat Elevation for Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensors mostly. They all run locally. I'd like to throw some smart LEDs in the mix for ambient lighting. What's a good, non enshittified vendor?
- wlonkly 3y ago
  Not sure if you mean bulbs or strips. For bulbs, most of IKEA's smart home stuff is Zigbee, supported by HE community drivers, and is priced well. For strips, if you're ok with wifi, HE supports local control of Kasa devices, which is made by TP-Link. Otherwise your best bet is something Zigbee-controlled but I don't have a particular recommendation. Check the HE forums[1], too, they're very active and full of recommendations, driver links, and experience reports. [1] https://community.hubitat.com/ https://community.hubitat.com/
crtified 3y ago
It's annoying how, in the world where a few boys could code Second Reality in 1993 in barely a megabyte or two, on computers that were a tiny fraction of what we're using today, we (collectively) have somehow obfuscated the matter of simple remote sensing and switching across a network into this ongoing kerfuffle of competing interests and complex, shaky solutions.
Ilijlmnuvw 3y ago
Is anyone maintaining and publishing a list of these consumer-hostile companies to avoid? In the last half year Haier, Chamberlain, and Mazda have issued takedowns or actively blocked access to HA integrations.
- mook 3y ago
  Just go to the bottom of the integration listing on Home Assistant's website and skip anything with a category that involves cloud. When companies are providing things for free that has an ongoing cost, something is going to break eventually.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
This is very good news. I extensively use HA and buy (and build) various smart stuff so now I know I blacklist Haier. Good thing they released the request. I will share this news with the HA networks I am active in. Thank you Haier for being proactive and help me to (not) choose!
smashah 3y ago
The tech community as a whole is dropping the ball by not advocating loudly and openly for adversarial interoperability. It is a fundamental digital right despite what nonsense-ese is present in any service's egregious terms and conditions. There needs to be an anti-adversarial interop specific complaint department at the EFF. Otherwise one day, one of these developers will take the lack of support at its face and choose to defend themselves in court without any (legal) resources. When the precedents are set that billion dollar megacorps can ruin an interop developers life due to overreaching ToS or some bs about copyright then it'll be too late to cry about it. Invidious (YouTube), beeper (iMessage), Meta Vs many OSS Devs, etc. etc. etc. largely show that tech's freedom loving stance is not much more than lip service. Interop projects aren't sexy. The Devs behind them get a pittance if anything. It's not VC-able. Yet instead of praise for the dog work they do we have well-actually-niks berating then in situations like this. We are now becoming digital beings. We should have digital human rights. Interop is a base level digital human right. I want to thank you for your work Andre0512 and Long Live hon! P.s if there any EU digital lawyers out here please reach out to Andre0512 and actually help him please!
- dv_dt 3y ago
  It could be a part of the push for right to repair. Farmers have pushed similar interface needs for maintaining advanced farming equipment. This seems very similar.
  - smashah 3y ago
    Interoperability IS right-to-repair for software. Should Sony decide what you do with your TV? No. Should Haier decide how you control your AC? NO. Should Whatsapp decide how you interact with your own account. NO! Interop devs are the Louis Rossman's/mom & pop repair shops of the software world. They take whatever redundant software/service you have and enable you to use it as you see fit.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    One of my thoughts is you can have the FTC and IRS issue rules about what qualifies as first sale and doesn't. Anything that fails the company has to count as inventory with a 20 year depreciation schedule. And they're required to pay for disposal.
asylteltine 3y ago
I’m really worried this will become common practice. We MUST fight against this otherwise they will take away open source from us. Making an integration to work with devices you own is NOT ILLEGAL. I’m happy to contribute to a qualified and trustworthy gofundme to protect devs. I myself have a few integrations I made and would refuse to take them down. Granted, I intentionally don’t use any “cloud” api garbage.
- DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
  not only will it be common practice but likely also the law. upcoming legislation in Europe mandates secure-boot for any IoT device sold by 2025 in EU. this and the cybersec resilience act will ensure only firmware shipped and signed by the vendor are able to boot :) ... so your comment is spot-on.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    What legalization is that? That's atrocious and only serves to fuck the end user.
    - DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
      legislation? Radio Equipment Directive which now has a huge cybersec impact. So if you want to sell hardware in EU it must be certified here is a lot of what will be in there. https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/303600_303699/303645/02.01.01_60/en_303645v020101p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/303600_303699/303645/02... the final standard is not the above but based on the ideas in ETSI. While the above applies mostly to the "thing" the cloud and edge that enable services for IoT will be covered by the hotly debated CRA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787005
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- supergeek133 3y ago
kstrauser 3y ago
Scratches Haier off list of household vendors. I use HomeKit so this probably doesn’t directly affect me at all. But if I stop using HomeKit, I can and will do as I see fit to make the gear I already own work with whatever I’ve switched to. If adversarial companies want to stop people from doing that, then I’ll help them in that mission by not bringing their stuff into my house in the first place.
- mook 3y ago
  Scratch off everything that requires internet access (in this case the Home Assistant integration talked to the vendor's API servers). See also previous discussion on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932
  - DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
    curious, is there a vendor that isn't "cloud-first" today? I've never seen an appliance that doesn't call home
    - smeej 3y ago
      The one that frustrates me the most is Home Depot's HubSpace. You do not have to link the devices to the router. They can be operated by Bluetooth. However, the app to control them cannot work without a connection to the server. It has no local device functions at all. It won't even launch if their servers are offline. That's just next-level stupid to me. Why build in a useless option? If Bluetooth won't work without a server connection anyway, what's the point?
      - yborg 3y ago
        The "feature" is end user tracking and isn't for you, it's for the vendor. So if the servers are down they don't care about the rest of it.
      - beeboobaa 3y ago
        At some point a team of developers fought for local control. They lost but it's too expensive to rip out again. So management chooses to sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. Stalking your users is so much more profitable.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932
alias_neo 3y ago
I'm in the process of reverse engineering an appliance myself to allow it to be integrated with Home Assistant, one which requires an mobile app to operate remotely and is connected to the net all of the time, when it doesn't need to be. I was gifted this particular appliance, but the solution is really to just not give companies like this your money. Unfortunately it's easier said than done, but looking for things with a local API or based on an open and configurable standard are a good start. I'll add Haier and related companies to my ever growing blacklist because fuck them for this. I vehemently support people doing what they want with the things they own so long as it's not "interfacing" with other people or their stuff; don't connect to or "abuse" their cloud systems, they can rightfully be upset about that, but removing their crappy smarts (and data collection) and replacing it with local-only is your own business and companies like this can get lost.
- DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
  which appliance?
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  If some company sells stuff that requires a connection to their cloud then it is 100% fair game to reverse and utilize that cloud to get the product working the way you want. They have no right to be upset about that. They sold you a requirement to connect to that cloud. If they don't want anyone connecting to their cloud, then don't sell cloud connected junk.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    > They have no right to be upset about that. Emotionally, ethically, morally, sure. Legally? We'll see how this shakes out, I guess. But yeah - this is one of the reasons why nothing in my home is smart. I fully can't bring myself to trust any company to not eventually fuck me, either intentionally, or by going out of business and bricking some C&C server, or by selling themselves to some assholes.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
r9295 3y ago
How is this different to Google copying Oracle's Java API? Is it because it's hardware?
- mook 3y ago
  The devices talk to Haier's servers, which Home Assistant (or rather a third-party integration) then talks to. It's dumb that it's required, but at least Haier's servers are involved.
- mindslight 3y ago
  Oracle vs Google is a fully resolved case that cost those companies millions of dollars to litigate. This is a shakedown letter which uses those kinds of large legal damages as a threat to force a developer to stop doing something that a company does not like.
  - r9295 3y ago
    I was wondering if the precedent set by the Oracle vs Google case applied here as the user is re-implementing an API, but considering the fact that the user still has to go talk to Haeir servers, it's a different story.
devwastaken 3y ago
If you are going to break DRM know that the DMCA makes it copyright infringement regardless of how easy it is. If you create software that does this do not use your real identity and ensure any IP used is not your own. Leave them nowhere to send "legal action" to. Only those that play by the rules are affected by those rules.
- jmholla 3y ago
  > If you are going to break DRM know that the DMCA makes it copyright infringement regardless of how easy it is. There are also carve outs for breaking DRM for compatibility.
lxe 3y ago
I was researching whether there's legal precedent making such uses legal, and ChatGPT pointed out that "Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.," where it was decided that developing a VCR where users can record Universal's content is legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... I think this applies here as well. Curious how this will play out.
- lxe 3y ago
  Here's the chat log if you're curious: https://chat.openai.com/share/6386ad1f-a44d-4cc1-a5d1-0e3c3cbfc748 https://chat.openai.com/share/6386ad1f-a44d-4cc1-a5d1-0e3c3c... Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.: In this 1992 case, the court held that Accolade's reverse engineering of Sega's game console for the purpose of developing compatible games without licensing was a fair use. Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation: In 2000, the court ruled that Connectix's reverse engineering of the Sony PlayStation to create a compatible emulator (Virtual Game Station) was fair use.
  - gsich 3y ago
    Have you verified the court cases? ChatGPT answers are usually garbage when it comes to facts.
    - lxe 3y ago
      Yes
bdcravens 3y ago
The only Haier products I've ever owned were "dumb" TVs that I received several years ago when buying some furniture. For that reason, I categorized them as very low-end in my mind.
WizardClickBoy 3y ago
My advice would be never to purchase anything from Haier, IoT or not. We had a washer drier that had to be repaired three times because of an enormous design flaw causing it to overheat to a dangerous extent. I did eventually somehow manage to persuade them to collect it, after more than a year of back and forth with their nice, hardworking and entirely powerless customer service team. After the device was collected it then took more than six months for me to get my money back. Never again.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  This is too bad. I've got a (dumb) Haier refrigerator that works perfectly well, going on 5 or 6 years now. It's an odd width because of a stupid home remodel by the previous owner that I can't really undo, and haier was the only vendor that didn't want to charge me "designer" prices because of that. Hopefully it keeps going strong :/
paradox460 3y ago
FWIW This is Haier Europe, Haier US supports Home Automation and DIY IOT: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/19a615l/haier_us_supports_home_assistant_and_open_iot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/19a615l/haie...
- KomoD 3y ago
  Haier Group owns them both so to me it doesn't matter which "region" it is, Haier Europe is still Haier, Haier US is still Haier Haier US -> GE Appliances -> Haier Group Haier Europe -> Candy Group -> Haier Group
unstatusthequo 3y ago
I was never impressed by Haier's quality to begin with. I for one wouldn't have bought their junk anyway. You're not missing anything. Take a hard pass and buy something that lasts? Have a Haier already? Sell it and buy something with a chance of longevity. BTW, the US/EU distinction on IoT is interesting, but in the end it's all Haier China. So you know what to expect.
kkfx 3y ago
For me is a call for boycott on one side, a call for class action in EU because such demand means: - they plan to trap customers in subscription scheme, that's one of the few logical reasons to oppose ADDING ways to use their devices; - they surveil and profit from data gathered form their users, to be known if under the respect of GDPR and similar norms or not; Those reasons suffice to AVOID any vendor who have such track record FOR LIFE, even if they change after a certain backlash. That's is, people simply must understand the concept of subscription trap and the concept of ownership, witch should be known but evidently it's not that understood for the sake of human civilization and evolution.
tracker1 3y ago
Asking a similar vein, really sick of all the cloud first networking great. Like Access Points especially. I don't mind a cloud option, but prefer self hosted first. I'm particular something that's already or otherwise ready to containerize.
j1elo 3y ago
Just like the recent case of Mazda sending a Cease and Desist to someone writing an integration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990990 I would suggest complying. Then, probably, a clone of the repo could maybe show up in some other git host, like Gitee, without authorship information that can reveal who to send further legal threats. I would of course never do such thing. Just talking about an idea a friend had.

175 points by linker3000 3y ago

The two subject repos are: https://github.com/Andre0512/hon https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn Make whatever use of that information you will before the takedown occurs.

ActionHank 3y ago
If people fork the repo, would they also be sent a takedown?
- EspadaV9 3y ago
  If people are forking it, it would probably be worth mirroring it to GitLab, Sourcehut, Codeberg, or some other place that isn't GitHub, since they could likely very easily remove all the forks at once if asked.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  If you fork it, do a proper git clone and git push. Github can and has DMCAed direct forks in the past.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    At the risk of asking a dumb question, what does a git push do for you there? (Fully agree on the clone locally point.)
    - pc86 3y ago
      Not the GP but at that point it's available and more discoverable for at least a little while longer for others (and no guarantee you'd get hit with a takedown as well).
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        Thank you! I was considering a different/lesser form of "keep it privately available" (as I suspected that keeping it widely/anonymously publicly available was never going to work.)
      - hooverd 3y ago
        Don't rely on GH alone. Save a local copy. Host it somewhere that isn't so centralized and discoverable. One upside of increasing centralization is that people who you don't want finding things are awful at finding said things that exist outside it.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      If Github doesn't realise you forked the project, it doesn't appear in the list of forks, which a lot of companies use when sending an actual DMCA notice to Github. I'm not sure what you'd need to do to disconnect your fork, but clicking the "fork" button will often get your repo automatically taken down if the parent repository gets DMCA'd. If the commit history is different (say, because you rebased the project onto a slightly different initial state), Github won't auto-detect the fork as easily, so the lawyers would need to find your project and include it in their takedown notice.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        When I read ‘git clone’, I assumed “on the command line of a machine you control, run git clone” not “use GitHub’s repo fork web interface action”.
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      It's not marked as a fork in their systems. Instead, it's as if you'd written a bunch of code in a local repository and then pushed it to GitHub. It could still be identified as the same codebase by eg. comparing commit hashes or content hashes, but that's harder. If you really want to be sure, clone the repository, make a few local edits to files (eg. adding a comment to each file), copy the full source repository to a new directory in the filesystem, git init that as a new repository, commit changes, and push. That blows away all the existing history of commits, and ensures that each file has a different hash. It's still technically possible to detect it as a dupe, but would require an extremely expensive shingling or filesystem diff on every repository in GitHub.
      - aaomidi 3y ago
        Find the first commit and overwrite it :P
        bspammer 3y ago
        That could still be fairly easily detected by looking at the tree and blob ids.
        xeromal 3y ago
        I never use squash but couldn't you squash all the commits into a new one for a new history?
      - penteract 3y ago
        > It's still technically possible to detect it as a dupe, but would require an extremely expensive shingling or filesystem diff on every repository in GitHub. Wouldn't a GitHub search still find it pretty easily? As I understand it, they put significant effort into supporting search; but since that's being done anyway, it doesn't have a very high marginal cost.
  - tzs 3y ago
    This doesn't appear to be a DMCA takedown request, so I doubt Github would care. This appears to be the company contacting the developer directly to ask that they withdraw the code.
    - detaro 3y ago
      because a company asking for a takedown would never file a takedown request afterwards?
      - tzs 3y ago
        In this case probably not. DMCA takedown requests are only for alleged copyright infringement. The allegation here is that the software is using an API on a company server in violation of the terms of use.

elkos 3y ago

I wish there would be an appliance manufacturer that would actually hire developers to create and maintain Home Assistant.

throwway120385 3y ago
Hardware companies don't understand how software works. To them, it's just something you pay a low-wage grunt to produce to an exacting specification written by an EE. Doing what you suggest would require them to respect software enough to bring it in as a discipline alongside mechanical and electrical engineering.
agilob 3y ago
Tuya started this trend in 2020, but it didn't last long. They developed lots of local-APIs, but quickly stopped contributing to GH repo.
r0ckarong 3y ago
Ah hell naw. Walled garden much? If anyone dumps significant enough money into the project they're going to expect "a return".
supergeek133 3y ago
Home Assistant users are small minority of many of these companies user bases (including ours), and these integrations being locally focused often poll HEAVILY causing an upside down ratio in API traffic compared to all other users. The solution is to allow local interfaces (matter, HTTP, etc) but most company cybersecurity teams just freak out at this. Oh, and the reason we don't have a full time team managing HA is like I said.. addressable market versus FAANG/Samsung. It takes a full time person (persons) to manage Alexa, Google, Samsung, etc.
- redeeman 3y ago
  > but most company cybersecurity teams just freak out at this. Yeah, and we can see(in general) how good they are. is there any such shitty consumer thing that doesnt have atrocious security?

agilob 3y ago

>"Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company." Except lots of people wouldn't buy your shit if not for the addon.

pc86 3y ago
It should be a requirement that companies include a good-faith estimate of actual economic damages in a DMCA, or an excellent reason why they cannot come up with such an estimate, and if there is a lawsuit stemming from this later be on the hook for those estimates actually being in good faith and not just "let's assume everyone in the country would have bought our dehumidifer if not for this GitHub repo existing ..."
- plagiarist 3y ago
  I don't think anyone should have to estimate damages for DMCA. Damages are not an issue, it's still your copyright. Instead, this seems like a completely bullshit copyright claim. That's what the ideal fix should be. There's zero incentive to not do DMCA takedown notices, what are the consequences of getting it wrong? It's a great tool to intimidate anyone doing something you don't like. Haier has a legal team, this developer has nobody.

hansihe 3y ago

> We are writing to inform you that we have discovered two Home Assistant integration plug-ins developed by you [...] that are in violation of our terms of service > Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company. > We take the protection of our intellectual property very seriously and demand that you immediately cease and desist all illegal activities related to the development and distribution of these plug-ins. They seem to be threatening legal action because he is violating their terms of service? This doesn't make much sense to me

mytailorisrich 3y ago
IANAL, but this sounds like bullshit intended at scaring people into compliance. An individual cannot afford legal fees against a corporation no matter what. The usual.
tzs 3y ago
It looks like it is using a service running on Haier's servers, which is probably what brings terms of service into this.

Tomte 3y ago

Never heard of them. May the Streisanding commence.

MostlyStable 3y ago
You may not have heard of Haier but I'm pretty sure you've heard of GE Appliance and Hoover. >Haier is a multinational home appliances and consumer electronics corporation selling a wide range of products under the brands General Electric Appliances, Hotpoint, Hoover, Fisher & Paykel, and Candy.
FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago
One of the largest consumer appliance companies in the world... the own GE Appliances, for instance. They do about $30 billion a year in revenue.
wlonkly 3y ago
"According to data released by Euromonitor, Haier was the number one brand globally in major appliances for 10 consecutive years from 2009 to 2018." (from their wikipedia article)
- Tomte 3y ago
  Yes, but I suppose the name is rather unknown in Germany. I only know some brands enumerated in other comments (Hoover etc.) from American TV series.

ShakataGaNai 3y ago

This is stupid and just like Chamberlain with their MyQ snafu [1]. Assuming the developer did not steal the code, then this sort of work should be protected. If you have a public API, people should be legally allowed to use it and work against it. If you as a company don't like that, then make it harder for 3rd parties. If the open source code is abusive, then use a freaking WAF to protect yourself. But unless they are hacking yours system, stealing code, or being intentionally abusive there should be no legal recourse here. Or... better yet, engage with these clearly VERY passionate customers. This is someone who not only bought your product but has donated hundreds or thousands of hours of their free time to making your product better. Better how? Because its works in a way your customers want that you don't otherwise offer. Instead of demanding take down, file a bug report with them to explain how the code is misbehaving. Bugs happen, maybe the developer didn't include an exponential fall off for outages. Whatever. Let them know and they'll probably fix it. Heck, you could use one of the in house developers to file a pull request to fix it yourself. That's how you be the good guys. Instead of stomping on small projects of passionate customers, you engage with them. Make them even more a fan of your product, rather than a lifetime hater. [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq-integration/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq...

smolder 3y ago

This is like suing somebody for using chopsticks to eat a meal you sold them. Where is the financial damage? Do they sell their own automation products? Even if that's the case, and they're fork-sellers on the side in my analogy, there's absolutely no good to come from suppressing these plugins.

agilob 3y ago
>Where is the financial damage? They offered API that they don't want people to use. Maintaining APIs and uptime costs, but they only wanted their API to be used by their apps that collect data about you.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  > They offered API that they don't want people to use. I wonder how this would play out if instead of serving responses for nonhuman consumption (i.e., an API), it was serving responses for human consumption (i.e, HTML documents). In that scenario, if a subset of requests were of a high-frequency nonhuman nature (i.e., polling and scraping), would a court find it equally abusive or materially different?
  - agilob 3y ago
    HTLM documents evolve much more frequently and there were dozens of HA addons that simply gave up updating their regexes extracting certain information from HTML and emails.
    - quotemstr 3y ago
      Ah, but now we have LLMs that can understand human interfaces without manual tweaking!

MostlyStable 3y ago

Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and open integrations getting taken down, and none of the examples where this hasn't happened have existed long enough for us to say anything besides "so far". If you want smart functionality, it had better run entirely locally, or else you should not care about or depend on that functionality. -edit- I also had to learn this lesson (somewhat) painfully. I chose the EVSE that I did for 2 reasons: it was on the list of devices my power company would help pay for and it had an HA integration. less than 6 months after I bought it, the company killed the API that the HA integration relied on. Luckily for me, the HA integration wasn't that big of a deal, more of "nice to have", but I learned my lesson to never use non-local cloud functionality as a selling point.

Tomte 3y ago
Philips Hue did run locally, and now they are rolling out updates where a cloud account is required.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  Yeah the second rule is: for anything that runs locally and for which your use doesn't require an internet connection: put it on a separate network without WAN access. I also had to learn that lesson painfully when my network connected Brother printer got a (unasked for and unapproved) firmware update that disabled the 3rd party toner cartridge it was using. It's now blocked from the internet in my router, but it's unfortunately a case of shutting the barn door after the cows are gone.
- joshvm 3y ago
  Hue bulbs and strips run fine on HA. For a couple of reasons, I have a completely offline system running in a Docker container with a ZigBee dongle (mainly I have no control over my LAN). I don't use the bridge any more. You don't get some of the scenes and other functionality that the bridge offers, but 90% of the functionality is there. The bridge already has some weird requirements like refusing to work unless you connect an ethernet cable. As far as I know the update is to force you to use an account with the app, but the devices should still be compliant with other controllers.

Havoc 3y ago

Another brand to add to the shit list

mike_ivanov 3y ago
It's been there for a long time. The quality of their products is awful.
- albert180 3y ago
  I've once read an article in Harvard Business Review about how this company works, it's also awful. It's like they are all "self employed" and can associate with other employees to form a mini company inside Haier. They are all competing against each other, the fluctuation between the teams is very high and of course if their mini companie is successful, the company takes the profits and credits for it, if you don't make your money worth you get canned quite quickly

jitl 3y ago

Unfortunate. I'm not directly affected by this takedown, but I just started using Home Assistant with my GE (owned by Haier) washer and dryer via this repo: https://github.com/simbaja/ha_gehome https://github.com/simbaja/ha_gehome I often forget to take clothes out of the dryer in the garage, so I'm working on an automation to flash the lights by my desk with increasing urgency the longer clothes are left in. I'm very surprised how well Home Assistant works for its kind of hobby project, it's matured quite a bit from when I looked into it a few years back. It's not a huge win if all your devices are already HomeKit and programmable via Shortcuts, but it's that it can bridge my non-Homekit Nest, ECOVACS, and GE devices into HomeKit land, and offer unified WebSocket & REST APIs to program against. I can see why companies would send the takedown notices if their API service implementation is low quality. The HomeAssistant user has to be a super-expert, the sort of person to set up a Google Cloud project to create OAuth credentials so you can connect your calendar. There can't be a lot of those people, and the integrations are probably quite spammy with API polling.

Arn_Thor 3y ago

Just bought a convection heater today. I was willing to spend more for a “smart” one, but on the one condition that I was confident it would work with Home Assistant. Certainly not opening my wallet for the likes of Haier until they change their tune.

clintfred 3y ago
Would you be willing to share the one you ended up getting?
- Arn_Thor 3y ago
  Yes! I was a bit cagey because I hadn’t tested it so didn’t know if it worked. It’s a Mill smart convection heater. Their smart stuff works both with their app and with a Home Assistant integration (and via HASS with HomeKit as well). Really neat to use when it’s all set up. What impressed me particularly is that the generation 3 smart heaters (which is my version) lets you specify to NOT connect to the cloud when it joins WiFi, and instead is accessible only locally—in my case via home assistant. (But I did have to create an account on the first-time setup to update the firmware) The fact their newest products offer this kind of functionality gives me some faith in the future.

jameshilliard 3y ago

I noticed a potential licensing issue Home Assistant may have when it comes to relying only on an external package source host like pypi and complying with a plugin takedown request. If home-assistant receives a GPL source code request(for example due to many of the python libraries in the home-assistant docker images being GPL licensed) wouldn’t the source code to all library dependencies(including the source for historical dependencies like any plugin taken down after a release) need to be provided for 3 years(due to the combined home-assistant application effectively falling under GPL requirements) from the date of last distribution of the home-assistant docker image?

Ilijlmnuvw 3y ago
No, why do you think that? Have you actually read the GPL?

H8crilA 3y ago

The takedown notice says that the "plug-ins are in violation of the terms of service". This is super odd. So what would happen if I never bought their product and hosted this repo - while not being a party to the terms of service?

pxmpxm 3y ago
Probably this: https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/main/pyhon/const.py https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/main/pyhon/const.py
- justinclift 3y ago
  Sounds like the company could just invalidate that API key and break the integration themselves whenever they want.
- adapiz 3y ago
  Initially I had the same thought: I'm not using their services, how can I break TOS? But this explains it. If a device cannot be controlled locally and need their cloud connection to work, it's in a high risk of becoming e-waste at some point of time. That's why I would never pick such devices.

ur-whale 3y ago

So, and assuming it is true, we now know which company not to buy appliances from.

jp191919 3y ago

I guess I'm not buying that GE washer/dryer combo now...

hooverd 3y ago

I hate home automation! I hate home automation! I have a Hubitat Elevation for Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensors mostly. They all run locally. I'd like to throw some smart LEDs in the mix for ambient lighting. What's a good, non enshittified vendor?

wlonkly 3y ago
Not sure if you mean bulbs or strips. For bulbs, most of IKEA's smart home stuff is Zigbee, supported by HE community drivers, and is priced well. For strips, if you're ok with wifi, HE supports local control of Kasa devices, which is made by TP-Link. Otherwise your best bet is something Zigbee-controlled but I don't have a particular recommendation. Check the HE forums[1], too, they're very active and full of recommendations, driver links, and experience reports. [1] https://community.hubitat.com/ https://community.hubitat.com/

crtified 3y ago

It's annoying how, in the world where a few boys could code Second Reality in 1993 in barely a megabyte or two, on computers that were a tiny fraction of what we're using today, we (collectively) have somehow obfuscated the matter of simple remote sensing and switching across a network into this ongoing kerfuffle of competing interests and complex, shaky solutions.

Ilijlmnuvw 3y ago

Is anyone maintaining and publishing a list of these consumer-hostile companies to avoid? In the last half year Haier, Chamberlain, and Mazda have issued takedowns or actively blocked access to HA integrations.

mook 3y ago
Just go to the bottom of the integration listing on Home Assistant's website and skip anything with a category that involves cloud. When companies are providing things for free that has an ongoing cost, something is going to break eventually.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

This is very good news. I extensively use HA and buy (and build) various smart stuff so now I know I blacklist Haier. Good thing they released the request. I will share this news with the HA networks I am active in. Thank you Haier for being proactive and help me to (not) choose!

smashah 3y ago

The tech community as a whole is dropping the ball by not advocating loudly and openly for adversarial interoperability. It is a fundamental digital right despite what nonsense-ese is present in any service's egregious terms and conditions. There needs to be an anti-adversarial interop specific complaint department at the EFF. Otherwise one day, one of these developers will take the lack of support at its face and choose to defend themselves in court without any (legal) resources. When the precedents are set that billion dollar megacorps can ruin an interop developers life due to overreaching ToS or some bs about copyright then it'll be too late to cry about it. Invidious (YouTube), beeper (iMessage), Meta Vs many OSS Devs, etc. etc. etc. largely show that tech's freedom loving stance is not much more than lip service. Interop projects aren't sexy. The Devs behind them get a pittance if anything. It's not VC-able. Yet instead of praise for the dog work they do we have well-actually-niks berating then in situations like this. We are now becoming digital beings. We should have digital human rights. Interop is a base level digital human right. I want to thank you for your work Andre0512 and Long Live hon! P.s if there any EU digital lawyers out here please reach out to Andre0512 and actually help him please!

dv_dt 3y ago
It could be a part of the push for right to repair. Farmers have pushed similar interface needs for maintaining advanced farming equipment. This seems very similar.
- smashah 3y ago
  Interoperability IS right-to-repair for software. Should Sony decide what you do with your TV? No. Should Haier decide how you control your AC? NO. Should Whatsapp decide how you interact with your own account. NO! Interop devs are the Louis Rossman's/mom & pop repair shops of the software world. They take whatever redundant software/service you have and enable you to use it as you see fit.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  One of my thoughts is you can have the FTC and IRS issue rules about what qualifies as first sale and doesn't. Anything that fails the company has to count as inventory with a 20 year depreciation schedule. And they're required to pay for disposal.

asylteltine 3y ago

I’m really worried this will become common practice. We MUST fight against this otherwise they will take away open source from us. Making an integration to work with devices you own is NOT ILLEGAL. I’m happy to contribute to a qualified and trustworthy gofundme to protect devs. I myself have a few integrations I made and would refuse to take them down. Granted, I intentionally don’t use any “cloud” api garbage.

DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
not only will it be common practice but likely also the law. upcoming legislation in Europe mandates secure-boot for any IoT device sold by 2025 in EU. this and the cybersec resilience act will ensure only firmware shipped and signed by the vendor are able to boot :) ... so your comment is spot-on.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  What legalization is that? That's atrocious and only serves to fuck the end user.
  - DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
    legislation? Radio Equipment Directive which now has a huge cybersec impact. So if you want to sell hardware in EU it must be certified here is a lot of what will be in there. https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/303600_303699/303645/02.01.01_60/en_303645v020101p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/303600_303699/303645/02... the final standard is not the above but based on the ideas in ETSI. While the above applies mostly to the "thing" the cloud and edge that enable services for IoT will be covered by the hotly debated CRA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787005
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
supergeek133 3y ago

kstrauser 3y ago

Scratches Haier off list of household vendors. I use HomeKit so this probably doesn’t directly affect me at all. But if I stop using HomeKit, I can and will do as I see fit to make the gear I already own work with whatever I’ve switched to. If adversarial companies want to stop people from doing that, then I’ll help them in that mission by not bringing their stuff into my house in the first place.

mook 3y ago
Scratch off everything that requires internet access (in this case the Home Assistant integration talked to the vendor's API servers). See also previous discussion on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932
- DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
  curious, is there a vendor that isn't "cloud-first" today? I've never seen an appliance that doesn't call home
  - smeej 3y ago
    The one that frustrates me the most is Home Depot's HubSpace. You do not have to link the devices to the router. They can be operated by Bluetooth. However, the app to control them cannot work without a connection to the server. It has no local device functions at all. It won't even launch if their servers are offline. That's just next-level stupid to me. Why build in a useless option? If Bluetooth won't work without a server connection anyway, what's the point?
    - yborg 3y ago
      The "feature" is end user tracking and isn't for you, it's for the vendor. So if the servers are down they don't care about the rest of it.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      At some point a team of developers fought for local control. They lost but it's too expensive to rip out again. So management chooses to sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. Stalking your users is so much more profitable.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044932

alias_neo 3y ago

I'm in the process of reverse engineering an appliance myself to allow it to be integrated with Home Assistant, one which requires an mobile app to operate remotely and is connected to the net all of the time, when it doesn't need to be. I was gifted this particular appliance, but the solution is really to just not give companies like this your money. Unfortunately it's easier said than done, but looking for things with a local API or based on an open and configurable standard are a good start. I'll add Haier and related companies to my ever growing blacklist because fuck them for this. I vehemently support people doing what they want with the things they own so long as it's not "interfacing" with other people or their stuff; don't connect to or "abuse" their cloud systems, they can rightfully be upset about that, but removing their crappy smarts (and data collection) and replacing it with local-only is your own business and companies like this can get lost.

DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
which appliance?
beeboobaa 3y ago
If some company sells stuff that requires a connection to their cloud then it is 100% fair game to reverse and utilize that cloud to get the product working the way you want. They have no right to be upset about that. They sold you a requirement to connect to that cloud. If they don't want anyone connecting to their cloud, then don't sell cloud connected junk.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > They have no right to be upset about that. Emotionally, ethically, morally, sure. Legally? We'll see how this shakes out, I guess. But yeah - this is one of the reasons why nothing in my home is smart. I fully can't bring myself to trust any company to not eventually fuck me, either intentionally, or by going out of business and bricking some C&C server, or by selling themselves to some assholes.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago

r9295 3y ago

How is this different to Google copying Oracle's Java API? Is it because it's hardware?

mook 3y ago
The devices talk to Haier's servers, which Home Assistant (or rather a third-party integration) then talks to. It's dumb that it's required, but at least Haier's servers are involved.
mindslight 3y ago
Oracle vs Google is a fully resolved case that cost those companies millions of dollars to litigate. This is a shakedown letter which uses those kinds of large legal damages as a threat to force a developer to stop doing something that a company does not like.
- r9295 3y ago
  I was wondering if the precedent set by the Oracle vs Google case applied here as the user is re-implementing an API, but considering the fact that the user still has to go talk to Haeir servers, it's a different story.

devwastaken 3y ago

If you are going to break DRM know that the DMCA makes it copyright infringement regardless of how easy it is. If you create software that does this do not use your real identity and ensure any IP used is not your own. Leave them nowhere to send "legal action" to. Only those that play by the rules are affected by those rules.

jmholla 3y ago
> If you are going to break DRM know that the DMCA makes it copyright infringement regardless of how easy it is. There are also carve outs for breaking DRM for compatibility.

lxe 3y ago

I was researching whether there's legal precedent making such uses legal, and ChatGPT pointed out that "Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.," where it was decided that developing a VCR where users can record Universal's content is legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... I think this applies here as well. Curious how this will play out.

lxe 3y ago
Here's the chat log if you're curious: https://chat.openai.com/share/6386ad1f-a44d-4cc1-a5d1-0e3c3cbfc748 https://chat.openai.com/share/6386ad1f-a44d-4cc1-a5d1-0e3c3c... Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.: In this 1992 case, the court held that Accolade's reverse engineering of Sega's game console for the purpose of developing compatible games without licensing was a fair use. Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation: In 2000, the court ruled that Connectix's reverse engineering of the Sony PlayStation to create a compatible emulator (Virtual Game Station) was fair use.
- gsich 3y ago
  Have you verified the court cases? ChatGPT answers are usually garbage when it comes to facts.
  - lxe 3y ago
    Yes

bdcravens 3y ago

The only Haier products I've ever owned were "dumb" TVs that I received several years ago when buying some furniture. For that reason, I categorized them as very low-end in my mind.

WizardClickBoy 3y ago

My advice would be never to purchase anything from Haier, IoT or not. We had a washer drier that had to be repaired three times because of an enormous design flaw causing it to overheat to a dangerous extent. I did eventually somehow manage to persuade them to collect it, after more than a year of back and forth with their nice, hardworking and entirely powerless customer service team. After the device was collected it then took more than six months for me to get my money back. Never again.

zdragnar 3y ago
This is too bad. I've got a (dumb) Haier refrigerator that works perfectly well, going on 5 or 6 years now. It's an odd width because of a stupid home remodel by the previous owner that I can't really undo, and haier was the only vendor that didn't want to charge me "designer" prices because of that. Hopefully it keeps going strong :/

paradox460 3y ago

FWIW This is Haier Europe, Haier US supports Home Automation and DIY IOT: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/19a615l/haier_us_supports_home_assistant_and_open_iot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/19a615l/haie...

KomoD 3y ago
Haier Group owns them both so to me it doesn't matter which "region" it is, Haier Europe is still Haier, Haier US is still Haier Haier US -> GE Appliances -> Haier Group Haier Europe -> Candy Group -> Haier Group

unstatusthequo 3y ago

I was never impressed by Haier's quality to begin with. I for one wouldn't have bought their junk anyway. You're not missing anything. Take a hard pass and buy something that lasts? Have a Haier already? Sell it and buy something with a chance of longevity. BTW, the US/EU distinction on IoT is interesting, but in the end it's all Haier China. So you know what to expect.

kkfx 3y ago

For me is a call for boycott on one side, a call for class action in EU because such demand means: - they plan to trap customers in subscription scheme, that's one of the few logical reasons to oppose ADDING ways to use their devices; - they surveil and profit from data gathered form their users, to be known if under the respect of GDPR and similar norms or not; Those reasons suffice to AVOID any vendor who have such track record FOR LIFE, even if they change after a certain backlash. That's is, people simply must understand the concept of subscription trap and the concept of ownership, witch should be known but evidently it's not that understood for the sake of human civilization and evolution.

tracker1 3y ago

Asking a similar vein, really sick of all the cloud first networking great. Like Access Points especially. I don't mind a cloud option, but prefer self hosted first. I'm particular something that's already or otherwise ready to containerize.

j1elo 3y ago

Just like the recent case of Mazda sending a Cease and Desist to someone writing an integration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990990 I would suggest complying. Then, probably, a clone of the repo could maybe show up in some other git host, like Gitee, without authorship information that can reveal who to send further legal threats. I would of course never do such thing. Just talking about an idea a friend had.