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I thought I bought a camera, but no DJI sold me a license to use it [video]

354 points by qingcharles 2y ago

mjevans 2y ago
Not watching a video, but how is it legal for any company to "sell" something like this? (The video might explain that, but that's my focus of what I care about out of the situation.)
- sneak 2y ago
  You’re free to not buy it, that’s why. This video is the market working as intended.
  - hansvm 2y ago
    We have laws about false advertising and such things. At a minimum, there's a case to be made with respect to the warranty of merchantability.
  - serial_dev 2y ago
    It’s also not allowed to sell a coffee machine that electrocutes its users every time it’s turned on, then burns down the house for good measure. Sure, someone will make a video “this coffee machine killed my wife and burned down my house with my children in it”, and you would say it’s the market working as intended… There are standards the stuff sold need to meet, even if ultimately you are always “free to not buy it”.
  - yoyohello13 2y ago
    The problem with letting “the market” decide things like this is it requires first that someone gets hurt. Then they need to wage and information campaign against said company. Or we can just have a law that says this is bad and be done with it.
    - sneak 2y ago
      Unchecked lawmaking hurts a lot more people than bad consumer products. We have a good system, and this video shows it functions well.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        We have a terrible system, built around power disparity, dishonesty, unequal and difficult access to remedies for dishonesty, and this obsession with the idea that only individuals should act individually, and not collectively as a governing body, to prevent and punish harms.
      - GavinMcG 2y ago
        Have you read enough history to know what life was like before we got rid of child labor, established weekends as a norm, regulated food products, etc.? Or do you assume that the free market provides those things because you’ve only lived in an age where you can take them for granted?
      - yoyohello13 2y ago
        Comments like these and knowing people like you are in charge make me fear for the future. Companies, unchecked, will kill as many people as they can to make more profit. History proves this, it’s not a hypothetical. Laws are the only lever we have to keep profit incentive aligned with the common good.
  - barnabee 2y ago
    Markets are tools. They are good at some things (allocating resources, adapting to changing supply and demand, revealing preferences and discovering prices, incentivising innovation and socially useful risk taking, …) and bad at others (ensuring new entrants don’t repeatedly make the same safety mistakes, preventing exploitation of customers, protecting IP, solving for long term social needs, maintaining national resilience against threats, preventing waste…) Fetishisation of markets is the issue. Though markets and generally free trade are incredibly important and have brought (and hopefully will continue to bring) great benefits to humanity, they also have downsides, and other tools (regulation, taxation, industrial strategy, …) are needed to balance these. This is one such case. The market is creating downsides that society should not tolerate.
    - johnea 2y ago
      > Fetishisation of markets is the issue. Well said. It should also be pointed out, that the regulatory laws are what _defines_ the market. They are even more fundamental to a market's existence than the companies producing goods and services, or the consumers buying them. Without regulatory law, the "market" devolves to a relapse into the warring states era. Why shouldn't amazone hire a mercenary force to blow the vault doors off of Ft. Knox and carry all the gold home to Bozo? Because there are laws against it! And that would render the action unprofitable. Bozo sure as sh1t doesn't care about stealing from anyone, or even someone getting killed, if it means he gets a bunch more shekels. The regulatory law is more than just inherent, it's a mandatory component of anything that's going to have more resemblance to a "market" than to Mad Max... So, the profiting companies actually _require_ a regulatory structure, to prevent the most wealthy and powerful from just taking whatever they have. The question is in also making these regulations benefit the consumer as well as the supply side. In the US this part is currently in rather complete failure...
- dsign 2y ago
  It's about false advertising: they say "our product gets images like this and that", which is Okay and something the buyer uses to base their decision. And there is an expectation that their product will do as advertised. But they never say front-and-center "our product won't function without a valid Internet connection and an approved photo ID, because we use our product to harvest your data."
K0balt 2y ago
Enshitification at its best. This is all part of the inexorable current sweeping us along to the post capitalist society, where corporations no longer sell anything but rather rent or sell access to their things. We’re already there with phones, most consumer computers, farming equipment, cars, and gradually, more and more consumer goods. With pervasive automation, we are accelerating towards a future where money is meaningless, but not in a nice humanistic star-trek kind of way… more in a dystopian, no need to pay wages to anyone because automation, so we just need land, natural resources, and energy kind of way. It’s grey goo, on a macro scale so you have to get into space to see it for what it is. The current pushes us towards a time, soon, when power is the only currency that matters, and justice is reduced to the will of the stronger. If we want to have something better than trying to compete for resources as squishy humans alongside technofacist enclaves where humans are sparse and wield unprecedented power through massive robotic capabilities, we need to start making changes now.
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  It’s not going to get better any time soon unfortunately. The technocrats have fully captured the US government. Turns out cyberpunk was the most accurate sci-fi portrayal of our future.
- pmontra 2y ago
  What is there of "post capitalist" in all of that? I see capital and scarcity all the way down. Maybe scarcity is artificially enforced on things that wouldn't be scarce anymore but nothing changed substantially compared to 100 years ago.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    What changed is that “the people” are not serfs, they are irrelevant competitors for resources. The only thing you can do with money is pay people for their time. In the end wages is the end consumer of currency. It serves no other purpose. We are entering a new chapter, where money will cease to be relevant at all. Only land and energy will be relevant. The elite will not need people at all anymore, people and society in general will become annoyances, at best. Everything is better when you have less people to share it with, so “depopulation” will likely be in vogue. Technofacist enclaves will have the monopoly of coercive force, and will probably fight amongst themselves for resources, but the population of people outside those entities will be a lot like ants.
dsign 2y ago
I have a washing machine that won't let me use it fully without installing an app that asks for permission to track my GPS coordinates at all time, in my phone. HomeWhiz.There should be a law against selling new hardware that demands that sort of thing to function, or to have full functionality. But I would be happy if procedures to bring class-auction lawsuits against companies that engage in this kind of bait-and-ransom were somehow simpler.
- deepsun 2y ago
  At least a requirement to let customers know in big letters that the device/appliance you're going to buy would not function without App + Wifi + Internet plan + GPS, and that you're not buying an appliance but a limited license to use it.
- Teever 2y ago
  This is the kind of stuff that I feel a coordinated campaign to have consumers take companies to small claims court over would be very effective in combating. I'm sure a bunch of elderly magistrates would feel that this kind of requirement is obscene and would readily side with the claimant. Collectively this would cost the company a lot.
  - prawn 2y ago
    As well, I would say pick a shame domain and make some noise about this, collate feedback from other consumers, etc. Spread that constantly until the manufacturer can justify it or relent. Hassle them for comment and until they reply to your satisfaction, note on the site that they haven't responded despite repeated attempts at contacting them.
- mjevans 2y ago
  At the very least, when you the current end user refuse to agree to their terms of service, the model should have to be returned, at the manufacturer's expense, irrespective of condition. Think of renters stuck in a place with units like that! They too should have the right to require un-tracked appliances and be free from being forced to agree to additional contract overheads that aren't obvious in the price / what should be reasonable terms.
sneak 2y ago
This bothers me about DJI equipment too. I use disposable throwaway email VPN accounts to activate the products then uninstall the apps. I avoid DJI when and where I can now. The only DJI product I have purchased since experiencing this same shit is the Osmo Pocket 3. I know of no comparable product.
- Frieren 2y ago
  > I avoid DJI when and where I can now. I used to avoid spyware apps. My antivirus would flag them so I could remove them. Until all of them became spyware. Widely used apps by well known corporations do more intrusive and more constant tracking that the apps that my antivirus used to flag. Avoiding these brands is one step, but it will not last long. Only the law can deal with total corporation surveillance.
Frieren 2y ago
It should be forbidden for all device manufacturers to make apps, tracking, registering, etc. mandatory. Every TV, phone, camera, tablet, fridge, ... is becoming a spying device like in the worst scifi dystopias. And as soon as the company stops supporting them they become trash to pollute the planet so they can sell you the next one. Regulations should have come a decade a go. We own nothing, we have no privacy, we are sold products 24/7. I will vote for a goverment that protects me of this total corporate surveillance. It is their duty towards citizens to do so. And it will happen, like feudalism died this techno-feudalism will die too.
- dsign 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
  When the governments all over the world are making their citizens download mobile apps I doubt whether there will be any regulation prohibiting hardware manufacturers forcing apps on consumers.
  - jofla_net 2y ago
    dependence on such complex devices is disgusting
- inopinatus 2y ago
  My vote could be swayed by a policy platform making it not merely forbidden, but outright criminal, to market software and hardware that cannot function without assignment of a user id. Everything from drones to games. In many cases this would thoroughly annoy certain authoritarian regimes that are normalised as totalitarian surveillance states. Their exports would be disrupted. What a pity.
  - jackvalentine 2y ago
    So, world of Warcraft is illegal now?
goblin89 2y ago
Wait until physical camera makers not only license you the unit, but also make everything you shoot belong to them, like software camera apps (e.g., Filmic Pro) do now. DJI can just add some mandatory firmware upgrade process that offloads your footage to the mothership, and 99.9999% will agree to everything without reading.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  Might be a realistic way for manufacturers to to implement a certified-taken-by-camera-not-AI photo feature.
  - bornfreddy 2y ago
    And then extort you to get access to "your" images.
    - AStonesThrow 2y ago
      So the photo print market is really weird right now. Remember how, in the 1970s and 80s, they used to have little booths surrounded by parking-lot, and you could drive up to the Fotomat booth and drop off your 110 or 35mm film, and they would go develop it and bring back your negatives and prints, and you could drive your Dodge Charger or your Ford Fairlane to come pick them up? And then, the pharmacies got in on this, because pharmacies are where the chemicals are at anyway. And at a pharmacy, you could have film developed, and you could also get prints, and reprints, and larger-sized prints, and framed photos and albums and greeting cards and all sorts of things. And this pharmaceutical extension tradition carries on into the present-day. Now you can waltz into CVS or Walgreens or Wal-Mart, you can bring your USB or your microSD card, or just your phone with a cable, and you can plug in your USB or thunk down a disc, and load it into their kiosk computer, and some even have scanners. And then you can order instant photo prints! And they still can sell you albums, and framed photos, and large-format prints, and posters and whatnot. Here's the trouble, though: phone cameras don't generate the right-sized images. I was at a Walgreens and they were selling, like, 8x10 and 5x7 and other standard photo-sized frames and prints. And I upload a photo, and the kiosk complains. Kiosk says it's low-resolution. Kiosk shows me a sample preview, and the edges are cut off. So I chat with the clerk there, and she tells me to just take a screenshot of the image and it'll work. LOL a screenshot, when the resolution is too low already? And so eventually I figured out that, even if I took a 50 megapixel photograph with the phone's sophisticated camera, it would not print correctly. I told the clerk: this phone takes photos like a TV set. It's in 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. Those are not the same as 8x10 photos! So the pharmacies have all this tooling for conventional cameras. I suppose a DSLR could still turn out 8x10 photos. I suppose I could "crop" a photo down in my smartphone on Android. But what I really wanted was to download a PD photo from Commons.wikimedia.org and print that out in an 11x17 or larger. And that was not working out so well. Phone cameras today are producing really impeccable photos of really impossible aspect ratios. There's a ton of tooling that is specifically made for photographs that were based on the size of negatives and the size of photo paper in the last 70 decades or so. Kodak and Fujifilm and their ilk are still haunting us. Thankfully there are more online services. Everything I put now into Google Photos. Google Photos will happily generate a photobook and they'll even drop-ship them to my family. I have sent them cool photobooks in the past. I never got to peek at them. No complaints. Google Photos doesn't mind when your photos are a weird aspect-ratio. Google Photos will adapt. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be shown your memories.
Animats 2y ago
Where is the part where he doesn't click "Agree", boxes the thing up, and sends it back? I've sent stuff back for that sort of thing. Often, I'll look at a EULA and decide I don't want it. Mandatory arbitration with anybody other than the American Arbitration Association is a killer.
- MarioMan 2y ago
  In the comments, he mentions that he will be returning the unit as defective.
  - Animats 2y ago
    But he clicked "Accept" on the EULA. On camera.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      Of course he does. Nobody can be expected to actually read those, much less for them to be legally effective at enforcing anything.
- thayne 2y ago
  1. Most people don't actually read long EULAs. And who can blame them? We have been trained not to read them, and if you do, you are spending a significant amount of your life on a tedious and frustrating endeavor. 2. If you do read it, it is a long document in difficult and intentionally misleading legalese, where you can easily miss something. 3. If you don't agree to the terms, and return it, does the company pay for the shipping? Even if they do, you have now wasted a fair amount of time on this product you won't actually use. 4. Depending on the product there may not be anything on the market that has an acceptable EULA. In part due to the fact that few enough people read the EULA that companies can afford to lose business from the people who do.
  - windex 2y ago
    I suppose consumers need to be able to pool their effort to read this. We upload it to a site, see the comments others have made and then decide. If there are changes between the comments and now, then those are highlighted as well. A EULAgrokker.
jart 2y ago
When all the manufacturing was moved to China decades ago, I bet no one predicted China would do this!
- Renaud 2y ago
  It's not China doing this, it's manufacturers, wherever they are. DJI happens to be a Chinese company but Samsung isn't, and they have been tracking what people watch on their TV (even if you're using HDMI and your own input) for years. Big European, Asian and American brands are doing the same, washing machines requiring an account to access basic capabilities, cars phoning home, computers phoning home, phones phoning home, they all want it, they all do it. Blaming China for this is deflecting the true culprit: the rampant notion that everything that could be sold has to be sold. Privacy doesn't matter, just put a red ribbon over it and force user to create an account and share their data in exchange for the priviledge of accessing what they thought they bought. China didn't invent that, they sure love it, but they are not responsible for it alone.
  - ourmandave 2y ago
    ... and they have been tracking what people watch on their TV (even if you're using HDMI and your own input) for years. How? If you didn't give it an internet connection, how is it sending any tracking data back to the mothership? It can't guess your wifi password or anything.
    - jart 2y ago
      It's still possible to watch television without an Internet connection?
    - LadyCailin 2y ago
      More and more devices are coming with SIM cards baked in. You don’t pay for them, the manufacturer does, but they harvest your data whether you give them internet or not. For now I’m only aware of cars having these, but I suspect it’s just a matter of time before even cheap consumer gadgets have this too. Really, the only answer is privacy regulation. Any other solution (just let the free market handle it, don’t give it internet access, etc) is not workable in the long term.
radicality 2y ago
Was just browsing earlier today for some potential upgrades from my GoPro10 and was looking at these too, that’s disappointing, guess wont be looking at these.
GianFabien 2y ago
And the list of companies whose products I won't buy grows. I just hope the next hammer I buy doesn't come with a head that turns to funny putty when it loses internet connection.
- jofla_net 2y ago
  Or when banging unregisterd nails!
  - GianFabien 2y ago
    Bring on the nails with individual RFID in their heads. I'll just go back to using my solid metal pre-2000 25oz claw hammer.
spyder 2y ago
and the next step is a monthly subscription fee to use your camera...
- itsafarqueue 2y ago
  If you’ve read this first here, mark the day. This is coming.
- conductr 2y ago
  I bought a GoPro last year after reading about a feature HyperSmooth Pro stabilization. Granted, I didn't do an inquisition into the specifics just thinking if I bought their best camera it was supported. Feature is only available if I also subscribe to their $100 per year membership. I think without the membership some lesser, non-Pro version is available. It felt like a bait and switch situation to me when I unboxed it and tried to use the feature the first time.
Ferret7446 2y ago
Shittiness aside, there's no such thing as a license for a physical product. Licenses are for things that are copyrighted, like movies or software. A company can't force you to use a physical product in a certain way; a "license" won't hold up in court.
- 3abiton 2y ago
  What argument would hold in US court though? Camera is not working without an app be valid?
- fuzzbazz 2y ago
  > won't hold up in court Does that even matter? because at 4:50 on the video you can clearly read: "You agree to give up your right to go to court to assert or defend your rights under these Terms" ... in the "binding arbitration and no class action" terms that you need to Agree to.
  - codesnik 2y ago
    is that clause even legal/enforceable in "normal" jurisdictions?
- indrora 2y ago
  Tell that to Haas, one of the only US based CnC machine manufacturers. They instruct technicians to disable features for hardware if you haven’t paid the licensing fee for that hardware. Swapped the 10 head tool changer for a 14 head from a downed machine? Sucks to be you buddy it won’t work because you haven’t licensed the feature to have 14 tools! Oh you bought the machine used? And they swapped it for you? Sucks to be you pay up or it’s scrap metal to you.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mrandish 2y ago
Well then it seems only fair that I pay for the camera license with a license to use my money.
pyfon 2y ago
They thought they sold me a camera but no I'll invoke my statutory rights and get a full refund.
- itsafarqueue 2y ago
  This is the way. Mass consumer activist action, hundreds or thousands of purchases that turn around and invoke statutory rights and refunds, as protest. It won’t change until we make them hurt.
fxtentacle 2y ago
To me, it increasingly seems like the US lacks cultural autonomy. US companies are A-OK with censoring movies and games to gain access to the Chinese market, for example remember when Blizzard banned a US player in an US tournament to please Chinese censors? But in the other direction, it seems Chinese companies aren't willing to "return the favor" and modify their products to account for American sensibilities when they export to the US. Perpetual surveillance and only little property rights protection is how everyday life in China works, so Chinese consumers won't be bothered by this. It only bothers US consumers, who are used to more privacy and solid property rights.
- mcintyre1994 2y ago
  Isn’t the solution to this to just regulate for American sensibilities in the US market? I don’t think it’s true that US companies respect privacy, but if it is then you can regulate for that and the Chinese companies will have to do the same in the US market. They’re not going to “return the favour” if it’s not regulated for and their products do fine in the market without.
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    Yes, but regulations cost companies money, and the US isn’t a real country of the people by the people, it’s three corporations in a trenchcoat.
- stavros 2y ago
  > It only bothers US consumers, who are used to more privacy and solid property rights. Which US are you talking about? The one I know is a capitalist free-for-all, where the word "regulation" is anathema. The vast majority of Us-based products and services spy on the consumer to make an extra penny, and nobody cares. It really baffles me to hear someone say that the US isn't under perpetual surveillance, when the NSA literally piped all phonecalls to their servers twenty years ago, before they realized they can just make companies give them all the data.
  - conductr 2y ago
madduci 2y ago
Guess what? Canon has now switched its "Camera Connect" app to a cloud based version, where you need an account first to access to the camera pictures that are available only over WiFi Direct.
matsemann 2y ago
The action cam market is a bit weird at the moment. The others have caught up to GoPro, and some say even surpassed. But the field is very messy, you can't trust half the stuff. Dji and Insta360 are very good at giving away free stuff to influencers, and to tech reviewers with strings attached (like forbidding side-by-side comparisons). Sock-puppets constantly recommending these brands, etc. As a consumer it's very hard to make an informed decision on what to buy. Can't trust anything you read about the models.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  Yeah you watch advertisements and promo videos shot with some professional equipment with people flying around in everything imaginable and explosions all over the place, all in high resolution and crisp quality. Then copy the footage from SD Card and it looks like a turd.
- bambax 2y ago
  DJI products are extraordinary and way above the competition. But registration is a huge pain, yes. Two solutions: 1/ Buy used; the previous owner probably didn't do a factory reset -- if they did, return it and try again. 2/ Use a disposable email. On the Action pro, once "registered", nothing happens and the device never asks for anything. Drones are different, they sometimes need to be attached to a proper account; when that happens, create yet another disposable email and "register" again.
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    > way above the competition did you test them all or are you basing it on the reviewers the other commenter just pointed out are useless?
- mbirth 2y ago
  To prove your point, looks like Insta360 started a big campaign today. This popped up in my YouTube stream: * Best Motorcycle Camera Review - Insta360 X4 vs X5 (FortNine) * I Tested the Next-Gen 360 Camera (Mrwhosetheboss) * The IMPOSSIBLE Camera (CaseyNeistat) And if even Casey Neistat graces us with a new video, you just know there was a good reason for him.
_7acn 2y ago
Until literally today, I was using what’s commonly called a “senior phone” — just a regular mobile phone with a keypad, on which you can’t install any apps. This fact made it impossible for me to use various products and services (e.g. DJI or Meta Quest, which also require an app, or mobile banking transfers that are only accessible via smartphone apps). I resisted for a long time, but in the long run it became very exhausting (for example, people sending me MMS messages I couldn’t open, or having to reply using that clunky keypad on the phone). In the end, I chose convenience. I believe we’re all to blame.
- testing22321 2y ago
  I have a DJI Mavic mini pro 4 with the remote control with a screen. I do not have a phone app.
  - _7acn 2y ago
    The app is required to "activate" their gimbals. I'm not sure about other products.
    - testing22321 2y ago
      Not on my mini pro 4
- queenkjuul 2y ago
  You didn't choose convenience, you chose what was necessary to operate in modern society, much like why you were paying for phone service to begin with. The idea that this stuff is a meaningful choice is laughable. Society requires use of a smartphone now. We're 20 years down this road, there is no going back
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    That would be acceptable, insisting on using iOS, Android or whatever is that Chinese OS - outside of USA / China - is not.
nokeya 2y ago
They say: “Just buy hi-end/expensive products, they are free from this bullshit!”. But this is simply not true. Almost all my home appliances (oven, air conditioners, dishwasher, washing and dryer machines) are from top tier lines and cost me a ton of money, but they still had WiFi and mobile applications. But, one important difference - all of them could work normally without it. I haven’t connected any of them to network and not going to do this ever.
8bithero 2y ago
9 times out of 10, all these IoT devices really do is add another node to a botnet.
conductr 2y ago
I really wish more people felt this way about the invasive connectivity of devices.
- mr90210 2y ago
  Unfortunately this is one of those cases where regulators came in handy. The regular Joe/Jane without the knowledge of the inner works of tech companies simply cannot fathom to which extent those companies go to track and collect data of their customers.
casenmgreen 2y ago
I bought a Ricoh GR III. Nice camera, shame about the app - it's pretty bad in and of itself (you need it for remote shutter), but it has a horrific data collection/sharing T&C. Fortunately, in Android, you can block network access for an app. If I couldn't do that, I'd need to root e/os/ to install firewall to prevent, or, not use the app - which would mean no remote shutter on the camera. AFAIK, there is no way to discover the T&C until you have installed the app.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  > Fortunately, in Android, you can block network access for an app. Not in stock Android. If you have that option it's an added extra.
- remlov 2y ago
  A01GR2 is a pretty good open source alternative available on the play store. Miles better than Ricoh's own app.
  - casenmgreen 2y ago
    I thought briefly about writing an app for remote shutter, but obviously a lot of work. Did not cross my mind would already exist!! Thank you very much. Appalling Ricoh T&C now in the bin.
lifestyleguru 2y ago
I bought HomeKit camera assuming I can run it having multiple Apple devices and even paid iCloud subscription claiming "HomeKit Secure Video support". Nope! need a HomePod. Walled garden circled back and is bitting. Not so nice, innit?
matt3210 2y ago
Hopefully you can return it. I also really dislike needing an app for stuff that shouldn't need an app. If only there was a "hide my email" like feature for crap apps... maybe a special highly restricted sandbox.
nixass 2y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43742229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43742229
liendolucas 2y ago
I'm keeping my gadgets to the bare minimum and if in the future I need to purchase something I truly need I think I will be just fine buying second hand and couple of generations old. There's no other way. Why we don't have more laws protecting customers from these buy-baits I still don't know. People should absolutely boicott and spread the word about these pieces of junk being put in the market. KUDOS to the author for taking the time to document this.
femto 2y ago
Any Australian buyers should be able to get an instant refund under consumer law (goods not as advertised). For those who don't want a refund and have the time and energy, fun could be had with the consumer law around "Unfair contract terms" [1]. [1] https://consumer.gov.au/sites/consumer/files/2016/05/0553FT_ACL-guides_ContractTerms_web.pdf https://consumer.gov.au/sites/consumer/files/2016/05/0553FT_...
- glaucon 2y ago
  I was curious what sort of remedies that legislation might offer to an individual who wanted to pursue. Page 22 of the linked document summarises that and they are, at least at face value, satisfyingly real. Having said that I'm not sure how this would work if an Australian bought the camera online from a business based outside of Australia, I'm guessing the answer is "not at all".
Mayora13 2y ago
[flagged]
- bayindirh 2y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tarasglek 2y ago
  appreciate the summary
ursusarcanum 2y ago
Rossman is the wrong guy to irk. He has money and spite, has caused a lot of deserved grief to companies that play dirty tricks.
broknbottle 2y ago
Please drink verification can. https://imgur.com/please-drink-verification-can-dgGvgKF https://imgur.com/please-drink-verification-can-dgGvgKF
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  reality is stranger than 4chan fiction https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
theturtletalks 2y ago
Asking to add an app to use a device is one thing. DJI literally had him install the app and give full camera permissions to activate the device. He tried giving it access once and clicking ask for permission every time. Neither worked, he had to give full phone camera permissions. Why would a camera need a phone camera access if not for surveillance?
silexia 2y ago
Right to repair and right to own what we pay for should be supported by all of us. We are entering a dystopian nightmare where corporations and government control everything and we have no freedoms left.
greatgib 2y ago
I got exactly the same kind of things with Xiaomi security camera. I used to have one and it was not like that, but now you need to pay a monthly plan to have the last day of events available "in the cloud". It might be ok for me if it was just in the case that you store things in the cloud, but it looks like that if you don't take the subscription, even if you store things on a local sdcard, when there is an intruder alert, you will just receive the alert but you will not be able to see remotely the 10s video of the event like what is done when you use their subscription. Also you have nag screen for the subscription everywhere. And obviously, there is no way to store things in the cloud anywhere else than using their own service. And especially not using common standard protocols. What pisses me off is that Chinese brands, like Xiaomi, used to be "you just buy a device", no frill, good value and no need to rely on Chinese services and co. Now, DJI, Xiaomi, they are following the trend of American and European crappy products selling you licence to products that you don't really own but that requires an all time one connection and subscription to Chinese services. I saw the change coming hard when used to buy Xiaomi phones regularly, before you got the phone with a very light OS, crap free, it was a big relief coming from Samsung phones. Now it is probably worse than Samsung, you have hundreds of mandatory apps by default for useless games and utils like bubble war, candy crush, facebook things, and dozens of nag screen to share your data or take subscriptions...
dzhiurgis 2y ago
If you want to activate Air Unit 4O DJI Assistant 2 installs kernel extension (HoRNDIS).
ongytenes 2y ago
Mandatory app +camera = citizens unwittingly spying for a foreign power?

354 points by qingcharles 2y ago

Not watching a video, but how is it legal for any company to "sell" something like this? (The video might explain that, but that's my focus of what I care about out of the situation.)

sneak 2y ago
You’re free to not buy it, that’s why. This video is the market working as intended.
- hansvm 2y ago
  We have laws about false advertising and such things. At a minimum, there's a case to be made with respect to the warranty of merchantability.
- serial_dev 2y ago
  It’s also not allowed to sell a coffee machine that electrocutes its users every time it’s turned on, then burns down the house for good measure. Sure, someone will make a video “this coffee machine killed my wife and burned down my house with my children in it”, and you would say it’s the market working as intended… There are standards the stuff sold need to meet, even if ultimately you are always “free to not buy it”.
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  The problem with letting “the market” decide things like this is it requires first that someone gets hurt. Then they need to wage and information campaign against said company. Or we can just have a law that says this is bad and be done with it.
  - sneak 2y ago
    Unchecked lawmaking hurts a lot more people than bad consumer products. We have a good system, and this video shows it functions well.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      We have a terrible system, built around power disparity, dishonesty, unequal and difficult access to remedies for dishonesty, and this obsession with the idea that only individuals should act individually, and not collectively as a governing body, to prevent and punish harms.
    - GavinMcG 2y ago
      Have you read enough history to know what life was like before we got rid of child labor, established weekends as a norm, regulated food products, etc.? Or do you assume that the free market provides those things because you’ve only lived in an age where you can take them for granted?
    - yoyohello13 2y ago
      Comments like these and knowing people like you are in charge make me fear for the future. Companies, unchecked, will kill as many people as they can to make more profit. History proves this, it’s not a hypothetical. Laws are the only lever we have to keep profit incentive aligned with the common good.
- barnabee 2y ago
  Markets are tools. They are good at some things (allocating resources, adapting to changing supply and demand, revealing preferences and discovering prices, incentivising innovation and socially useful risk taking, …) and bad at others (ensuring new entrants don’t repeatedly make the same safety mistakes, preventing exploitation of customers, protecting IP, solving for long term social needs, maintaining national resilience against threats, preventing waste…) Fetishisation of markets is the issue. Though markets and generally free trade are incredibly important and have brought (and hopefully will continue to bring) great benefits to humanity, they also have downsides, and other tools (regulation, taxation, industrial strategy, …) are needed to balance these. This is one such case. The market is creating downsides that society should not tolerate.
  - johnea 2y ago
    > Fetishisation of markets is the issue. Well said. It should also be pointed out, that the regulatory laws are what _defines_ the market. They are even more fundamental to a market's existence than the companies producing goods and services, or the consumers buying them. Without regulatory law, the "market" devolves to a relapse into the warring states era. Why shouldn't amazone hire a mercenary force to blow the vault doors off of Ft. Knox and carry all the gold home to Bozo? Because there are laws against it! And that would render the action unprofitable. Bozo sure as sh1t doesn't care about stealing from anyone, or even someone getting killed, if it means he gets a bunch more shekels. The regulatory law is more than just inherent, it's a mandatory component of anything that's going to have more resemblance to a "market" than to Mad Max... So, the profiting companies actually _require_ a regulatory structure, to prevent the most wealthy and powerful from just taking whatever they have. The question is in also making these regulations benefit the consumer as well as the supply side. In the US this part is currently in rather complete failure...
dsign 2y ago
It's about false advertising: they say "our product gets images like this and that", which is Okay and something the buyer uses to base their decision. And there is an expectation that their product will do as advertised. But they never say front-and-center "our product won't function without a valid Internet connection and an approved photo ID, because we use our product to harvest your data."

K0balt 2y ago

Enshitification at its best. This is all part of the inexorable current sweeping us along to the post capitalist society, where corporations no longer sell anything but rather rent or sell access to their things. We’re already there with phones, most consumer computers, farming equipment, cars, and gradually, more and more consumer goods. With pervasive automation, we are accelerating towards a future where money is meaningless, but not in a nice humanistic star-trek kind of way… more in a dystopian, no need to pay wages to anyone because automation, so we just need land, natural resources, and energy kind of way. It’s grey goo, on a macro scale so you have to get into space to see it for what it is. The current pushes us towards a time, soon, when power is the only currency that matters, and justice is reduced to the will of the stronger. If we want to have something better than trying to compete for resources as squishy humans alongside technofacist enclaves where humans are sparse and wield unprecedented power through massive robotic capabilities, we need to start making changes now.

yoyohello13 2y ago
It’s not going to get better any time soon unfortunately. The technocrats have fully captured the US government. Turns out cyberpunk was the most accurate sci-fi portrayal of our future.
pmontra 2y ago
What is there of "post capitalist" in all of that? I see capital and scarcity all the way down. Maybe scarcity is artificially enforced on things that wouldn't be scarce anymore but nothing changed substantially compared to 100 years ago.
- K0balt 2y ago
  What changed is that “the people” are not serfs, they are irrelevant competitors for resources. The only thing you can do with money is pay people for their time. In the end wages is the end consumer of currency. It serves no other purpose. We are entering a new chapter, where money will cease to be relevant at all. Only land and energy will be relevant. The elite will not need people at all anymore, people and society in general will become annoyances, at best. Everything is better when you have less people to share it with, so “depopulation” will likely be in vogue. Technofacist enclaves will have the monopoly of coercive force, and will probably fight amongst themselves for resources, but the population of people outside those entities will be a lot like ants.

dsign 2y ago

I have a washing machine that won't let me use it fully without installing an app that asks for permission to track my GPS coordinates at all time, in my phone. HomeWhiz.There should be a law against selling new hardware that demands that sort of thing to function, or to have full functionality. But I would be happy if procedures to bring class-auction lawsuits against companies that engage in this kind of bait-and-ransom were somehow simpler.

deepsun 2y ago
At least a requirement to let customers know in big letters that the device/appliance you're going to buy would not function without App + Wifi + Internet plan + GPS, and that you're not buying an appliance but a limited license to use it.
Teever 2y ago
This is the kind of stuff that I feel a coordinated campaign to have consumers take companies to small claims court over would be very effective in combating. I'm sure a bunch of elderly magistrates would feel that this kind of requirement is obscene and would readily side with the claimant. Collectively this would cost the company a lot.
- prawn 2y ago
  As well, I would say pick a shame domain and make some noise about this, collate feedback from other consumers, etc. Spread that constantly until the manufacturer can justify it or relent. Hassle them for comment and until they reply to your satisfaction, note on the site that they haven't responded despite repeated attempts at contacting them.
mjevans 2y ago
At the very least, when you the current end user refuse to agree to their terms of service, the model should have to be returned, at the manufacturer's expense, irrespective of condition. Think of renters stuck in a place with units like that! They too should have the right to require un-tracked appliances and be free from being forced to agree to additional contract overheads that aren't obvious in the price / what should be reasonable terms.

sneak 2y ago

This bothers me about DJI equipment too. I use disposable throwaway email VPN accounts to activate the products then uninstall the apps. I avoid DJI when and where I can now. The only DJI product I have purchased since experiencing this same shit is the Osmo Pocket 3. I know of no comparable product.

Frieren 2y ago
> I avoid DJI when and where I can now. I used to avoid spyware apps. My antivirus would flag them so I could remove them. Until all of them became spyware. Widely used apps by well known corporations do more intrusive and more constant tracking that the apps that my antivirus used to flag. Avoiding these brands is one step, but it will not last long. Only the law can deal with total corporation surveillance.

Frieren 2y ago

It should be forbidden for all device manufacturers to make apps, tracking, registering, etc. mandatory. Every TV, phone, camera, tablet, fridge, ... is becoming a spying device like in the worst scifi dystopias. And as soon as the company stops supporting them they become trash to pollute the planet so they can sell you the next one. Regulations should have come a decade a go. We own nothing, we have no privacy, we are sold products 24/7. I will vote for a goverment that protects me of this total corporate surveillance. It is their duty towards citizens to do so. And it will happen, like feudalism died this techno-feudalism will die too.

dsign 2y ago
[flagged]
Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
When the governments all over the world are making their citizens download mobile apps I doubt whether there will be any regulation prohibiting hardware manufacturers forcing apps on consumers.
- jofla_net 2y ago
  dependence on such complex devices is disgusting
inopinatus 2y ago
My vote could be swayed by a policy platform making it not merely forbidden, but outright criminal, to market software and hardware that cannot function without assignment of a user id. Everything from drones to games. In many cases this would thoroughly annoy certain authoritarian regimes that are normalised as totalitarian surveillance states. Their exports would be disrupted. What a pity.
- jackvalentine 2y ago
  So, world of Warcraft is illegal now?

goblin89 2y ago

Wait until physical camera makers not only license you the unit, but also make everything you shoot belong to them, like software camera apps (e.g., Filmic Pro) do now. DJI can just add some mandatory firmware upgrade process that offloads your footage to the mothership, and 99.9999% will agree to everything without reading.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
Might be a realistic way for manufacturers to to implement a certified-taken-by-camera-not-AI photo feature.
- bornfreddy 2y ago
  And then extort you to get access to "your" images.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    So the photo print market is really weird right now. Remember how, in the 1970s and 80s, they used to have little booths surrounded by parking-lot, and you could drive up to the Fotomat booth and drop off your 110 or 35mm film, and they would go develop it and bring back your negatives and prints, and you could drive your Dodge Charger or your Ford Fairlane to come pick them up? And then, the pharmacies got in on this, because pharmacies are where the chemicals are at anyway. And at a pharmacy, you could have film developed, and you could also get prints, and reprints, and larger-sized prints, and framed photos and albums and greeting cards and all sorts of things. And this pharmaceutical extension tradition carries on into the present-day. Now you can waltz into CVS or Walgreens or Wal-Mart, you can bring your USB or your microSD card, or just your phone with a cable, and you can plug in your USB or thunk down a disc, and load it into their kiosk computer, and some even have scanners. And then you can order instant photo prints! And they still can sell you albums, and framed photos, and large-format prints, and posters and whatnot. Here's the trouble, though: phone cameras don't generate the right-sized images. I was at a Walgreens and they were selling, like, 8x10 and 5x7 and other standard photo-sized frames and prints. And I upload a photo, and the kiosk complains. Kiosk says it's low-resolution. Kiosk shows me a sample preview, and the edges are cut off. So I chat with the clerk there, and she tells me to just take a screenshot of the image and it'll work. LOL a screenshot, when the resolution is too low already? And so eventually I figured out that, even if I took a 50 megapixel photograph with the phone's sophisticated camera, it would not print correctly. I told the clerk: this phone takes photos like a TV set. It's in 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. Those are not the same as 8x10 photos! So the pharmacies have all this tooling for conventional cameras. I suppose a DSLR could still turn out 8x10 photos. I suppose I could "crop" a photo down in my smartphone on Android. But what I really wanted was to download a PD photo from Commons.wikimedia.org and print that out in an 11x17 or larger. And that was not working out so well. Phone cameras today are producing really impeccable photos of really impossible aspect ratios. There's a ton of tooling that is specifically made for photographs that were based on the size of negatives and the size of photo paper in the last 70 decades or so. Kodak and Fujifilm and their ilk are still haunting us. Thankfully there are more online services. Everything I put now into Google Photos. Google Photos will happily generate a photobook and they'll even drop-ship them to my family. I have sent them cool photobooks in the past. I never got to peek at them. No complaints. Google Photos doesn't mind when your photos are a weird aspect-ratio. Google Photos will adapt. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be shown your memories.

Animats 2y ago

Where is the part where he doesn't click "Agree", boxes the thing up, and sends it back? I've sent stuff back for that sort of thing. Often, I'll look at a EULA and decide I don't want it. Mandatory arbitration with anybody other than the American Arbitration Association is a killer.

MarioMan 2y ago
In the comments, he mentions that he will be returning the unit as defective.
- Animats 2y ago
  But he clicked "Accept" on the EULA. On camera.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Of course he does. Nobody can be expected to actually read those, much less for them to be legally effective at enforcing anything.
thayne 2y ago
1. Most people don't actually read long EULAs. And who can blame them? We have been trained not to read them, and if you do, you are spending a significant amount of your life on a tedious and frustrating endeavor. 2. If you do read it, it is a long document in difficult and intentionally misleading legalese, where you can easily miss something. 3. If you don't agree to the terms, and return it, does the company pay for the shipping? Even if they do, you have now wasted a fair amount of time on this product you won't actually use. 4. Depending on the product there may not be anything on the market that has an acceptable EULA. In part due to the fact that few enough people read the EULA that companies can afford to lose business from the people who do.
- windex 2y ago
  I suppose consumers need to be able to pool their effort to read this. We upload it to a site, see the comments others have made and then decide. If there are changes between the comments and now, then those are highlighted as well. A EULAgrokker.

jart 2y ago

When all the manufacturing was moved to China decades ago, I bet no one predicted China would do this!

Renaud 2y ago
It's not China doing this, it's manufacturers, wherever they are. DJI happens to be a Chinese company but Samsung isn't, and they have been tracking what people watch on their TV (even if you're using HDMI and your own input) for years. Big European, Asian and American brands are doing the same, washing machines requiring an account to access basic capabilities, cars phoning home, computers phoning home, phones phoning home, they all want it, they all do it. Blaming China for this is deflecting the true culprit: the rampant notion that everything that could be sold has to be sold. Privacy doesn't matter, just put a red ribbon over it and force user to create an account and share their data in exchange for the priviledge of accessing what they thought they bought. China didn't invent that, they sure love it, but they are not responsible for it alone.
- ourmandave 2y ago
  ... and they have been tracking what people watch on their TV (even if you're using HDMI and your own input) for years. How? If you didn't give it an internet connection, how is it sending any tracking data back to the mothership? It can't guess your wifi password or anything.
  - jart 2y ago
    It's still possible to watch television without an Internet connection?
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    More and more devices are coming with SIM cards baked in. You don’t pay for them, the manufacturer does, but they harvest your data whether you give them internet or not. For now I’m only aware of cars having these, but I suspect it’s just a matter of time before even cheap consumer gadgets have this too. Really, the only answer is privacy regulation. Any other solution (just let the free market handle it, don’t give it internet access, etc) is not workable in the long term.

radicality 2y ago

Was just browsing earlier today for some potential upgrades from my GoPro10 and was looking at these too, that’s disappointing, guess wont be looking at these.

GianFabien 2y ago

And the list of companies whose products I won't buy grows. I just hope the next hammer I buy doesn't come with a head that turns to funny putty when it loses internet connection.

jofla_net 2y ago
Or when banging unregisterd nails!
- GianFabien 2y ago
  Bring on the nails with individual RFID in their heads. I'll just go back to using my solid metal pre-2000 25oz claw hammer.

spyder 2y ago

and the next step is a monthly subscription fee to use your camera...

itsafarqueue 2y ago
If you’ve read this first here, mark the day. This is coming.
conductr 2y ago
I bought a GoPro last year after reading about a feature HyperSmooth Pro stabilization. Granted, I didn't do an inquisition into the specifics just thinking if I bought their best camera it was supported. Feature is only available if I also subscribe to their $100 per year membership. I think without the membership some lesser, non-Pro version is available. It felt like a bait and switch situation to me when I unboxed it and tried to use the feature the first time.

Ferret7446 2y ago

Shittiness aside, there's no such thing as a license for a physical product. Licenses are for things that are copyrighted, like movies or software. A company can't force you to use a physical product in a certain way; a "license" won't hold up in court.

3abiton 2y ago
What argument would hold in US court though? Camera is not working without an app be valid?
fuzzbazz 2y ago
> won't hold up in court Does that even matter? because at 4:50 on the video you can clearly read: "You agree to give up your right to go to court to assert or defend your rights under these Terms" ... in the "binding arbitration and no class action" terms that you need to Agree to.
- codesnik 2y ago
  is that clause even legal/enforceable in "normal" jurisdictions?
indrora 2y ago
Tell that to Haas, one of the only US based CnC machine manufacturers. They instruct technicians to disable features for hardware if you haven’t paid the licensing fee for that hardware. Swapped the 10 head tool changer for a 14 head from a downed machine? Sucks to be you buddy it won’t work because you haven’t licensed the feature to have 14 tools! Oh you bought the machine used? And they swapped it for you? Sucks to be you pay up or it’s scrap metal to you.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

mrandish 2y ago

Well then it seems only fair that I pay for the camera license with a license to use my money.

pyfon 2y ago

They thought they sold me a camera but no I'll invoke my statutory rights and get a full refund.

itsafarqueue 2y ago
This is the way. Mass consumer activist action, hundreds or thousands of purchases that turn around and invoke statutory rights and refunds, as protest. It won’t change until we make them hurt.

fxtentacle 2y ago

To me, it increasingly seems like the US lacks cultural autonomy. US companies are A-OK with censoring movies and games to gain access to the Chinese market, for example remember when Blizzard banned a US player in an US tournament to please Chinese censors? But in the other direction, it seems Chinese companies aren't willing to "return the favor" and modify their products to account for American sensibilities when they export to the US. Perpetual surveillance and only little property rights protection is how everyday life in China works, so Chinese consumers won't be bothered by this. It only bothers US consumers, who are used to more privacy and solid property rights.

mcintyre1994 2y ago
Isn’t the solution to this to just regulate for American sensibilities in the US market? I don’t think it’s true that US companies respect privacy, but if it is then you can regulate for that and the Chinese companies will have to do the same in the US market. They’re not going to “return the favour” if it’s not regulated for and their products do fine in the market without.
- LadyCailin 2y ago
  Yes, but regulations cost companies money, and the US isn’t a real country of the people by the people, it’s three corporations in a trenchcoat.
stavros 2y ago
> It only bothers US consumers, who are used to more privacy and solid property rights. Which US are you talking about? The one I know is a capitalist free-for-all, where the word "regulation" is anathema. The vast majority of Us-based products and services spy on the consumer to make an extra penny, and nobody cares. It really baffles me to hear someone say that the US isn't under perpetual surveillance, when the NSA literally piped all phonecalls to their servers twenty years ago, before they realized they can just make companies give them all the data.
- conductr 2y ago

madduci 2y ago

Guess what? Canon has now switched its "Camera Connect" app to a cloud based version, where you need an account first to access to the camera pictures that are available only over WiFi Direct.

matsemann 2y ago

The action cam market is a bit weird at the moment. The others have caught up to GoPro, and some say even surpassed. But the field is very messy, you can't trust half the stuff. Dji and Insta360 are very good at giving away free stuff to influencers, and to tech reviewers with strings attached (like forbidding side-by-side comparisons). Sock-puppets constantly recommending these brands, etc. As a consumer it's very hard to make an informed decision on what to buy. Can't trust anything you read about the models.

lifestyleguru 2y ago
Yeah you watch advertisements and promo videos shot with some professional equipment with people flying around in everything imaginable and explosions all over the place, all in high resolution and crisp quality. Then copy the footage from SD Card and it looks like a turd.
bambax 2y ago
DJI products are extraordinary and way above the competition. But registration is a huge pain, yes. Two solutions: 1/ Buy used; the previous owner probably didn't do a factory reset -- if they did, return it and try again. 2/ Use a disposable email. On the Action pro, once "registered", nothing happens and the device never asks for anything. Drones are different, they sometimes need to be attached to a proper account; when that happens, create yet another disposable email and "register" again.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  > way above the competition did you test them all or are you basing it on the reviewers the other commenter just pointed out are useless?
mbirth 2y ago
To prove your point, looks like Insta360 started a big campaign today. This popped up in my YouTube stream: * Best Motorcycle Camera Review - Insta360 X4 vs X5 (FortNine) * I Tested the Next-Gen 360 Camera (Mrwhosetheboss) * The IMPOSSIBLE Camera (CaseyNeistat) And if even Casey Neistat graces us with a new video, you just know there was a good reason for him.

_7acn 2y ago

Until literally today, I was using what’s commonly called a “senior phone” — just a regular mobile phone with a keypad, on which you can’t install any apps. This fact made it impossible for me to use various products and services (e.g. DJI or Meta Quest, which also require an app, or mobile banking transfers that are only accessible via smartphone apps). I resisted for a long time, but in the long run it became very exhausting (for example, people sending me MMS messages I couldn’t open, or having to reply using that clunky keypad on the phone). In the end, I chose convenience. I believe we’re all to blame.

testing22321 2y ago
I have a DJI Mavic mini pro 4 with the remote control with a screen. I do not have a phone app.
- _7acn 2y ago
  The app is required to "activate" their gimbals. I'm not sure about other products.
  - testing22321 2y ago
    Not on my mini pro 4
queenkjuul 2y ago
You didn't choose convenience, you chose what was necessary to operate in modern society, much like why you were paying for phone service to begin with. The idea that this stuff is a meaningful choice is laughable. Society requires use of a smartphone now. We're 20 years down this road, there is no going back
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  That would be acceptable, insisting on using iOS, Android or whatever is that Chinese OS - outside of USA / China - is not.

nokeya 2y ago

They say: “Just buy hi-end/expensive products, they are free from this bullshit!”. But this is simply not true. Almost all my home appliances (oven, air conditioners, dishwasher, washing and dryer machines) are from top tier lines and cost me a ton of money, but they still had WiFi and mobile applications. But, one important difference - all of them could work normally without it. I haven’t connected any of them to network and not going to do this ever.

8bithero 2y ago

9 times out of 10, all these IoT devices really do is add another node to a botnet.

conductr 2y ago

I really wish more people felt this way about the invasive connectivity of devices.

mr90210 2y ago
Unfortunately this is one of those cases where regulators came in handy. The regular Joe/Jane without the knowledge of the inner works of tech companies simply cannot fathom to which extent those companies go to track and collect data of their customers.

casenmgreen 2y ago

I bought a Ricoh GR III. Nice camera, shame about the app - it's pretty bad in and of itself (you need it for remote shutter), but it has a horrific data collection/sharing T&C. Fortunately, in Android, you can block network access for an app. If I couldn't do that, I'd need to root e/os/ to install firewall to prevent, or, not use the app - which would mean no remote shutter on the camera. AFAIK, there is no way to discover the T&C until you have installed the app.

IshKebab 2y ago
> Fortunately, in Android, you can block network access for an app. Not in stock Android. If you have that option it's an added extra.
remlov 2y ago
A01GR2 is a pretty good open source alternative available on the play store. Miles better than Ricoh's own app.
- casenmgreen 2y ago
  I thought briefly about writing an app for remote shutter, but obviously a lot of work. Did not cross my mind would already exist!! Thank you very much. Appalling Ricoh T&C now in the bin.

lifestyleguru 2y ago

I bought HomeKit camera assuming I can run it having multiple Apple devices and even paid iCloud subscription claiming "HomeKit Secure Video support". Nope! need a HomePod. Walled garden circled back and is bitting. Not so nice, innit?

matt3210 2y ago

Hopefully you can return it. I also really dislike needing an app for stuff that shouldn't need an app. If only there was a "hide my email" like feature for crap apps... maybe a special highly restricted sandbox.

nixass 2y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43742229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43742229

liendolucas 2y ago

I'm keeping my gadgets to the bare minimum and if in the future I need to purchase something I truly need I think I will be just fine buying second hand and couple of generations old. There's no other way. Why we don't have more laws protecting customers from these buy-baits I still don't know. People should absolutely boicott and spread the word about these pieces of junk being put in the market. KUDOS to the author for taking the time to document this.

femto 2y ago

Any Australian buyers should be able to get an instant refund under consumer law (goods not as advertised). For those who don't want a refund and have the time and energy, fun could be had with the consumer law around "Unfair contract terms" [1]. [1] https://consumer.gov.au/sites/consumer/files/2016/05/0553FT_ACL-guides_ContractTerms_web.pdf https://consumer.gov.au/sites/consumer/files/2016/05/0553FT_...

glaucon 2y ago
I was curious what sort of remedies that legislation might offer to an individual who wanted to pursue. Page 22 of the linked document summarises that and they are, at least at face value, satisfyingly real. Having said that I'm not sure how this would work if an Australian bought the camera online from a business based outside of Australia, I'm guessing the answer is "not at all".

Mayora13 2y ago

[flagged]

bayindirh 2y ago
[flagged]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tarasglek 2y ago
appreciate the summary

ursusarcanum 2y ago

Rossman is the wrong guy to irk. He has money and spite, has caused a lot of deserved grief to companies that play dirty tricks.

broknbottle 2y ago

Please drink verification can. https://imgur.com/please-drink-verification-can-dgGvgKF https://imgur.com/please-drink-verification-can-dgGvgKF

1oooqooq 2y ago
reality is stranger than 4chan fiction https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en

theturtletalks 2y ago

Asking to add an app to use a device is one thing. DJI literally had him install the app and give full camera permissions to activate the device. He tried giving it access once and clicking ask for permission every time. Neither worked, he had to give full phone camera permissions. Why would a camera need a phone camera access if not for surveillance?

silexia 2y ago

Right to repair and right to own what we pay for should be supported by all of us. We are entering a dystopian nightmare where corporations and government control everything and we have no freedoms left.

greatgib 2y ago

I got exactly the same kind of things with Xiaomi security camera. I used to have one and it was not like that, but now you need to pay a monthly plan to have the last day of events available "in the cloud". It might be ok for me if it was just in the case that you store things in the cloud, but it looks like that if you don't take the subscription, even if you store things on a local sdcard, when there is an intruder alert, you will just receive the alert but you will not be able to see remotely the 10s video of the event like what is done when you use their subscription. Also you have nag screen for the subscription everywhere. And obviously, there is no way to store things in the cloud anywhere else than using their own service. And especially not using common standard protocols. What pisses me off is that Chinese brands, like Xiaomi, used to be "you just buy a device", no frill, good value and no need to rely on Chinese services and co. Now, DJI, Xiaomi, they are following the trend of American and European crappy products selling you licence to products that you don't really own but that requires an all time one connection and subscription to Chinese services. I saw the change coming hard when used to buy Xiaomi phones regularly, before you got the phone with a very light OS, crap free, it was a big relief coming from Samsung phones. Now it is probably worse than Samsung, you have hundreds of mandatory apps by default for useless games and utils like bubble war, candy crush, facebook things, and dozens of nag screen to share your data or take subscriptions...

dzhiurgis 2y ago

If you want to activate Air Unit 4O DJI Assistant 2 installs kernel extension (HoRNDIS).

ongytenes 2y ago

Mandatory app +camera = citizens unwittingly spying for a foreign power?