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submitted 1 year ago by narwhal@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. But that's just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it's getting worse.

It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage "cloud" "integration" involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you.

If you ever saw the South Park episode where they try to get the cable company to do something on their behalf and the cable company people just touch themselves inappropriately upon hearing the lamentations of their customers, well, I suspect that's what's going on here. The management of these places are fundamentally sadists, and they are going to auger all of these things into the ground to make their short-term money before flying the coop for the next big thing they can destroy.

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[-] space@lemmy.dbzer0.com 150 points 1 year ago

So let me get this straight. You buy Phillips Hue devices because they work offline. Then they change how the devices you bought function making them only work online forcing you to create an account and allow them to collect data.

This should not be legal. This is a breach of contract, they modified the contract after you already signed it (by buying the device). If they want to do this, they should offer full refunds to anyone that wants to exit the contract, or only apply the changed to new devices.

[-] ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago

Phillips: " I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago
[-] mjhelto@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

I found the youngling, y'all!

[-] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 year ago

No issue here. If you don’t like the new terms, just decline and toss all your smart home appliances that you spent your hard earned money on right into the trash.

See, no problem!

/s

[-] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

I'm sure there's a line somewhere in the ToS that you always read carefully from beginning to the end, saying that they merely rent you the devices infinitely, so they're actually not your property and they can do whatever they want with them.

[-] WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

There is a bog standard line in nearly every ToS "We have the right to modify this terms of service without notification to the user" blah blah blah. It probably even holds up in court.

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

They do not.

The format where they do is when it is a service provider and they simply stop service of the contract. I.e. if you don't accept the terms and services for say, using reddit, they can just choose to not continue providing you access to those servers.

But it didn't hold up on contracts involving already rendered services or anything really other then the outcome of declining being 'everyone exiting the contract' or simply moving back to the previous contract.

Courts in the us have pretty much universally upheld that contracts cannot be changed without all parties agreeing.

[-] WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah but the whole tech industry operates as Whatever-as-a-Service now, which means those ToS changes are able to be applied whenever they like. You either continue using the service or you don't. This apparently applies to lightbulbs now. Lightbulbs as a Service. Sigh.

[-] osmoen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Does it matter that these ToS aren't available until after you buy the product? I mean, these agreements are rarely posted right next to the product in-store or online. Right?

[-] WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

You can own a doodad but it's a static, useless doodad until you agree to the ToS which allows you to use it.

this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
443 points (98.3% liked)

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