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Class Action Filed Against Sling Media
New submitter DewDude writes: In case you missed it; Sling Media has been forcing advertisements into video streams from Slingbox devices unless you pay for a client application, which is only an option for Apple, Android, and Windows 8 devices. The issue will now head to the courts, as two plaintiffs have filed a class action suit against Sling Media, claiming the company participated in 'bait-and-switch' tactics by charging users for the hardware, then monetizing the streaming of content. The suit notes that Sling does not own the rights to the programming into which they are inserting advertisements.
Guess it's going to be interesting to see if the court allows Sling box to insert advertising on streams it doesn't actually own or pay to have rebroadcast rights.
If they are not broadcasting the original commercials and are adding their own into them, then it's sounds to me like that would be illegal. Wonder if this decision will have ramifications on how advertising is handled via hardware makers that are not content producers.
Be seeing you...
The ads started appearing back in like, November. It started out as a youtube-like ad in the browser client; which at the time was the only PC based way of watching the units. Then they started hard-coding them in to the new desktop application. At first, you had the option of skipping after so many seconds; but lately they've been advertisements between :30 and 2:30 that have no way of skipping them.
They are not actually inserting advertisements in the video stream; but what they are doing is requiring you to watch one before it will begin playing your TV. As many pointed out Youtube does this; I also point out to people that I don't buy hardware to watch youtube; where as I've purchased a physical piece of hardware as well as subscribe to a TV service to utilize the hardware.
To make matters worse; Sling has seemingly gone downhill in customer support. When you question the advertisements to them on social media, you don't get a response; you get silenced and banned from that social media page. If you talk about it on the forums; they will delete the posts. They're going to great lengths to not only hide the fact you will get advertisements from them in this manner; but even greater lengths of blatantly ignoring customers.
The whole issue with this is they are in fact monetizing your viewing; which is the exact same thing Aereo got shut down over. I'm getting the feeling that they were taking the one judge stating Singbox is not retransmission in a manner they weren't supposed to; and decided to monetize every time you connect.
I get that they have server maintenance to pay for; but it's not like they quit selling Slingboxes; and no one was actually complaining when it was an un-obtrusive banner ad displayed on the client plugin. But the fact they're basically making you watch an entire advertisement that does nothing but benefit them; so you can watch TV you pay for, on hardware they own; they've just taken the "evil corporate" route.
...when someone would get around to this.
I work for one of the big cable companies. We use slingboxes at hub sites which are remote or just not staffed 24/7 in order to be able to verify whether or not video service is working, particularly after maintenances which may affect video.
A couple weeks ago was the first time in awhile that I've had to verify it myself, and I was very surprised to see ads popping up before the live tv stream kicked in, and I was thinking 'that's.... not right'. I'm not terribly surprised that there are some consumers who are pissed off enough to sue.
It's one thing if the service is free. With Youtube, we kind of understand that they have to show ads in order to keep the service free. But when something I paid for in order to use starts shoving ads at me, I tend to get a little ticked off too.
I'm curious, does Netflix do the same thing? Show ads before you start streaming? I don't remember that being the case, but I stopped using Netflix after their price hike fiasco.
If they don't currently do this, and Sling Media wins the suit, I'll bet my bottom dollar they will.
I've owned a Slingbox since the mid-2000s and been very happy with the service. For those unfamiliar, you hook it up to your set top box and it rebroadcasts your signal over the internet and provides things like a remote control library so you can manage your device 100% remotely.
When I first got it, it came with Desktop software for Windows and Mac. This was replaced with a plugin based web interface a few years ago. For iOS and Android devices you have to buy a (rather expensive) dedicated app. I thought this was good value for money so invested. It's especially useful as I travel abroad a lot and UK-based services are almost all geofenced.
In the past 6 months they have been putting advertisements in the web app. Because Chrome has deprecated NPAPI, they released a Desktop application again (the old one doesn't work properly on recent versions of OS X). This Desktop app now inserts mandatory advertisements.
As a long-time customer it's infuriating! I paid good money for my Slingbox which originally had a Desktop app with no ads. The sale promise was "Watch TV anywhere with no subscription". I consider advertisements a subscription.
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!