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Class Action Filed Against Sling Media

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-take-the-law-into-your-own-hands dept.

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.

112 comments

  1. Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Nyder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...
    1. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by arbiter1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      What they do is when you connect to your slingbox to watch. An add will play at the start kinda like youtube has some times. They don't replace the comercials on tv channels.

    2. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't loads of ISP's do this?

      From what I understand that's also what free CDN's do.

    3. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by DewDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Putting an advertisement could constitute as monetizing the stream; and Aereo got shut down over basically monetizing streams they didn't have rebroadcast rights to. Sling doesn't have retransmit consent; but a judge ruled that the nature of the service was a private link that only served one viewer at a time. Still, that ruling was made back when you weren't getting forced advertisements either.

      They aren't inserting ads over the video stream; what they're doing is inserting an advertisement before it will play your live TV stream. These ads range from :30 to sometimes 3 minutes in length; and you have zero way of opting-out. There's no ability to skip; and even adblock is becoming a tad useless.

    4. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

      Aereo got shut down because the judge ruled they were retransmitting the signal which they didn't have a right to do. Sling, SimplTV and Tablo do exactly the same thing as Aereo but the device is at your house so no retransmission issues. This is a different issue and yet to be vetted through the courts.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    5. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by DewDude · · Score: 5, Informative

      The difference here, as I'm sure I'll have to point out many more times to people; you purchase the hardware that digitizes and streams your cable box; so you're essentially also paying for the content you are watching, as well as the bandwidth, plus the electricity to run it. All Sling really does is run a server that keeps track of your IP address to make connecting easier for people who are technically savvy.

    6. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      I wonder how this compares to Microsoft's Xbox and their Live service. When I first bought my Xbox 360 and subscribed to Live, the device had NO paid advertisements on it. Since then, they've revamped the Xbox interface in order to allow a massive amount of advertisement (on some screens, the majority of the screen is nothing but advertisements now), and all this on a paid device while subscribing to their paid premium service. If I wanted to keep using Xbox Live to play with friends, I had no choice but to start watching all those advertisements.

      The Xbox is a little different than Sling, I suppose, in that the advertisements are passive and don't actively interrupt my activities. However, we've seen games that have attempted to patch an advertisement into a loading screen. What would happen if Microsoft patched the OS so that you saw a streamed advertisement at the beginning of each game you played? It sounds ludicrous, but you know that some bean-counter has probably suggested this at some point, although wiser heads knew they'd be looking at mass outrage+lawsuits if they actually tried this.

      Should companies be able to "alter the deal" via patches after you've bought and paid for hardware, especially if that alteration makes for an arguably *worse* consumer experience?

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    7. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by DewDude · · Score: 2

      My logic to all of that is stations opted for retrans consent because cable companies were often using the ability to get out of market locals due to their big towers and highly sensitive equipment to get customers in; and the networks felt someone else shouldn't be able to profit off that. I mean, for the first 40-some years of "cable" TV it's entire concept was picking up local and/or distant stations and selling a connection to it. I mean...the guy that came up with the concept did so to sell more TV's in the mountainous area his customers were in, who couldn't get a TV signal with an aerial. Slingbox and similar technologies have been held as not being re-transmission because in most cases; you have a legal right to use that signal for private use. The reception equipment is yours, it's in your house; and unless you're running OTA...you're already paying for the channels. The stream originates from your dwelling using your internet connection.

      But now here is Sling, wanting to profit off all of that. It was one thing when they were selling you just a piece of hardware to do it; networks had less legal ground to call foul (well, they did for a short period of time, but everyone waited too long and the judge stated if no one had a problem with it to start, why now?). So while yes, Aereo was re-transmitting in all the classical sense; that whole issue comes down to someone profiting off the content without having a legal right to. Sling doesn't seem to have much of a legal right, considering it's not their content and it's involving physical hardware they've been paid for.

      In a lateral form of thinking...it's along the same lines as what Comcast did by forcing a public "members-only" wifi point on everyone without consent; which basically lets them build a "wi-fi network" by forcing customers to provide part of the resources. "Hey, you've gotta have all this stuff hooked up anyway; so we're gonna make it so other comcast members can connect to your wifi...and we're going to use this as a marketing ploy to make us more money...and we're not compensating you for this."

    8. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not that different really. If they are inserting adverts at the start of the content, that means they are at least caching the content so it can be eventually viewed once the adverts are finished.

      So in essence, they are capturing, delaying, and then retransmitting once their adverts are done. Just because the box is at a local level, does not mean it is not transmitting.

      Transmit: cause (something) to pass on from one person or place to another.

    9. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by DewDude · · Score: 1

      The unit has always cached about a 5 second buffer of content; except it accomplishes this over time by playing the stream back at 90% and gradually increasing that as the buffer fills up.

      You don't need a 30 second advertisement (or more) to fill what is essentially a 5 second buffer. Your PC is streaming and buffering the content from the Slingbox, while the client is displaying a server-based advertisement. I'm not even 100% it keeps any of the content that was streamed to you other than to fill the buffer; I haven't checked where the 30-minute rewind actually starts at when the box stream does finally get going.

    10. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Xtifr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The legality of that is also dubious, especially in the case of CC-NC or similar content. The Grateful Dead, for example, have a very strict non-commercial-use license for their concert recordings which explicitly forbids any sort of advertisement attached to their music. If I put the Dead's music on my (ad-free) site, and someone else injects ads, that someone could well be liable for violating the Dead's copyrights. Which, since many of the Dead's copyrights are held in part by one of the founders of the EFF, could be a risky move.

      Of course, most content on the net is provided as-is, so it's not a general problem, but for cases like this, the ISPor CDN might well find themselves in legal hot water. (And it does have some obvious analogy to the case at hand.)

    11. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      No you thief. You didn't pay Sling for the box. You just paid for a license to use it.

      They deserve to track what you watch, rent your statistics to whomever wants access to them and to sell advertising for you to watch, because clearly you didn't pay nearly enough for an ad-free experience.

      So there.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    12. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      The question of rebroadcasting rights is irrelevant to this case, since the class does not contain broadcasters and thus would have no standing on that issue.

    13. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by DewDude · · Score: 1

      Yeah..but there's the hope someone in the legal department of various networks who were looking to throw Sling against the wall might join in. I know Fox was really aggressive at one point; but the judge said if it didn't bother them for the last 8 years, they didn't see a legitimate reason it should now. But they could probably spin that in to a valid reason now.

    14. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what is the price of an ad-free experience ? ... people forget that the original pitch for cable-tv was that, because you paid a monthly fee, there would be no ads in the content - the fee would pay for an ad-free experience. And this was true, for the first several years of the cable-tv business. But soon, advertising appeared - apparently, the monthly fees weren't enough for an ad-free experience. Or, more likely, the cable-tv folks realized that it would be an ideal double-dip situation - charge the viewers for access to cable-tv, and charge advertisers to place ads in the cable-customer's content. ... so, the answer to 'what is the price of an ad-free experience' is ... enough to satisfy all of the usual advertisers, *and* any middlemen (cable co's) ... ad-free, after all, constitutes a 'loss' for advertisers (money they can't make that they otherwise would).

    15. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No you thief. You didn't pay Sling for the box. You just paid for a license to use it.

      They deserve to track what you watch, rent your statistics to whomever wants access to them and to sell advertising for you to watch, because clearly you didn't pay nearly enough for an ad-free experience.

      So there.

      What sort of moron modded that flamebait? Do trolls get mod points now - or has Slingbox gotten drunk and spent money on blackhead social media management.

    16. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by mcl630 · · Score: 1

      I agree with what you're saying about Sling, but your part about Comcast is false. No one is forced to run a hotspot for Comcast's network. For one, you don't have to use their wifi router/modem, or you can run it in bridge mode and use your own wifi router. Even if you do use their wifi router, you can disable the hotspot:

      http://customer.xfinity.com/he...

    17. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by mcl630 · · Score: 2

      "What would happen if Microsoft patched the OS so that you saw a streamed advertisement at the beginning of each game you played?"

      Microsoft would lose a ton of customers to Sony and have to stop doing it. It would be a different story if Microsoft was the only console maker.

    18. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can thank Google for this culture of embedding advertising into everything, even stuff you have paid money for.

      I've seen this countless times in apps on Google Play for example and I always refund anything that costs money and has advertising or IAPs.

    19. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so by all means make a business where you sell the box outright if you see a business in that. oh, and you should get prizes for watching too, right, milhous?

    20. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Megane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      people forget that the original pitch for cable-tv was that, because you paid a monthly fee, there would be no ads in the content

      [Citation Needed] where does this meme come from?

      The original pitch for cable TV in the 1950s was basically "we make the antenna work so you don't have to", especially for people who lived in an area where mountains obstructed the signal. Cable-only channels came much later, in the late '70s and early '80s when satellite TV happened. And they already had ads on them.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    21. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      Putting an advertisement could constitute as monetizing the stream;

      They could, you never know what a judge will rule, but there is a good case also to be made that the ad is monetizing the access app and not the stream itself, as the stream doesn't start till after you access it. I could see it going either way, but unless the broadcasters get in the fight, and I doubt they will, it won't be part of the case. In fact, that would be a different case altogether.

      I think Slingbox should have at least put a 'skip' feature on the ads that pops up after a few seconds. Long ads are gonna piss people off when they are trying to tune in to a program already in progress.

    22. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      ^of course, 'already in progress' thought was kind of short sighted, as the program is DVRd... so much for thinking while typing.....

    23. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Cantankerous+Cur · · Score: 2

      Um, yeah, they were sued. http://www.sfgate.com/business... You didn't honestly think Comcast suddenly grew a sense of ethics, did you?

    24. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Regardless of how it was originally billed, the reality is that today Netflix, DVRs and Bittorrent offer advert free viewing for either a subscription fee or a one-off payment. Any platform that thinks it can sneak in annoying, unskippable ads is dreaming. People will abandon it.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    25. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      parasite: n. an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.

    26. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Comcast themselves are claiming you CANT run their modem in bridge mode. they are trying like hell to force the XfinityWiFi access points out there even with bold lies.

      Sadly the FCC wont force them to stop this crap. you can lie to your customers without recourse.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    27. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Any platform that thinks it can sneak in annoying, unskippable ads is dreaming. People will abandon it.

      People are still buying DVD and BluRay movies with shit-tons of unskippable ads...

    28. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

      I agree...the issue isn't retransmission although broadcasters would love to be able to make it about retransmission. It's about who is doing the retransmission. Even though Aereo was claiming they only rented the little antenna to you and you are doing the retransmission (legal) the law determined they were in possession of the antenna and therefore the ones doing the retransmission and rebroadcasting and reselling the service not renting antenna (not legal). Semantics to be sure but different enough in the eyes of US law to condemn them.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    29. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      I moved recently and owned all the equipment I needed. The cable modem I own is an older DOCSIS 2.0 version, and I bridge it to a wifi router. I ordered internet and got it up and running by myself the same day. Comcast didn't say a thing.

    30. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the real crime is that nobody acknowledged your ace rimmer quote.

    31. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't this case be the same/similar as the Malware in the 90,s that put ads on everyone's web site as long as you had their toolbar? The ads covered the ads of the web site cant remember the name of it. I guess what im saying here is, hasn't there already been a ruling on this kinda behavior?

      --
      Jack of all trades,master of none
    32. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

      Yes it was because of poor TV reception people moved to cable. Honestly cable should be crystal clear. I remember watching Cable TV from cable at my aunts house and my jaw dropped to the floor. I will say however MTV and HBO was advertised as Commercial free and they were sued when they added commercials. End Story was MTV wasn't a pay channel like HBO they could show ads Hoever HBO was a paid for extra channel so they cant show ads during the movies,shows only before and after. And no i don't have a link this is from memory which I,m sure isn't 100% correct.lol

      --
      Jack of all trades,master of none
    33. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

      Dude i have a nice collection none of which force me to watch ads. What movies, what studio does this?

      --
      Jack of all trades,master of none
    34. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see you did not understand where he said "their".

    35. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by mcl630 · · Score: 1

      The option to disable the hotspot was there before the lawsuit... the article you linked even says so. I think it was harder to find back then though. Still doesn't change the fact that nobody is "forced" to act as a hotspot.

    36. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by mcl630 · · Score: 1

      That's baloney... you CAN run their modems in bridge mode. Check their forums, people do it all the time.

    37. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude i have a nice collection none of which force me to watch ads. What movies, what studio does this?

      You must not have children, or you would know the answer is Disney. Every f$sking thing they have released for the last 15 years has pre-roll ads and previews that cannot be skipped or fast-forwarded past.

      I rip them, edit out the ads, then re-burn them for the kids to watch. This also prevents loss of the show when the kids trash a disc - just re-burn it again, and make another copy for the van.

    38. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      [Citation Needed] where does this meme come from?

      From people's recollections about advertisements for cable TV on their over-the-air television signal. I also recall seeing ads for cable TV that said or implied a lack of commercials on cable. I was under 10 at the time (1980's) and didn't have any kind of video recording equipment, so, like many others, I have no proof. I recall having conversations at various stages of my life with my mother about the "switch to cable, ditch the commercials" thing as well, so there was an adult to corroborate my story. Still no proof.

    39. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      Unless you are ripping the DVDs, there definitely are some that have unskippable ads.

      *USUALLY*, one of the following will work:
      FF
      skip forward
      MENU
      STOP then MENU

      Not always though..

    40. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Some_Llama · · Score: 1

      no it's the technically legal way of having to opt out of something that most people don't even realize they are doing in the first place.

    41. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Some_Llama · · Score: 1

      i'm doing it right now. i wanted to keep my old network config and open a new network for guests at my house.

    42. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Some_Llama · · Score: 1

      which gives a very nice view of the upcoming windows 10 OS doesn't it?

    43. Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast by Megane · · Score: 1

      Honestly cable should be crystal clear.

      Of course the best part of all this is that to keep with the bazillion different cable channels out there, and the limited (125 or so) RF channels that they also have to share with cable modems, they try to cram as many sub-channels on the same RF channel as possible, at least 10 or so for SD channels, re-compressing them to lower quality. Meanwhile, my antenna gets a full-quality HD signal that maybe only has to share with one or two SD channels. (FWIW, I think cable QAM gives twice the bit rate per channel as antenna ATSC, but still.)

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  2. Sling is so typical of a Republican-ruled... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    corporation. They hate their customers and rip-off their suppliers. They do not own the content they are modifying, but they do it anyway. The Republicans only care about money.

    1. Re:Sling is so typical of a Republican-ruled... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blake Krikorian, their co-founder, graduated from UCLA so you just know he's one of those Republicans. Plus, he is 47 so at his age his wealthy kind typically becomes hateful and unemphatic.

    2. Re:Sling is so typical of a Republican-ruled... by DewDude · · Score: 1

      Except he's not connected to the company anymore; Echostar owns it.

    3. Re:Sling is so typical of a Republican-ruled... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except he's not connected to the company anymore; Echostar owns it.

      Who is ruled by the founder of Dish that still owns 52 percent of it. Plus, he is a well-known xian. His sect of choice is Episcopalian. He is from Tennessee and went to that Republican-scam fake school University of Tennessee that doesn't prove a real education. Also, he has five children. Five! You just know he's one of those CONservatives.

    4. Re:Sling is so typical of a Republican-ruled... by DewDude · · Score: 2

      The only difference was when Ergen was running the show; the company was total bad-asses in the customer service department. Prior to his departure as CEO; it was a pretty decently run company.

    5. Re:Sling is so typical of a Republican-ruled... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      And, his father was a nuclear physicist so you just know he supports mass murder probably both through fission bombs or radiation released from one of their power plants. That is the way of their kind. Those nuclear people kill kill kill. He literally made his money off of death.

  3. Gotta pay for the streams somehow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    With outrageous CEO pay, hardware/software only gets you a fix income for so long. After that you're screwed. Commercials or nothing morons.

    1. Re:Gotta pay for the streams somehow by DewDude · · Score: 4, Informative

      What do you mean "pay for the streams". Sling doesn't pay for the streams. You're paying for the streams by subscribing to cable TV; you're paying for the bandwidth because it's your internet connection you're streaming from; you've also given them a couple hundred bucks for the hardware to do this.

    2. Re:Gotta pay for the streams somehow by jandersen · · Score: 1

      Commercials or nothing morons.

      That's an easy choice, at least. I'd rather have nothing than help feeding a buch of parasites, considering that most of what gets streamed is empty calories with artificial flavours.

      On a different note - with your skills at pleasing the crowds with sweet words, surely you must be in advertising yourself? What advertiser still haven't managed to grasp is that when people avoid adverts, it isn't because they are subversives with a communist agenda tryig to take away fundamental rights. They are simply sick of advertising and advertisers that show no respect for anybody, unless they are forced to at gunpoint. Advertisers appear to shamelessly lie, cheat, invade our privacy and steal time and space from us - and the effect is that most of us loathe advertising, and most of us subconsciously or consciously decide to place our shopping elsewhere.

      Hopefully, in the future, businesses will learn to not spend money on idiotic advertising that only alienates their customers, but I'm not optimistic.

    3. Re:Gotta pay for the streams somehow by Megane · · Score: 1

      it's your internet connection you're streaming from

      Is that really true? Or does the entire stream get proxied through Sling's servers because it's not trivial for something behind NAT to be a server?

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    4. Re:Gotta pay for the streams somehow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is trivial for something behind a NAT to be a server. It's not trivial for a service behind a NAT to be discovered. That's why there are so many NAT service discovery services these days.

    5. Re:Gotta pay for the streams somehow by DewDude · · Score: 1

      In most cases, yes; the slingbox client software will attempt to connect directly to the box using TCP; the boxes automatically issue UPnP commands to open the ports. Barring that, they will attempt a UDP connection. IF that fails, they *will* proxy a stream; but it's a much lower quality. The ads are showing up on the direct TCP connections; so...essentially...I'm getting shown advertisements for something that's using my own resources.

    6. Re:Gotta pay for the streams somehow by Megane · · Score: 1

      I'm getting shown advertisements for something that's using my own resources.

      If they are doing that, then they are definitely being assholes. If they don't have to proxy the connection, then it's not costing them bandwidth. If they are running a service to let you find or connect to your box (due to stuff like not being on a static IP), that's a little bit of effort on their part, but not much.

      If their only contribution is requiring you to go to a web site to connect to a box when you could have reached it directly with older client software by typing in its IP address, fuck them.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  4. Derivative works by penguinoid · · Score: 0

    Other people make nice derivative works, not add ads. I wonder if they're getting nailed for $10,000 per infringement, or is that only for the little guy?

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  5. So this is why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i do not use commercial media players instead of a small desktop and xbmc/kodi

    Captcha: shelved

  6. yea by arbiter1 · · Score: 1

    This is why i still use the windows program they killed off some time ago when ever possible. that webui crap they forced on us with ad's is complete bs.

    1. Re:yea by Caedite+Eos · · Score: 1

      How are you dealing with the sound delay issue on Win 8 and later?

  7. It's been going on...for months by DewDude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:It's been going on...for months by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of the time I found a Windows security vulnerability, I posted about it on windows tech net and I got deleted and banned. After that, I switched to Linux and will never go back.

    2. Re:It's been going on...for months by davidwr · · Score: 1

      I get that they have server maintenance to pay for;

      Maybe I don't understand how Slingboxes work, but the general concept of a "home DVR you can access from anywhere" doesn't seem to require that the vendor maintain a server or stay in business for that matter for the basic DVR and remote-viewing functionality to work.

      This whole thing is really too bad. If I get to the point where I need to remote-view my DVR, shenanigans like this are going to make a home-brew box attractive by comparison.

      --
      Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    3. Re:It's been going on...for months by TylerJWhit · · Score: 1

      I can see the reason for them doing this. If you found a vulnerability and posted it on a public forum, that's a major security risk.

    4. Re:It's been going on...for months by cfalcon · · Score: 0

      No, the security risk was in their code.

      Note this well:
      > Ideally, you correct the flaw and thank the contributor.
      > If the contributor posted code that exploits the problem, it's reasonable to remove part of the post, PM the poster, etc. This can eliminate the downtime. You also mark that there was an edit there, etc. This is also acceptable.
      > You could instead delete the whole post, and also PM OP, thanking him and asking him to keep it on the D/L until patch day, at which point you acknowledge his help in public, and ideally reinstate the post. This is a bit alarmist, but isn't loopy.
      > You could instead delete the whole post and give no reason. This is shitty- you are trying to deny the poster credit, and you aren't obviously resolving the problem.
      > You could instead delete the whole post, give no reason, and BAN THE POSTER. This is for crazy fuckers only, and is what OP said happened to him. That's nuts.

    5. Re:It's been going on...for months by jarkus4 · · Score: 1

      If you want to make it consumer friendly you need to have vendor server for one puprose: finding your device from the internet. Otherwise to get it to work you would need to input some magic numbers* (that may even change sometimes randomly!) or setup some strange services** you dont understand. With vendor server its just few simple clicks.

      * IP address
      ** DNS

    6. Re:It's been going on...for months by DewDude · · Score: 2

      Maybe I don't understand how Slingboxes work, but the general concept of a "home DVR you can access from anywhere" doesn't seem to require that the vendor maintain a server or stay in business for that matter for the basic DVR and remote-viewing functionality to work.

      Here's basically how Slingboxes work: you have a piece of hardware that is connected to your network and the A/V connections on your cable box (it even has pass-through ports); the box then digitizes and compresses the A/V stream being spit out of the cable box. You also have a small IR emitter (built in to later boxes) that relays remote control commands to the box. It's not exactly a "home DVR you can access from anywhere"; it's quite literally a device that streams whatever your set-top-box displays while allowing you to control it. Now, one thing they've done well is making the device a bit "fool-proof" for the average user to use. Most people don't know what an IP address is, or how to look it up, or that it changes; it's not a problem for those of us who have been doing that type of stuff for years. So what they do is maintain servers that keeps track of your Slingbox's IP address; so you can access it without having to know anything but your slingbox ID. The servers don't just do that; but they are also capable of relaying a stream (at reduced quality), should some crazy firewall/double-NAT/other reason occur that your client can't directly connect to it. However, most of the time the boxes will attempt to set up a port-forward on your router through UPnP, if that fails, it will then attempt to blast through the router using UDP, then falling back to relay if that doesn't work. While I would almost buy the argument "we have to cover those costs", one could argue "no one is asking you to"; they've just basically built all that in to the product.

      There is also the issue that, for a while; they were hosting additional bandwidth as playback had gone strictly to browser-embedded clients. They had a desktop application for a while; but discontinued it sometime around 2011 and the 2012 models weren't supported. The worst part about that was if your internet went down with the older boxes; the client application could still find them over the LAN and connect without any intervention from Sling. The browser method meant if your internet was down; or their servers went down...you were totally unable to watch the device at all (unless it was an older unit) They have a desktop program now...and I'm still not sure if they list it as being supported by anything except the latest models. But at this point, all they're really doing is pushing a minimal amount of bandwidth to tell the client where your boxes are. It may still be able to find local boxes without intervention from Sling, but I haven't tested it. In retrospect, using a device that wasn't connectable using standard software was a bad idea; at the same time...the $180 investment was *much* cheaper than buying the hardware necessary to digitize 1080i video over component and compress it to a high-efficiency video codec in realtime. I actually considered something like an HDHomeRun; but I'd have to cannibalize a cable box for it's CableCard or pay an extra I'm-not-even-sure-what-it-costs for a standalone cable card...which at the time my provider was not allowing self-install on...and didn't do installs for anything except home-theater-PCs.

      But ultimately, you can still only go so far keeping people locked in; and while many of us put up with some of thier stupid stuff in the past...making us feel like we've got to pay them to watch our TV on hardware we bought from them is an insult.

    7. Re:It's been going on...for months by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I suppose that, sort of technically, you do buy hardware to view YouTube be it a PC, phone, tablet, etc... However, that has nothing to do with your Sling device I would imagine. This seems like it may be bordering on illegal but I would check the terms of service carefully to see what they have to say. You may not have a leg to stand on in court but the content supplier's rights may be infringed. A bit of a conundrum really - do you want copyright to work in this case?

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re:It's been going on...for months by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That and the story is likely a complete fabrication...

    9. Re:It's been going on...for months by Monoman · · Score: 1

      Please don't put Aereo in a category with Sling. Aereo rented hardware and provided a service that delivered broadcasted content (unaltered) only to the people that already had the permission to view the content. Unfortunately the SCOTUS did not see it that way.

      Sling is inserting ads in some fashion.

      --
      Keep the Classic Slashdot.
    10. Re:It's been going on...for months by rtkluttz · · Score: 1

      Yes... the hardware distinction is important. I have a Hopper V2 from Dish with integrated Sling. Its also utterly damn infuriating that I have a device behind my home firewall that I have to log onto a CLOUD service to be able to access. I should be authenticating to my Sling, not to their shit.

      --
      Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
    11. Re:It's been going on...for months by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The vulnerability, which I later found out windows allows with no notification to the user, is that during the installation of any program, it has access to anything on the hard drive. I found this out while troubleshooting a problem, looking through ini files I found it had grabbed my personal email address and pop server from the email config files. There was no reason this program needed this, and it was registered with a totally different email address. There was no malware/adware/virus found with this program. Like I said, the post was deleted and I was banned.

    12. Re:It's been going on...for months by TylerJWhit · · Score: 0

      Yeah I agree, they should have responded better, but I'd be pissed at someone publicly posting a zero day exploit for the world to see. That's infinitely worse than what Microsoft did.

  8. Time for a haiku by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    There is a faggot
    He put his erect penis
    In a man's anus

  9. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So the obvious question here, is why would anyone subscribe to this? If I had been using a service like this and it started inserting ads everywhere, I'd drop it immediately.
    Advertisements are something I simply will not tolerate in any media. Ever. It's done. I quit watching advertisements the moment I got cable TV back in the 80s and abandoned even that when all the stations became just like the crappy network channels. I've never tolerated ads on the internet.
    I'm just not going to watch ads. I can't believe anyone would. It is literally a waste of your time.

    1. Re:Why? by DewDude · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because most of us didn't "subscribe" to it; we have a piece of hardware that cost between $180 and $300 sitting on our AV racks we did for this same purpose. It's a little more difficult to justify "dropping it" when there's physical hardware you've shelled out money for involved.

    2. Re:Why? by Drakonblayde · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yup. that's why folks are kind of pissed about it and claiming bait and switch. Most folks purchased a slingbox as a device to act as video forwarder so they could watch their tv service when they weren't physically present, and Slingboxes have been really good at that for a long time. If folks knew they'd be getting extra ads on the device, they may have opted not to purchase.

      I personally think that Sling should be forced to issue refunds if they're not going to stop the ads.

    3. Re:Why? by fishscene · · Score: 1

      I'm attempting to do just that. However, I bought mine a year ago and didn't really get a chance to use it until a couple of months ago, when, to my horror, ads were all over it. I attempted a return, but SlingMedia doesn't handle hardware returns, instead directing me to their hardware partner. I requested a return, but it was rejected 3 weeks later on the basis that there wasn't anything wrong with the hardware. (I COMPLETELY abhor advertisements and would not have bought the device if I had known they were going to have ads. I posted on the forums a couple of times trying to show people what I was doing. But I discovered my threads were silently "locked" and I just created a new one with the status update. Recently, when I try to post or create anything, it says I'm logged off the forums, even though I'm clearly logged in. Tried from multiple computers and browsers. I've since filed a BBB case to return the product, and BBB has accepted my case, but have yet to hear anything from Sling Media. My stance is this: I've already bought the product, as well as the use of the software to use the product. Product 100% payed for. They switched the function of the software several months after I bought to software so that I keep "paying" for something I do not want. The way the company has been behaving towards its customers, as well as their actions towards me on the forums (I was completely NON-Hostile and I presented my case as professionally as possible), is completely uncalled for and I'm not surprised this class-action lawsuit exists. It might save me from going to small-claims.

    4. Re:Why? by fishscene · · Score: 1

      Hold the phone. Looks like the company *did* respond and the case was closed, but I was not informed of the response or the case disclosure. I also can't view the case at all, in any way shape or form online- although I can see my case (it is the only one) filed. I'll be calling the BBB soon enough to figure out what is going on.

  10. Have you used Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The whole Start menu is one big advertisment. Everything is about directing you into Microsofts Services or the Windows Store. All baked in. Nice.

  11. Amazon Instant Video by bl968 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Amazon tried doing that to me with prime instant video on my Kindle, until I pointed out that I paid good money for the option of not having advertising on my Kindle, and that in my opinion that included while watching prime instant video. They quickly modified my account so I no longer see those ads.

    --
    "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
    1. Re:Amazon Instant Video by DewDude · · Score: 1

      As I've said; when you complain about this to Sling; they not only ignore you; but they delete any existence you said anything to them and then ban you if it's on their forums or social media pages.

    2. Re:Amazon Instant Video by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Of course, Amazon have a different business model. They know they're going to make a lot more money from the average consumer from media sales than hardware. It costs them a lot more to piss of customers.

      Not that I think it makes sense to Sling to do this. These days it's harder than ever to cover up bad corporate behaviour, and this is going to bite them.

  12. I was wondering... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...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.

    1. Re:I was wondering... by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

      What did you expect when Dish bought them?

      You should have expected it.

    2. Re:I was wondering... by DewDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I actually know a couple guys in the broadcast and cable industry who have made heavy usage of Slingboxes for various tasks; one guy I know works for a fiber co-op and they use them to quickly verify if a problem exists at whatever partner is down-linking it, a couple of others use them for remote monitoring, and I've heard of a case or two where they were used for verification of ad-insertions.

      I first noticed the ads creeping up back in like, November; it's only gotten even worse as the months have drug on.

      Hulu shows ads even on the paid service; Netflix doesn't though; and it's probably against their contracts on content to do so. Sling has no contract over the content we're watching...because it's a private stream and we bought hardware.

      Even if the class-action doesn't go through; I'm pretty sure it will have attracted the attention of the content providers...who will likely start their own suits.

    3. Re:I was wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Interesting thought about the content providers... But don't you have to show "harm" of some sort. They'd never be able to prove that they lost out on revenue because the application forced a 30 second wait on a slingbox owner before connecting to a device that may or may NOT have been showing their programming in the first place.
      I hope if someone does try that, I see the results, though. Very interesting.

    4. Re:I was wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sure as hell not defending the practice, but I pose a question to you that I can't decide on. (Similar employment, exact same use)...
      "If the service is free..." You say...
      Let's say for whatever reason, we have to DHCP the Slingboxes.. (Actually, I guess, on some models, we do!) And we don't bother to reserve the MAC in the firewall/router for a port forward...
      Are we paying a "fair" price for their Sling ID service? Their dyndns equivalent? I kinda have to look at it that way, or I'm going to be one bitter fellah!

    5. Re:I was wondering... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 1

      I don't own one myself, so I'm not sure how they work, but I'd imagine it wouldn't matter if you had to DHCP them or not, as they're going to register with Sling regardless.

      And I think the price is perfectly fair. Slings entire thing is to make it easy on folks to be able to watch their TV remotely. Your average user is not going to have any clue how to reserve a MAC address. They may have a clue how to forward a port, but I suspect that's more the gamer crowd. If maintenance of the service was an issue, then there should be a sub fee for it (but should have the option to avoid the sub fee by actually forwarding the port yourself, and then configuring the client). The advertising is another way of pushing a sub fee for the service - they're selling subscriptions to their users video streams to advertisers.

      Even that wouldn't be so bad, *if* there was a way to opt out or configure direct connections to the Slingbox via the clients. As it is, however, their customers are a captive audience with no recourse to avoid seeing the ads. Hence, the class action suit.

    6. Re:I was wondering... by mcl630 · · Score: 1

      Netflix recently started showing ads (just ads for their own original shows, they aren't selling ad space) at the start or end of videos, but they are rare, rare enough I've yet to see one myself.

    7. Re:I was wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you in one of the test markets for their advertisements? That might be the reason you haven't seen one. They're only rolling it out to a couple locations so far.

      However, that's how it always starts. Give it a few years and you'll be wondering what the difference is from cable.

    8. Re:I was wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, you get ticked off having to watch ads through a service you paid for? I didn't realize there were such magical cable companies that didn't have ads on the channels they carry, that I'm paying $100+ a month for.

    9. Re:I was wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I pay for cable... and a lot. why should I have to watch commercials?

    10. Re:I was wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I work for one of the big cable companies.

      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 don't think you are to blame for the situation (and you may even hate this aspect of the company you work for too)... but the irony of a cable company employee complaining about getting advertisements on something they also paid for did strike me.

    11. Re:I was wondering... by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

      I have yet to see any commercial advertisement while utilizing Netflix.

      Which is a HUGE reason why I utilize their services. I loathe commercials and will go without television completely before I return to that bullshit.
      I put an HD antenna in the attic for local channels if / when we need it for news. Crystal clear reception from ~50 miles out from the transmission towers.

      Netflix pricing, if you haven't used it in a while, is pretty decent for what you have access to.

      I pay $12 USD / month which allows four concurrent devices to be logged in as well as HD service. ( two concurrent devices is $8 / month )
      This is for their streaming services, I do not utilize their disc mailing program.

      Effectively unlimited access to their entire library commercial and advertisement free for less than what I was paying the Cable Company to rent their HD-DVR
      on a monthly basis. :| ( For the record, the aforementioned DVR ran $20 / month )

  13. look how far we've come ma! by don_combatant · · Score: 3, Funny

    broadcast tv: free
    original cable tv: paid, but commercial free
    mature cable tv: paid with commercials
    sling: paid hardware, paid cable tv and commercials
    new sling: paid hardware, sling commercials, paid cable tv, and cable tv commercials!

    1. Re:look how far we've come ma! by Drakonblayde · · Score: 1

      The opiate of the masses......

      Big Media is hoping everyone needs their fix bad enough to overlook the way their being monetized.

      It's shit like this that makes me lose not one second of sleep when my favorite shows happen to fall off the back of the internet, miraculously commercial free

  14. nice article by xenofane99 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    http://www.arabictips24.com/

  15. Long-time Slingbox user by mattsday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!
  16. It is ridiculous to put part of the comment in the by Stormwatch · · Score: 3

    subject box.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  17. Attorneys + MBAs = win! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    I can smell this one a mile off. The MBAs aren't interested in making a profit. They learned at school that the only goal is to maximize profits. So, they had the brilliant (yeah right) idea to start putting ads in their service. They then consulted the attorneys, who as always take the attorney's view that "if it doesn't specifically say we can't do that, then we can do it, and even if it does specifically say we can't do that, a good attorney can always find a way." The MBAs loved that one, so they said, "sure we might get sued, but screw it! Let 'em sue us! Our attorneys can win, and even if we lose, it's still a net win because our advertising fees will outweigh the legal penalties."

    I miss the old days when profitable companies simply stuck around year after year making a quality product, and you knew what you were getting before you bought.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Attorneys + MBAs = win! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You've obviously never dealt with a corporate attorney. They are the most risk-averse people on the planet. This is not the action of a strong player with hubris, this is the action of a weak player with nothing to lose. Sling media were dead in November, this is just their death throes.

    2. Re:Attorneys + MBAs = win! by swb · · Score: 2

      It reminds me of something I read about when MBAs buy apartment buildings. They said if your building has a full roster of tenants, you're not charging enough in rent. You should be raising rents frequently enough that you always have 1-2 empty places that result from people who can't afford the rent increase.

    3. Re:Attorneys + MBAs = win! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Business schools teach managers to maximize value, not profits. It's a distinction that will likely get me down voted on Slashdot, but I'm posting anon so who cares.

  18. This is why I didn't buy a slingbox by tannhaus · · Score: 1

    This is actually the reason I did not purchase a slingbox. It was to be one of my seven year-old's birthday gifts (the other being a tablet). However, I went with Amazon Prime instead when I saw you have to pay $15 for each app and then they throw their own advertisements (which may or may not be age appropriate) over the top.

  19. I agree. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not

    --sf

  20. AT&T Charges for Hardware, Too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AT&T Charges me $7/month for my stupid DSL modem, on top of hijacking my DNS queries and serving with with ad-ridden search pages when I go to an NXDOMAIN.

    I don't see a lack of equivalency here, so I will be watching this case closely.

  21. Sold mine last year by Trikoloko · · Score: 1

    USD 280 + USD 15 a pop per app, per device + extremely curated user experience - no thanks. It seems that Hauppage has a similar offer. Don't know how it compares to the Slingbox, though.

    --
    My cellphone ringtone is a ring tone.
  22. FYI: Alternatives by BcNexus · · Score: 1

    Anyone interested should look into one or more of the following alternatives. They don't add any ads to the experience as far as I know. The exception being Tivo, but my understanding is that their ads don't interfere with watching the content. Each of these alternatives have varying levels of openness and freedom ranging from truly FOSS to not FOSS/OSS at all...

    Ceton's products: http://cetoncorp.com/
    Silicon Dust's products: https://www.silicondust.com/
    Kodi's offerings: http://kodi.tv/
    Tivo's products: http://www.tivo.com/

    1. Re:FYI: Alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      None of the alternatives listed are capable of watching through your HD cable box. They offer live tv but do not allow watching Video on Demand that is ONLY available through cable provider's cable box.

  23. What need do interlace by DeVilla · · Score: 1

    you to is them.