Sonos Says Users Must Accept New Privacy Policy Or Devices May Cease To Function (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Sonos has confirmed that existing customers will not be given an option to opt out of its new privacy policy, leaving customers with sound systems that may eventually "cease to function". It comes as the home sound system maker prepares to begin collecting audio settings, error data, and other account data before the launch of its smart speaker integration in the near future. A spokesperson for the home sound system maker told ZDNet that, "if a customer chooses not to acknowledge the privacy statement, the customer will not be able to update the software on their Sonos system, and over time the functionality of the product will decrease. The customer can choose to acknowledge the policy, or can accept that over time their product may cease to function."

Comments

Fuckers

[DontBeAMoran]

Is there any law to take companies that pull this kind of stunt to court and sue the pants of them?

Re:Fuckers

[Mashiki]

Depends on the country. In Canada, this is right up illegal under privacy laws(federal and provincial), and modifying a product to degrade it after purchase(consumer protection laws), or changing/modifying a product that doesn't represent actual advertised claims(consumer protection laws).

Re:Fuckers

[green1]

Having been the victim of a company (Tesla) modifying a product after purchase to remove functionality that I specifically paid for, I have discovered that while it may be illegal, you'll need major $$$ to do anything about it. Not a single consumer protection agency in the country will do any more than forward your complaint to the manufacturer who can then feel free to ignore it completely.

So unless you can afford a long drawn out legal battle with a company that is guaranteed to have a lot more money to throw at lawyers than you do, good luck.

Re:Fuckers

[green1]

Hands free on-ramp to off-ramp driving, ability to use autopilot at any speed on any roadway.

Re:Fuckers

[Grishnakh]

So you spent tens of thousands of dollars on a product based on its marketing claims, and were disappointed when they didn't deliver.

I hope this is a good lesson to you and others about purchasing products in America. Marketing claims are just that: claims, and companies are not required to live up to those claims. There's no law that will punish a company if they outright lie to you. If you feel you've been wronged, your redress is that you can sue, but that's not going to be cheap. Hiring an attorney on retainer will cost you thousands of dollars, and their time is worth hundreds of dollars per hour. The prudent course of action is to stick to less-expensive mass-market stuff where you can go by numerous owner reviews to guide your purchase decision. Leave the risky high-end purchases to rich people who don't care too much if a $100k purchase doesn't live up to its claims, or to people in other countries where they have laws protecting them.

While Tesla does not provide any information to allow visualizing the size of the battery pack in the vehicle, the best evidence presented is that the car contains an 80.7 kWh battery pack, with only 77 kWh usable.

Actually for this point, I thought that Tesla intentionally limited how much you could use out of the pack, because Lithium-ion cells suffer significant degradation when they're completely run down. So just like a hard drive will advertise a certain capacity, but after formatting will only have a certain percentage of that capacity available for your files, the same goes here.

Also, for your claims 3 and 4, close-to-economy level Mazdas now have speed limit sign recognition (not all traffic signs; it sees the speed limit signs and shows you on the nav screen), and ones with radar cruise control will come to a full stop if you're using cruise. The newest ones will also come to a full stop (regardless of cruise) if you're driving 49mph or less and a collision is imminent (called "smart city braking"; pre-'17 models could only do this at 19mph or less using Lidar; note this option is only available on some trim levels). I'm sure a lots of other inexpensive mass-market cars now have this stuff as standard or optional. So the lesson here is: don't be the first adopter. Let other people try out the initial versions and pay through the nose, and wait a bit until it filters down to the mid-level or lower.

Finally, for your claim 1, you have a lot of complaints about Autopilot and how it's basically not working the way *you* think it should (won't go over the speed limit on some roads, nags you to have your hands on the wheel and apply torque, disables if you're not obedient enough, and subsequent updates have made it even worse, etc.). This is a good lesson on why closed-source software is bad, and you shouldn't spend more money on it than you absolutely have to. It will not work the way you want, and you can't modify it to do so, and worse, these days, they can reduce or remove functionality with an automatic update. The best way to win this game is to not play at all, or stick with cheaper options so you don't feel quite so shafted when this happens to you. (i.e., If you spend $10 for something with closed-source software and it sucks, you're only out $10, and if it at least does some of what you want, it's not that bad. But if you spend $100k for something with closed-source software and it sucks, now you're really mad unless you're a billionaire because that's a very large amount of money to you and for such a princely sum you expected all your expectations to be met and then some.)

So I guess in summary, stick with cheap stuff so you don't get mad when it doesn't live up to your expectations, plus you can more easily resell it.

Bi-directional?

[Luthair]

I always wonder when I see these sort of changes, or billing changes whether the user can send their own terms to the company and if they don't respond assume the terms are accepted.

Re: Plug the digital hole.

[Miamicanes]

> 90s-early 00s era recievers are still probably the best,
> unless you need more than 5.1 or 7.1 sound.

Actually, their ability to do even 5.1 surround is likely to diminish over time:

* Dolby designed DD+7.1 to be easy to downconvert to 5.1, but few/no receivers that ONLY know how to handle DD5.1 can do it.

* Few AVRs made prior to ~2012 (and basically NONE prior to ~2009) can do 5.1 PCM, let alone 7.1 PCM.

* Toslink & coaxial SPDIF can't do PCM 5.1 on consumer gear (there IS a way to kludge it with pro audio mixing gear, but it's either forbidden by licence terms or too expensive/niche for AVR manufacturers to use in consumer gear.

* The only real way to get PCM 5.1/7.1 into your AVR is via HDMI... but there's lots of gear made prior to ~2014 that can SWITCH HDMI, but can't actually decode 5.1 or 7.1 AUDIO from HDMI. And plenty that are supposed to, but fucked up their implementation or firmware (e.g, EDID spofing of downstream sinks to keep the source from seeing a PCM2.0(stereo) sink & falling back to PCM2.0 for EVERYTHING (HDMI makes no provision for sending multiple audio streams, so it's up to the AVR to hide the PCM2.0-ness of downstream TVs from upstream sources).

I'm aware of EXACTLY ONE box that can successfully extract 5.1 or 7.1 PCM from HDMI and output it as analog 5.1 or 5.7... and it costs almost as much as a cheap DD+ capable AVR (it's basically a 1-watt amp with a single HDMI input & four 1/8" stereo jack outputs they pretend are 'for headphones' to dance around DRM restrictions... and I'm not 100% confident it can downmix 7.1 to 5.1, so if you're watching a source that supports ONLY DD+7.1 (like Netflix on Roku) & have a 5.1 amp, you're still fucked.

So... you can forget about having surround sound from most HDMI-only streaming clients (like Roku), any recent Nintendo gear (Wii-u & Switch), and probably MOST post-2009 & future Blu-Ray & DVD players and cable boxes (even if the player has SPDIF outputs, if the studio masters the disc with ONLY PCM 7.1, no post-2009 player I'm aware of can/will re-encode it as DD5.1 or DD+7.1 and output it via SPDIF... all you'll get is flat 2.0 stereo).

The thing that sucks the worst is that the lack of PCM5.1/7.1-via-HDMI to analog or re-encoded DD-via-SPDIF is entirely due to DRM. As if being able to record the analog 5.1 surround sound from a movie whose video I can't capture is going to make even the SLIGHTEST fucking difference to studios' bottom lines.