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

[Nidi62]

When people keep altering the terms of an agreement you only have 2 options: pray they don't alter them further, or blow up their death star.

Re:Fuckers

[William Baric]

It depends on the country where you live, but the vast majority of people do not care anyway. For example, Steam does the exact same thing. If they change their EULA and you refuse to accept it, you lose all your games, with no possibility of a refund. It doesn't stop the vast majority of people from buying games from Steam.

Re:Fuckers

[jonnyj]

In the UK, there almost certainly is a law to protect consumers. Under the Consumer Rights Act, consumers have a legal right to reject goods that are of unsatisfactory quality, unfit for purpose or not as described, and get a full refund.

If the manufacturer of a sound system has stated that its devices may eventually cease to function, I find it hard to imagine that a court would find that it was as described when sold.

Re:Fuckers

[erapert]

You don't even have to do that. There's a very simple solution to these kinds of problems: don't buy their product.
Don't buy products from crappy companies, don't buy products that limit your freedom.

Take this particular case for example.
These speakers are collecting data on me? That should be a show stopper right there.
These speakers require software updates and an internet connection to run? Another show stopper.
You, as the owner, do not have access to the software being run on these speakers? Don't you understand that puts you at the mercy of whoever does control the software?

Anyone buying these kinds of products (*ahem!* somethingsomethingmicrosoft) really have nobody to blame but themselves.
If you want this kind of behavior to stop then stop buying these kinds of products.

Re:Fuckers

[TWX]

The difference may be that Sonos is intentionally making a change that breaks functionality.

I am not terribly versed in their products, do they work locally or were they specifically designed to work in-concert with a remote system?

Re:Fuckers

[Penguinisto]

These speakers require software updates and an internet connection to run? Another show stopper.

That one item alone should be sufficient to kill the deal, all by itself. Very few physical things should require an internet connection to operate... and they had damned well better be things like routers and sat/DSL/Cable modems (and maybe the DVR, but only maybe).

Do I need an Internet connection to run your television? Yeah no, fuck you, I refuse to buy it. There's always TV makers out there who don't require that - and failing such, my house is small enough to press a large-enough desktop monitor into service.

Re:Fuckers

[bluefoxlucid]

Each release of firmware is a new software, which means new licensing. They never contracted to keep services up and support old devices in perpetuity, thus you must agree to new software or lose access.

We don't have laws to control this because such laws are... dangerous. Look at what happened with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, wherein violating the MySpace ToS became a criminal offence for a little while. Everyone wants legislative action, and nobody thinks too hard about the unintended consequences of such action.

If you want laws to control this, they have to start leaky and become water-tight. You want air-tight laws, you're either going to prevent some consumer-desired products from existing, criminalize consumer and researcher actions, or otherwise find yourself unhappy with the result. Look at the DMCA, and then imagine that you asked for it and got exactly what you asked for.

We need to curb privacy concerns; we can't eliminate them completely, but we can get some control and accountability. This isn't as much of a problem as you might think: at some point, you just need to accept you leak information, because you leak a hell of a lot of information even without an external actor trying to pry it out of your hands. Just touching the Internet sends packets moving along which a Government entity could observe, and creates handy debugging logs which can reveal tons of information; not to mention whatever you say online--as much as you might want to believe you're anonymous on Slashdot, there's plenty of information connected to your ID here to link you to other IDs, which ultimately link to you.

A competent PI might be able to track you down and identify all your public faces, as anonymous as you think you are; a Government entity can do so readily. You say things that expose your position, your thinking, your hobbies, your social contacts, your sympathies. The information is frequently non-explicit: the way you move through various topics leaves a void, and that void is shaped like a secret, and now I know something about you that nobody knows. You leak that much.

We might be able to safely deploy legislation to stop corporate sale of identity, exposure of private individual information, and deanonymization. We can't protect you from yourself, and shouldn't try, although if someone uses big-data forensics to go PI and publish your secret life maybe we should have something to say about that--right up until everyone has their hands on that technology and can tell it to look for you and report back to them, and then anonymity is truly dead, and perhaps privacy.

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

[rl117]

You can't waive statutory rights; you have them irrespective of any contract, and it's illegal for a company to ignore them.

Re:Fuckers

[Baloroth]

Based on the article and the summary, they're not modifying it to degrade functionality, they're just not offering software upgrades, and saying that without upgrades, the devices might not work properly in the future (the headline makes it seem like they're going to disable devices of people who don't accept the terms, which AFAICT is absolutely not true).

Re:Fuckers

[green1]

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

Re:Fuckers

[green1]

I specifically paid for "hands free on-ramp to off-ramp driving" per Tesla. They never delivered on that functionality, but they did remove much of the parts they had delivered after purchase. I've included a small sample of the lies Tesla made to make the sale, along with proof of the claims, and a description of what they've actually delivered:

Claim #1: Tesla claimed that an alert driver could use the “Autopilot” feature to drive along a highway without touching any controls, as long as the driver was paying attention and ready to take over at any time.
Examples of claim:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... Elon Musk (CEO Tesla Motors) demonstrates the feature to a journalist in October 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... A Tesla employee demonstrates the feature to attendees at the Tesla “D” event in October 2014
http://www.stuff.tv/in/feature... Elon Musk (CEO Tesla Motors) in an interview in March 2015 states “We want you to go from highway on-ramp to highway off-ramp, without touching the controls, in the next 12 months”
What Tesla has delivered: In October 2015 Tesla released a software update that enabled “Autopilot”. This included a feature called “Autosteer” which came with a disclaimer that you must keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times. If your hands were not detected exerting torque on the steering wheel at road curves, the vehicle would pop up a warning asking you to place your hands on the wheel. This warning would intensify until either you applied torque to the steering wheel, or Autopilot would be disabled. In subsequent software updates the frequency, and intensity of the popup message was increased, and if the message occurs a certain number of times per drive the feature is completely disabled for the remainder of the drive. Additionally restrictions have been placed on it such that on some roadways the speed you can travel while on autosteer is limited to what the vehicle believes the speed limit to be.

Claim #2: Tesla claimed that drivers could use the “Summon” feature (part of the “Autopilot” suite) to call the vehicle and it would drive to them wherever they were on private property. Additionally Tesla claimed that the vehicle would check your schedule and pull out of your garage and meet you at your front door on private property.
Examples of claim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Recording of the Tesla Motors “D” event where the “AutoPilot” functionality was initially revealed. Elon musk (CEO Tesla Motors) states at 9:55 “You’ll be able to summon the car, if you’re on private property, you have to be on private property to do it, you can actually summon the car and the car will come to wherever you are and, it will use the ultrasonic sensors kind of like an insect antenna, because it can detect even small soft objects with the ultrasonics, and it will just sort of slowly make it’s way to you and then stop and be ready to go. It can go even a step beyond that, if you have your calendar turned on, it will meet you there. So if you’re getting ready to go to work or something and it knows you’re going to need to leave half an hour before work and you say ok I’d like to just come out and have the air conditioning done and everything done, your music playing, everything just ready to go and it will just come and be there.”
http://web.archive.org/web/201... Snapshot of the Tesla Motors website from July 16 2015, in the “Autopilot” section states “With calendar syncing enabled, Model S checks current traffic conditions to determine how muc

Re: Fuckers

[rl117]

Maybe in the USA. I was referring to UK law, where statutory rights can not be removed by contract law.

Re: Fuckers

[LynnwoodRooster]

How many votes do you think are actually cast for the President? Trump won the majority vote. Provably so...

Re:Fuckers

[Opportunist]

Talk for your country. In my country some laws have a provision that you "cannot waive this right contractually".

Yes, there are rights that you have, even if you explicitly say you don't want to have them.

These are not the terms I agreed to!

[bobbied]

I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further!

Internet of Legally Screwed

[sinij]

Internet of Things moved to Internet of Insecure Things and now to Internet of Legally Screwed Things.

Why would anyone buy IoT after this is a mystery.

Re:Internet of Legally Screwed

[JohnFen]

Why anyone ever bought IoT devices that talk to servers they don't control has always been a mystery to me.

Dodged a bullet, there

[JohnFen]

I recently updated my audio system and looked seriously at some Sonos hardware. I decided against it because it appeared that internet connectivity or a smartphone app was required to use (or at the very least, configure) it.

I clearly made an excellent decision!

Unfettered capitalism at work

[Baron_Yam]

Unfettered capitalism is ultimately only slightly better for society than unfettered communism. Large corporations can act as a single entity, while consumers are sufficiently segmented that in most cases coordination is unlikely.

The response is to change the market via legislation, and let the companies adapt to the new reality, rather than attempt boycotting them. A boycott - even if successful - only ensures they get sneakier about future attempts at the same goal.

Re:Unfettered capitalism at work

[bobbied]

You want to regulate this junk how?

The problem with having the legislature cough up some law is the same problem you have when you are trying to drive a finishing nail with a sledge hammer. You want the finished product to be nice looking so you are driving small nails, but all you have is a sledge hammer so you beat the stuffing out of what you are driving the nail into and what you get looks like junk, because it is junk.

Personally, I believe that capitalism already has a solution to this kind of thing, two actually. As a consumer, aware of this situation, you can choose another product... Or, if you have already purchased a product that is now known to be flawed and the manufacturer refuses to fix it because you don't like the new license terms, you can file a civil suit.

I don't believe that we need a law in this case, except perhaps one that requires full disclosure of such license terms with rights to return the device for a full refund should such terms be changed and support withdrawn w/o accepting the new terms within the warranty period.

Re:Unfettered capitalism at work

[Baron_Yam]

> I believe that capitalism already has a solution to this kind of thing, two actually. As a consumer, aware of this situation, you can choose another product... Or, if you have already purchased a product that is now known to be flawed and the manufacturer refuses to fix it because you don't like the new license terms, you can file a civil suit.

The first requires that enough consumers are aware of the problem and willing to purchase selectively to result in products with the intentional flaws being unprofitable to produce.

The second requires being willing to set your life aside to fight a corporation. You may win a small settlement up front, you may win a big one in 20 years... or you could ruin your life in the attempt.

There's a shift in the marketplace happening, and consumers are being pushed back into a feudal system except that instead of land its consumer products and instead of lords its corporations. Same end result - you're not allowed to actually own anything and what you do have in your possession is only so at the whim of your 'lord'.

That's something to be resisted, and it's better organized at the legislative level than continual boycotts and the occasional civil suit.

BOYCOTT bully brands...

[Zurkeyon3733]

DJI, Sonos, and Others think that FORCING you to comply with TOS and Privacy Terms, is a license to abuse customers and brick devices. VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS PEOPLE. Do NOT continue to buy from companies who do this. If you OWN a device, it should mean corporate suicide to "Threaten to Brick" those devices. Enough of this nonsense! If I truly own it, it should work until the materials fail from that use... Period!

I predict lawsuits

[QuietLagoon]

It seems that Sonos is intentionally disabling a device after the sale. Sadly, I expect to see more of this type of ransom demands from manufacturers, not less.

Good information out of the gate

[sarbonn]

I love it when a company gives me all the information I need before I decide to buy one of their products. Knowing they're a "do things our way, or take the highway" kind of company allows me to switch to a higher gear and continue on down the highway.

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:Misread of the outcome?

[Calydor]

Or because Sonos 'required' an update of integration to get rid of all the leeches that won't give them data access.

Maybe just to use the speakers as microphones?

[Swave An deBwoner]

This need not be viewed as some dastardly plot by an evil corporation.

Maybe they just want to be able to use the speakers as microphones once in a while to catch up on what you've been talking about lately.

Re:Plug the digital hole.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Sonos is a bit more than a wireless speaker, it provides whole house audio streamed from your music collection (on a NAS or whatever) instead on from your phone over sucktastic Bluetooth. I like the quality of their stuff but after this I might get rid of the lot on the second hand market.

Squeezebox could be a decent replacement for that, extensive functionality and loads of open(ish) client and server implementations. Run a client on an RPi and hook up a quality speaker with amp and aux in. I currently have a couple of Squeezebox clients on Windows & Linux, with the server running on a Synology NAS and so far I am pretty happy with it.

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.

Re:Plug the digital hole.

[networkBoy]

I have optical/rca to the pre-amp, but the pre-am to amp connections are all over balanced lines, specifically, XLR.

Re:Unlike copyrights, patents expire.

[Ted Cabeen]

Sure, AC-3 alone is patent-free, but each newer version of DD or DTS adds new patents and new licenses.