Google Tells Customers “Ownership” is now an Illusion

[marmar]

Google Tells Customers “Ownership” is now an Illusion
by Electronic Frontier Foundation • April 6, 2016


[font color="blue"]You just think you own the device you paid for.[/font]
By Kit Walsh, Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation:


Nest Labs, a home automation company acquired by Google in 2014, will disable some of its customers’ home automation control devices in May.

This move is causing quite a stir among people who purchased the $300 Revolv Hub devices—customers who reasonably expected that the promised “lifetime” of updates would enable the hardware they paid for to actually work, only to discover the manufacturer can turn their device into a useless brick when it so chooses.

It used to be that when you bought an appliance, you owned it, and you could take it apart, repair it, and plug in whatever accessories you wanted without the manufacturer’s knowledge or permission.

Nowadays, software enables devices to do new, useful things, but it also enables manufacturers to exert more control than ever before over their customers. Manufacturers use software to ensure a device serves their financial interests throughout its lifetime, forcing you to go to an authorized repair shop, buy official parts, and stay out of the secret workings of the device that would let you know what it’s doing with the data it collects about you.

The latest example, the Hub, communicates with and controls home electronics using several different communication standards. The Hub debuted in 2013 and was discontinued after Nest acquired Revolv in late 2014. One selling point was that the one-time payment of $300 included a “Lifetime Subscription,” including updates. In fact, the device shipped without all of its antennas being functional yet. Customers expected that the antennas would be enabled via updates. ..........(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/04/06/google-tells-customers-ownership-is-now-an-illusion/

[JackInGreen]

1. They've considered 'Ownership' of ANYTHING

an illusion for sometime now, it's just the rest of us havn't caught up to the fact that we're not people;
We're license holders, bound and tied to the products we've licensed and forever tied into the debt structure that's only goal has been to remove the 'public' from commons, and turn Freedom into Free Dumb.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Hell, if you don't own your car...

thanks to all the software "licenses", why would you think you would own a lamp or refrigerator?

[Recursion]

3. Well, no: Anyone can set up a Nest server if they want to

It's just that nobody has, because nobody has found a way to make it not lose a lot of money.

[Fairgo]

4. It's mind blowing

I advise not thinking too hard. Who's up for a couple of soma and a round of centrifugal bumble-puppy?

[Hekate]

13. That ought to adjust everyone's attitude in this brave new world, all right. nt

[Odin2005]

5. The new corporate serfdom.

[Democat]

6. "Lifetime" of the product not you

It's dead.

[GreatGazoo]

7. Inkjet printers were a big one for this too

Been going on for a century

[WillowTree]

8. Sooner or later the Supremes are going to have to take a look at such arrangements.

[DetlefK]

9. You own none of the computer-programs you bought.

The Terms of Service always contain a clause that the company can at will undo your right to use the software.

[Scootaloo]

10. So they'll have no problem with someone stealing their source code, I presume

[Taitertots]

12. Corporations are not bound to their obligations like people

If I sold you a lifetime subscription and cancelled, I'd lose everything in court. Google just laughs in your face like "hahaha fuck you".

It's fraud. But we can't do anything because the criminals involved hide behind corporate liability.

No one can tell me the social benefit of creating institutions (corporations) that protect decision makers from liability for criminal choices.

[Xithras]

18. Actually, it's not fraud.

I 100% guarantee that the licenses on every one of those products includes a disclaimer saying that they reserve the right to shut the service down when they want. Every single web and cloud service I've worked with contains this disclaimer.

[Taitertots]

19. A "disclaimer" that invalidates the initial claim should be fraud

Pay $300 for Lifetime service*







*not actually lifetime service.

Just because a lawyer gets away with something, doesn't make it right.

[Xithras]

20. But that's just it. They never actually said that it would work forever.

Here is the actual statement from Revolv's old marketing site:

"The Revolv Lifetime Subscription, which is included in the $299 you pay for the solution, enables GeoSense automation and remote updates that allows your Revolv to work together seamlessly (and continually update) with the products you already own; for the lifetime of the product."

So, how long is the "lifetime of the product"? Well, in business terms, that means until the product lifecycle comes to an end, which typically means "when we stop selling the product", plus a bit of extra time to allow any outstanding warranties to expire. That's been a standard for decades, and isn't unique to technology companies. Call up Sony and request a part for an old out-of-warranty TV, and see how far you get.

My TV has built-in players for Netflix and Amazon video. It's part of the reason I bought the TV. Neither works, because those companies have changed their platforms and broke compatibility. Panasonic quit manufacturing my TV quite a while back, and aren't releasing updates for it any longer because it's "reached the end of its lifecycle" and is no longer a supported product. That's just the way it works (or doesn't work, depending on your perspective).

Disclaimer: I write software for a living, and have "EOL"'d a LOT of my software over the years. People aren't always happy about it, but I can't spend the rest of my life patching software that they paid $10 for. I can give you a very real example of this in action. For many years, I've worked with small startups trying to develop various software gadgets. In 2003, I worked with one that had developed a system allowing auto dismantlers to list and share inventories for parts exchanges. It was a "thin service" (all the rage at the time) which means that it had no real infrastructure behind it. Searches were performed on the local client, using data retrieved from a third party RSS aggregator, which pulled its RSS files from a free (!) Angelfire account designed to store data for the application. The system continued to work for MANY years, long after the startup folded and all official support ceased.

And then, one day, the RSS aggregator the software depended on closed up shop, and the software simply stopped working. Someone actually managed to track down one of the companies old owners, and threatened to sue him because the product had been offered with a "perpetual license and support". As the owner explained, the product had reached its end-of-life many years before, and there was no way to support it. The owner actually contacted me to find out if I was interested in trying to fix it for them on a consulting basis. I'd helped to write it, which put me in a good position to rewrite it and fix the problem for them. The dismantlers weren't interested once they learned my consulting rates ($175 an hour at the time).

"Lifetime of the product" does NOT mean "forever". It means "while this continues to be a supported product".

[GeorgeGist]

14. A useful comment ...

My rule of thumb is to never buy a device that’s smarter than you are. Of course, if everybody did this the tech industry would collapse, leaving everyone to wonder how anybody lived before they invented silicon.

[Blue_Tires]

15. Can't say I'm surprised...

things have sort of been trending in this direction for a few years now...

[Eleanors38]

16. Good post, Marmar. This brings up the old discussion of Planned Obsolescence...

...300 yrs ago when in college, we studied "planned obsolescence" in basic sociology classes (really, psycho-sociological) during the 60s. In the post-War years the expression meant stylistic obsolescence; i.e., manufactures, from clothes to Chevies, convinced consumers the car you bought 3 yrs ago could no longer cut it because of its style or upholstery or radio or whatever, and you needed to buy another one. Yet the car and clothes were designed to actually do the job for much longer.

Now, the term planned obsolescence is much more hard-wired around technology whereby the product you purchased is forced into obsolescence: Unserviceable components, component unavailability, programs no longer updated or serviced, just plain crappy build quality and other means. Curiously, even when I heard the term as a child, I assumed like most folks, it meant a product which wasn't built to provide practical service life over many years. No, it was the switch from tail fins to low, wide and clean. Sure, improvements came with electric wipers, heaters and dual braking systems. But these improvements often came and held on for many years and were not a justification for replacing a serviceable vehicle; you want FM? Add an inexpensive conversion under the dash.

Now, there seems little choice from the corporate state pusherman.

[Xithras]

17. The last online services for the Sony Playstation 2 were shut down a couple weeks ago.

The problem with buying hardware that is reliant on external services is that your use of the product is limited by the willingness of the manufacturer to maintain THEIR servers to keep the product running. In the case of the PS2, you can no longer play video games online but you still have single player functionality. In the case of the Revolv, nearly all of the features were dependent on a remote server, so the device simply shuts down when the company shutters the service on their end.

The Revolv shutdown did raise one good question in tech circles. At what point is it acceptable TO THE PUBLIC for a cloud service to shut down? The Revolv hadn't been updated in many years, and Nest explained that very few people were still using it (Revolv comes from a startup that Nest purchased, before Nest itself was bought by Google/Alphabet). If it costs the manufacturer $10,000 a year to host the online services for a $500 product, and they have 100,000 customers using it, the math makes sense. But what happens a decade later when only three people are still using that product, haven't paid ANYTHING for it in a decade, and it's still costing $10,000 a year to keep the servers running? At what point is it okay to pull the plug?