Did your Roku TV decide to strong arm you into giving up your rights or lose your FULLY FUNCTIONING WORKING TV? Because mine did.
It doesn’t matter if you only use it as a dumb panel for an Apple TV, Fire stick, or just to play your gaming console. You either agree or get bent.
Recommendations to purchase a smart TV but never connect it to a network are futile, as well. Just like Amazon devices, smart TVs will find an open SSID and then phone home for updates without your knowledge.
My recommendation, when these kind of topics come up, is: either exchange your smart TV for a dumb one, or go to an electronics repair shop to have a board or two exchanged (depending on the make and model, older dumb components may be direct-ish replacements for smart ones).
EDIT: Another option? Try a projector! I was looking for dumb TV options online after writing up this comment, and someone on an old Reddit post recommended it. Great idea.
2nd EDIT: Someone else also recommended buying digital signage, another solid dumb display option.
If I ever have a device connecting to open networks by itself I’m snipping its wifi antenna
Yeah, connecting to open networks seems questionable. If it gets infected and you later connect it to your network, they are clearly at fault. So I doubt they do this.
Don’t underestimate how dumb and greedy corpos can be
Where do you live that you have free wifi all around?
I wonder why Roku make you sign this agreement out of the blue. I think they’re about to drop either an acquisition announcement, or news they were hacked.
I of course signed it like an idiot. I hate this cyberpunk present.
Was it your or you’re 8 year old who was just trying to watch some cartoons? 🤔
You are right there is something coming though
These are fun, Australians can’t waive any of their rights, including consumer rights and rights to access the courts.
Also, it’s illegal in Australia for a business to make “false or misleading representations” about those rights. Maximum penalty is 10% of annual revenue.
The contract isn’t just unenforceable, it’s just straight up illegal.
I think this is true in any civil country…
yup the US seriously is not a civil country. i would know, i live here.
Frankly, seeing how you people are treated as a employees or as a customers, sometimes I doubt it…
Australians* can’t waive
Here in Brazil, EULAs (they are called adhesion contracts here) can only deal with the way service is provided and cannot limit consumer rights in any way. Even if the contract has these types of clauses, they are considered void by default.
These types of things never fly here.
Shit like this is why my LG C1 is restricted to LAN access only in my router (local network for automation purposes) and can’t communicate with the internet.
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I will never buy a smart TV, ever. I don’t care if I’m left behind.
Are there new TVs that are not smart?
Lobotomize them after buying.
only sceptre makes dumb TVs anymore, and their quality varries wildly
That’s scary. Only solution then is to buy smart and castrate it.
What I did. I have two smart TVs.
Fuckers have never once been online. You can even go the extra mile and open them up and unplug the wifi antenna (or just remove the wifi card if its slotted and not integrated into the mainboard)
I brought mine online long enough to do an initial firmware update. That was it. I may bring it online long enough to do another one, but I’m going to google first to be sure they haven’t done something like Roku here without my having heard about it.
There are, but they’re old or not of the best quality. Last time I had a Sceptre TV, and I had to use a sound bar because the speakers were awful. But it was as dumb as it could be, so I was happy with that.
Edit: The only reason I gave it up is because of lack of space in my new apartment. I miss that TV.
Damn, so the solution is to buy whatever I want and castrate it with no access to internet.
Unfortunately. I personally prefer not to give money to those fuckers.
Well, yeah, but eventually you’ll have to. I currently have old Toshiba LCD which is super awesome. Not thin but works like a charm and came with all the schematics and bill of materials so it can be easily repaired. Needless to say I don’t plan on replacing it, but panel itself has expiration date unfortunately.
I took the wifi chip and antenna right out of a roku TV. I don’t even want it broadcasting its MAC out to the world, fuck that
Just an FYI, although they aren’t physical products like this Roku, many apps and digital services have added the very same binding arbitration clauses recently.
The McDonald’s app for one. I ended up deleting the app after it tried to force me into binding arbitration and I didn’t want to go through to opt-out process for marginally cheaper, shitty food, so I just deleted the app altogether and haven’t eaten there since November.
Watch out for it if you drive for doordash or ubereats as well. I opted out of both, although they claimed you couldn’t opt out in an new contract when you didn’t before (a bunch of BS, if the current contract you are about to sign says it supercedes all others, you can’t make the lack of an opt-out on a previous contract hold up).
On-going services might make sense for these shitty enough clauses, but to be strong armed into it for physical product you bought free and clear … Disgusting.
It’s like all these companies are locking themselves down to minimize legal exposure because they know that their services and products are getting more awful or something.
I legit don’t know how binding arbitration can be legal.
Agreeing to terms of actual usage of the product, I understand. Like for a pogo stick, assuming your own risk of injury.
But I don’t know how they can legally just say that suing is impossible.
Sections 1(F) and 1(L) seem like the only ways out/around of this. (IANAL; the bolding emphasis was done by me.)
F. Small Claims. You or Roku may pursue any Claim, except IP Claims, in a small-claims court instead of through arbitration if (i) the Claim meets the jurisdictional requirements of the small claims court and (ii) the small claims court does not permit class or similar representative actions or relief.
L. 30-Day Right to Opt Out. You have the right to opt out of arbitration by sending written notice of your decision to opt out to the following address by mail: General Counsel, Roku Inc., 1701 Junction Court, Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95112 within 30 days of you first becoming subject to these Dispute Resolution Terms. Such notice must include the name of each person opting out and contact information for each such person, the specific product models, software, or services used that are at issue, the email address that you used to set up your Roku account (if you have one), and, if applicable, a copy of your purchase receipt. For clarity, opt-out notices submitted via any method other than mail (including email) will not be effective. If you send timely written notice containing the required information in accordance with this Section 1(L), then neither party will be required to arbitrate the Claims between them.
Any lawyers out there who can speak towards the three bolded parts?
I thought I linked to my blog post about it, but it just used the image
Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs
“Dumb” TV + PC + 🏴☠️. life is good
There are no dumb TVs if you want e.g. OLED. The closest you can get is a smart tv that you never connect to the internet. If you like 4k HDR it will still be a major pain…
This sort of thing isn’t new but I’ve seen this particular one all over the place. Was there something different from this experience compared to the times that people have agreed in the past?
I am not a lawyer, but would such a contract be enforceable? To my untrained eye this has a lot of similarity to the unenforceable NDAs I keep on hearing about when people try to bully others into being quiet about crimes.
This is why I don’t buy “smart” TVs. They just want to data-mine you. And they can brick it whenever they want to, right over the Internet.
This is basically impossible unless you are buying commercial grade. Just buy whatever TV you want and never connect it to the internet.
I’m really surprised about this. Amazon got called on their arbitration clause so much that they removed it because it was so expensive.
Roku is practically asking for people to do the same to them. They could even do it about this clause, IMO. (I am not a lawyer.) This is a really dumb clause to have these days.
My Roku TV’s been reset to factory and not allowed on the internet for a few years now. It’s a TV. It displays shit that I give it over HDMI. If you desire more than that you’re part of the problem. I work in IT and that’s why my home has physical locks, a 30 year old thermostat, and cameras I own with recordings on a DVR I own.
In my experience, people that use the phrase “you’re part of the problem” so loosely are often the most miserable jackasses anyone ever allowed into society.
People just want neat things. It’s not wrong to want neat things.
It’s not wrong, but it’s just terribly short-sighted. You’re giving greed-crazed companies total control over a device that you own and nobody else should be able to touch.
Shiny things come at a cost. Sure, it may look convenient and super cool to have all these features, but it’s important to understand the trade-offs. And this is just the tip of the iceberg - we don’t even know what kinds of malice these companies will think of 5-10 years from now when these machines are even more widespread and probably come with even more invasive anti-user hardware capabilities.
It’s not wrong… it’s just very very naïve.
Most people don’t get that this is even possible until it bites them in the ass like this.
Certainly my own parents wouldn’t think to try and find a “dumb” TV in this market or to not connect the damn thing to the internet like it tells you when you power it on. They bought a TV that lets them watch Netflix.
By the same token, I don’t except my fucking microwave to suddenly require that I accept a ToS in order to nuke a potato, or to suddenly start showing me ads in increasing amounts a year or more after I bought and paid for it.
Users aren’t the problem. Shitty companies and a lack of strong legislation against this (or legislators being for it) are the problem. Nobody should ever be presented with a 50 page ever-changing EULA for a product they’ve paid for to access common functionality.
They’re not a problem. They’re not even naive. They’re just not savvy on all things about a given technology especially when it comes up aspects of legal arguments on such.
No ones asking you to stick some shiny thing up your ass and walk around to see how it fits. If you don’t like these services don’t use them, for most of us the convinience of an Internet connected device that let’s you stream content published to the Internet is a value.
The issue is that the market has spoken. People want cool neat things and they want them cheap. Companies were able to lower the price of major devices by including all the always-online stuff as it generated revenue after the initial purchase.
Now everything comes with smart shit wether you want it or not, and for those that dont, the product they wish to have dosent exist or is more expensive. So… the argument that the “naiveity” of the masses is making things worse is valid.
It’s not wrong to think people are stupid for wanting pointlessly internet connected things either.
Well sure, but we’re not talking about a washing machine or a refrigerator. Currently most media we watch is over the internet, so I at least don’t consider a TV with an internet connection “pointlessly” online.
Okay, well you are free to enjoy having your device bricked whenever the company you bought it from wants to.
And that’s incredibly unfortunate. Make no mistake, I’m not arguing in favor of the companies here. I was merely pointing out that TVs are not one of the impractical “smart” devices, which I believe you implied. There’s plenty of good use cases for an internet connected TV, and I don’t think users are stupid for wanting one. I too wish that we could have nice things not be ruined by corporate greed. That’s all. Have a good day.
Man, you are one angry fucker… You ever try weed?
Weed doesn’t magically make you less hostile of a person. If that were the case Canada would be a hell of a lot better than it is now, and it isn’t.
Shid, fair
I do smoke, wierdly enough it doesn’t make me not care about privacy and practicality.
I agree. That was why I originally bought the damned thing. Once I saw what it was doing on my network I decided “nope, that’s enough from you” and reset it. I’m not saying people who also bought it and continue to use it as intended are dumb, I’m suggesting the device itself and what it does is evil.
If that’s the case, why not just go for a commercial display TV (like McD). They run virtually forever and you get them for very low prices.
Sure! I didn’t know when I bought it that I’d come to this conclusion, but I learned over time. Been about 4 years or so since I bought it.
I got this yesterday, as well. There’s no way this could hold up legally, right? Like my 7 year old could easily just click through that, no way this is a legally binding contract to forfeit jury rights and right to sue.
…right?
It’s meant to scare people from attempting anything
