It seems like nobody actually owns anything any more - that we're all just digital serfs living on someone else's land. I really don't know why anyone would willingly make such a deal.
They implicitly agree under duress, because their time is worth far too much to even read 10 pages of fine print for every product they use. I'm not being flippant; it bloody well is.
I'm not sure why courts consider that to hold any weight; to me it goes against the whole notion of informed consent in binding agreements. And to be fair, often the courts don't consider to hold any weight.
>They implicitly agree under duress, because their time is worth far too much to even read 10 pages of fine print for every product they use. I'm not being flippant; it bloody well is.
You don't need to read 10 pages of fine print for every product, because it's functionally the same fine print for every product.
If you don't like this, don't ever buy smart devices because they /all/ reserve the right to do this kind of stuff.
I avoid smart devices like the plague. If I want my speakers smart, I'll connect them to a suitable control unit. The only thing I want from my speakers is for them to translate electrical waves into pressure waves, the more accurate the better.
>"If you don't like this, don't ever buy smart devices because they /all/ reserve the right to do this kind of stuff."
It seems odd then that you have to actually buy the device before you can even read the terms. I guess the idea is that you can always return it if you don't agree?
I don't know about the US, but in the EU if you don't get to see the terms before buying, the terms are effectively void. (of course most non-trivial EULA-style terms are already void in the EU, since it's well known that nobody reads them)
The downside is that if you don't keep buying the new systems even though the old ones work perfectly fine, eventually your device will get too old and you will be categorised as a legacy customer. When that happens, your shit will stop working.
I'm the same way and I love my 80's Marantz amp/Boston Acoustics floorstanders setup. But I still keep a cheap Chromecast audio and a $10 Bluetooth receiver around for parties, it's just so much easier especially when people forget their headphone dongles these days.
Individuals haven't owned much in a very long time; we've been physical serfs living on someone else's land for even longer.
You only "own" something so long as you pay taxes (aka rents) for the right to do so, otherwise someone, usually the government, will take it from you. Even if you don't want to play along, you can only be somewhere public for so long until you're loitering and subject to fines (more rents), confiscation (again, more rents), or removal.
The whole system is pretty blatantly anti-competitive [1], detrimental to individuals [2][3], and rotting the system from the inside out [4][5].
I highly recommend "Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed"
reviewing the rise of top-down city planning especially in recent modern cities like Brasilia (which systematically removed public space & spontaneous street interactions by design)
> Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural "modernization" in the Tropics―the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?
Thanks, it sounds like something I'd love; ordering a copy!
Please let me correct what you just said:
"rent seeking is pretty blatantly anti-competitive [1], detrimental to individuals [2][3], and rotting the system from the inside out [4][5]."
Now let's talk about having control over my speakers.
> Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. [1]
If I don't mow my lawn or pick up my garbage (labour) then my homeowners' association or local government can initiate legal proceedings which may end in me not "owning" my home.
Look, I'm actually for taxes generally, whatever you want to think about that, as long as they provide equal value to the people. However, our current system is designed so that any local government can arbitrarily decide that they're incorporated and I'm subject to their laws and taxation. 99% of us work towards putting more into the system than we get back and many do so exponentially.
Last time I checked, eminent domain and asset forfeiture are still actual things that happen in 2017.
We may not live in an outright "feudal system" but many of us live in a system closer to one than not.
Land specifically is kind of a special case, in that we can't just make more of it (to a first approximation). There is an ongoing opportunity cost to society to give you exclusive rights over a piece of land, and therefore it is right and proper that you make an ongoing contribution to society to compensate.
Generally, I would agree, and in the broadest sense of the terms, they are not equal. You can call anything whatever you want; you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig. England used taxation as a way to maintain control over its colonies regardless of how it turned out. Eventually, and most famously, the U.S. realized the taxation was a form of oppression and not for the common good.
People who didn't pay the "taxes" were evicted and their possessions given to loyalists; sounds a lot like renting.
The American Revolution isn't nearly as clear cut as that. It wasn't anti-taxation, it was anti-taxation without representation. The colonists were objecting to being taxed without having a say in the levying of the taxes. There were many colonial Americans who would have been happy returning Members to Parliament without independence.
The core of the issue really was that Britain defended the American colonies from French invasion during the Seven Year's War and the British taxpayer bore the brunt of the taxation (I can't remember exact figures, but Britons were taxed much, much heavier than Americans, even after the stamp duties and tea taxes). After the war, Parliament came looking for payback, understandably. So Britain wasn't using taxation to control the colonies, it was looking to recoup the costs of defending them.
On a sidenote, this is actually quite interesting in today's context over NATO military spending, where now it is Britain freeloading on American military spending.
I really appreciate your response; you're correct. I was wrong to offer the ideal I did. I had hoped to posit that taxation is often abused, used as a tool to accomplish something other than to generally fund the government or improve society; as a control over the people.
My argument wasn't sound - I'm glad you provided historically accurate facts that were both enjoyable and informative!
Your sidenote is also interesting - and on another note (albeit silly) - have you heard of the AMC drama TURN: Washington's Spies? I've started watching it and have quite enjoyed it so far.
This is so true. I refused to update a second generation Apple TV when after several updates I realized the "updates" added zero functionality to then end user. They were just occasions to put new paid-placement crapware on the home screen. I kept up this refusal to update partly out of stubbornness and partly as an experiment. Eventually, after a few months Apple just applied the update without asking. It was at this moment that I realized "I may have purchased this device but I certainly don't own it."
The list of services on older Apple TVs was online (and cached). The services were more like websites than like apps and you could supply your own by manipulating DNS and installing your own certificates. It could change without firmware updates.
> Sonos sounds great, has nice features and "just works".
Perhaps not for long, if you do not accept their take-it-or-leave-it terms. Personally, I don't mind not accepting the TOS and simply leaving my software in the state that it currently is in, forever. My device is currently working acceptably, so I don't see why I need an update. But if they're saying it's going to eventually stop working, that's where any sane person should draw the line.
Sometimes it's just fine though. It probably depends on the up-front cost, and what value you derive from it. If Spotify stops working tomorrow, I can stop paying them, and we can all go home friends. I wouldn't consider my subscription fees over the past couple of years "lost".
On the other hand, if I had to buy a $1000 device for the privilege of paying them $10/month, my anger level would probably depend on how many years I got utility out of that $1000 device before they shut down.
I've got a friend whose still bitter and vocal about how his car's stereo no longer "works" because Pandora pulled out of the Australian market. Sure that well-over-$1000-device's main purpose wasn't "playing music from Pandora" and it still has it's primary "get to work" utlilty, but playing music is high on the secondary feature list of a lot of vehicle purchases...
For someone like me, my decision making for any electronics I buy is "how extensible is this thing, how much control can I exert over it, and how much control does it exert over me".
My willingness to have a poorer experience is unfortunately not as strong as some FOSS enthusiasts. I'm happy to relinquish some control to Apple so long as they continue to provide me with positive experiences (AirPlay, for instance). Fortunately everyone is piling into the "works with everything else" crowd, so you don't really have to opt for something particularly power-user-oriented anymore. HomeKit doesn't fall too short of an ISY-99i based system, for instance.
I can only imagine if I wasn't excited by FOSS and linux to begin with. There is zero hope of escaping the cloud-trap for someone who doesn't have the knowledge or willingness.
I've got a bunch of hardware that plugs into specific services like Pocket (ebook reader) or Spotify (my hifi). If those services go away, or for some reason I don't want to use them, there's no way for me to get equivalent functionality with some simlar service (e.g. I'd rather use pinboard.in than pocket).
I would much prefer it if all of these services followed a publicly documented protocol and allowed me to configure which endpoint they talked to. I can't see this ever happening without regulation though.
It's even worse than that though. Even if you chose to forego updates promising features or better security, it seems like this product's box should actually say "not guaranteed to continue working past arbitrary dates, even if the hardware is still fine!"
> Sonos may modify or update this Statement when necessary to reflect customer feedback and changes in our Products and Service; so, please review it periodically. When we update this Statement, we will revise the “Last Updated” date at the top of the Statement. If there are material changes to the Statement or in how Sonos uses your personal data, we will notify you either by posting a notice of such changes before they take effect or by sending you a notification. We encourage you to periodically review this Statement to learn more about how Sonos is using and protecting your information. Your continued use of the Service or Products after any modification to this Statement will constitute your acceptance of such modification and updates.
I wouldn't have to just agree to the policy as you linked it today. One agrees to all future versions of the policy.
> Your continued use of the Service or Products after any
> modification to this Statement will constitute your
> acceptance of such modification and updates.
Is that even legal? I thought a contract required equal bargaining power, and explicit acceptance. If you have already purchased a good, and suddenly the terms change, I would think you would, at that point, have decidedly unequal bargaining power -- the company already has your money, and you either have to stop using the product, or agree to the terms. That doesn't seem "equal" at all.
I'm starting to think that any sort of B2C legal agreements, but particularly standard form contracts and similar documents like terms of service, EULAs and privacy policies, should be explicitly banned from including terms that essentially say the deal can be revised unilaterally and the customer is responsible for keeping an eye out for this. It's simply not a reasonable or practical arrangement for any normal person to do that, and it's the worst form of legalese CYA wording.
Perhaps, as with various other unreasonable or one-sided provisions, there should be a presumption under consumer protection laws that any such terms are invalid, that any substantial change in an agreement must have the customer's explicit, active consent, and that if the customer does not consent and this results in something they purchased no longer providing the expected benefit then the usual protections about broken purchases should apply. You'd have to be a bit careful, because sometimes these self-updating terms are used to deal with minor changes in the legal landscape that are formalities with no real impact on anyone, but that seems like the sort of thing a court could sensibly decide in the event of a dispute.
I suspect a lawyer might say you're right, though since most people aren't lawyers, the damage may be significant even from letting them include the terms in the first place.
More importantly, I don't think consent is sufficient in this sort of situation. It has to be a real choice, so even if you choose not to consent to the change, you're not then losing out on something you already paid for or otherwise giving up your normal legal consumer rights as a consequence.
In a situation where the continued effective functioning of a purchased item is dependent on some other facility, and that facility and the related functionality can be turned off if you don't accept the manufacturer/vendor moving the goalposts retrospectively, I don't see much ethical or practical difference between using this dependency as a lever to force a customer to accept revisions in some other aspect of the deal and just doing the other thing without their consent anyway.
The part where playing audio, including that from 3rd party sources, doesn't need Sonos to get any device usage data. However they still want it 'to improve their service', and you can't turn that off. Not accepting terms means that you'll never get firmware updates.
Read the privacy policy, you can opt out of usage data. This article is clickbait crap and completely inaccurate. They clearly tell users how to opt out of usage data collection; I'm not seeing the problem here.
As for the data collection you can't opt out of, it's super basic data like your ip and account registration info. How do you expect to use a cloud service if it doesn't know your ip?
You can play stuff you physically own from a Roku too. Are you saying that Sonos could arbitrarily upload your media files to their servers? Doubtful. At worst, they could do a sound-print analysis locally on the device to identify it and send the metadata to Sonos.
I am trying to think of concrete examples of scenarios where actual harm would REALISTICALLY be done to individual consumers because of Sonos privacy policy.
If an out-of-control oppressive government is the real concern here, is a flimsy EULA _really_ going to provide any protection whatsoever? Can you really even have 100% trust that the EULA will be obeyed by the company if they can get away with violating it?
The principle is at stake here. What the change is doesn't matter. The fact that the deal can be changed at all after a purchase has already been made is fundamentally unfair.
Too many hardware products are being tethered to opaque "updates" delivered via untrusted computer network, namely, "the Internet". Security issues of the delivery mechanism aside, purchasers of these products are given no options on whether and how they may choose to "update" the manufacturer's software, or replace the manufacturer's software with an open source alternative.
For example, if the manufacturer's software is closed source, the purchaser cannot verify what is in an "update". The manufacturer is under no legal obligation to tell her. As such, she may not be in a position to decide
[ ] YES, I could use this modification or
[ ] NO, this modification serves me no benefit
The modification may serve some benefit to the manufacture, e.g., collecting data, but no benefit to the purchaser.
It may be bundled with some other modification that benefits the purchaser but the purchaser cannot choose to accept or reject the modifications individually.
Or the manufacturer may simply state a possibility that breeds fear among certain purchasers: that if purchaser does not accept all updates, then the hardware may "cease to function". Consideration by the purchaser of whether this is actually probable may be superseded by a perceived risk of not being able to use the hardware to its full capabilities.
(For example, a router company may inform the purchaser that only the router company's software will allow certain performance specificatons to be met. If the purchaser installs an open source alternative software, then she will not be able to obtain the same performance. Of course there may be other benefits to the open source alternative besides performance, but the perceived "loss" of not reaching the performance specs advertised by the manufacturer is enough to convince many purchasers to tether the router to the manufacturer's "updates".)
Purchasers own the hardware they purchase. It is the software, including "firmware", pre-installed by manufacturers that gives rise to these shenanigans. The less access and control, including choice of alternatives, that the purchaser has to such software, the better for the manufacturer who wishes to continue to exploit the sale of the hardware well-beyond the purchase date.
When the purchaser of hardware is forced to accept the manufacturer's software, then I tend to agree with the comment. Regardless of whether the purchaser owns the hardware, if the manufacture controls the software, e.g. the manufacturer can "update" it at will or break it at will for anyone who does not "update", then with all due respect I submit that the manufacture ultimately controls the hardware.
Thought experiment: Apply the above view to every item of hardware you have ever purchased. Consider whether it will apply to the next item you purchase.
To be honest I had a pretty average experience with Sonos so far. It is connected with cat6 ethernet, professional switches, with no other connectivity problems on that network (and I tested all cables). I have 3 systems (pay1, play 5 and the sonos amp), and they keep losing track of each others, I have to regroup them regularly. They also struggle with long music tracks (i.e. 1h podcasts off a synology shared drive) and often stall in the middle.
If they brick my devices, I will only be half upset.
If the units are also wifi connected (sonos mesh networking), then either only plug in one of them to ethernet, or fiddle with your switch spanning tree cost values. As I recall, sonos uses the older standard spanning tree values, and until I fiddled with my managed switch settings, the sonos were regularly bringing down my local network, and/or winning the elections so that large amounts of my lan traffic went over their wireless mesh network.
Pretty crappy default configuration on Sonos' part (using old default cost values), if you ask me.
^ I worked in Sonos support for 7 years and going wired for everything is the best configuration - if you're still having issues with that then spanning tree configuration is the likely cause.
I found Sonos support to be super helpful. First time I've talked with a support representative where I came away impressed with how knowledgeable they were.
I eventually ripped out my custom switch configs and went with a single Sonos unit hard wired, and the rest on SonosNet/Mesh. I use only 5ghz wifi (2.4ghz disabled) at home, and since Sonos only does 2.4ghz wifi, this was the best solution for me.
I agree. It seems pretty bonkers, but I'm sure some PM thought it would be great for some subset of customers to just be able to plug things in and have things "magically work". Anything beyond the most basic network though, and it really causes problems.
How do I switch that off then? I don't see any option in the windows sonos app's settings. I just see a Advanced Settings/General/Wireless Setup but that's to connect it to a wifi, which I do not want to do.
Sonos's spanning tree implementation is problematic (and anachronistic: last I looked, it was using classic STP not RSTP). In a similar situation I've watched them flap away merrily, spitting constant topology change BPDUs at each other through both interfaces. It's not a pretty sight.
They seem to me to be totally in denial about it, judging by their forums. Lots of blame-the-customer and blame-someone-else's-device, and very little (or no) technical documentation. I think they are a speaker manufacturer first, a streaming audio interface second, and a networking company a very distant third.
I bought a LibraTone [0] and love the thing. With its inbuilt battery, it's a portable hifi system. You can take it anywhere. Sound quality is 5*. Integrates seamlessly with all Apple devices.
I have 2 Play 1's, Play 5 and Play Soundbar. They have worked fantastically and I've never had a problem once in several years. The idea that they can be bricked has me extremely upset right now.
5 Play:1s and they all work flawlessly on WiFi. It doesn't seem they're intended to work wired, from what I've seen.
I've had one tiny but annoying bug: Occasionally a podcast will show 0:00 to 0:00 on the scrubber and nothing -- not rebooting the whole system and my phone -- will fix it. It can be frustrating to be unable to scrub to the 40 minute mark on a podcast where I've already listened to half of it.
Wow talk about blowing something out of proportion. The new software comes with new terms. If you don't accept the new terms you keep the existing software. Over time, it is possible that current software sill stop working with e.g. some future Pandora API, and you'll have a choice of either updating your software or foregoing that feature.
I have a Sonos in every room of my house and I've owned them since the very first generation. Sonos has been extremely good about updating the software. The current software still works on the very first hardware, with all the functionality save for a single feature, room-correcting equalization, that requires the newer DSP. This company is the gold standard of ongoing software support for consumer goods and this article is trying to spin the situation in just the perfect way to make the Internet commentariat explode.
Whatever the rationale, the posts's core statement - that either people accept new contract terms or their device will brick the next time they change the API - is correct.
[edit] apparently the models have a line-in socket? In that case, I agree, them turning into regular speakers is better than bricking. However, I still think the article is relevant as it highlights the problem of ownership and terms of sale with IoT devices. (The conditions under which you bought the device can change arbitrarily after the sale)
This is silly, no one is saying they are going to brick the hardware, ever. But if you don't update and years later Spotify decides to change their end points, Spotify will likely stop working on your very outdated speaker.
If you have any google account or android device, they already have literally orders of magnitude more info on your life than Sonos would ever be able to collect. Not to mention Sonos has said it doesn't ever sell the data, AND you can opt out of usage info. Not seeing the problem here.
Found the Sonos employee. They've been extremely good about updating their software? I had to join the beta program and wait a year to get Spotify integration to work even after they advertised it as a feature. If you think they're the gold standard you've never seen their support forums..
I had a problem with their mac app years ago and ended up having a call on Christmas night with one of their engineers trying to track down what the bug was.
That said last I saw their software was just as buggy as its always been. Not worth the price IMO.
You violate HIPAA, and it's severe. So there's already a precedence for sensitive data. We just need to ensure all our personal data is considered under a sensitive data infrastructure of some form. That would hopefully also disincentivize home gadgets from constantly dumping everything to their mothership.
Again with the unfounded statement. Where are you giving away personal info? You register the device with an email, what personal info do you think they're collecting? Do you think they can identify you because you named a speaker "living room"??
They now have my email. There are these things called "relational databases" that allow one to collate lots of other data with a unique identifier. There are organizations that do nothing but gather that data and resell it. I do my best to stay out of that marketplace.
What benefit is there to me to provide any seller of consumer goods with my personal data?
I hate all smart devices. The TV should just be a TV, the dishwasher should wash dishes, the refrigerator should keep stuff cold, the washing machine and dryer should clean my clothes, and speakers should just produce sounds. I have yet to hear any compelling reason to make these devices dependent on software.
My degree is in mechanical engineering, but I work in software development. Software is eating the world for good reasons.
How many gates would it take to have a pure hardware decoder for ATSC?
A microcontroller-based dishwasher timer is much cheaper to design and manufacture, and wears out more slowly under many conditions, than a mechanical timer.
I wouldn't be surprised if a micontroller could wring another 1% efficiency out of your refrigerator vs. an analog or mechanical controller.
A microcontroller inside the speaker could perform some digital signal processing to account for the speaker's frequency response, so that the receiver doesn't have to know any details about the speakers.
Now, I do see little reason to make any of the non-TV appliances you mention reliant upon network connectivity or anything outside themselves apart from power and physical consumables (soap, water, etc.). Ideally, the television itself would be split into a screen with only HDMI in, and a small box or dongle that performs ATSC reception, decoding, and any smart TV functionality. The television itself should be something like a Chromecast.
The "Smart" in the post you replied to stands for something else than your examples (which are absolutely valid uses cases!).
We could summarize it as "needlessly Internet connected, reporting to some endpoint in the cloud outside of your control, which is now a point of failure".
Indeed my dishwasher is likely more reliable, and my fridge can get more efficient with a microcontroller. But the 2017 version is likely to suddenly stop working is someone in Korea forgets to renew a certificate (or worse, become part of a botnet, or act as an breach in the security of your network like the aquarium in Vegas I read about lately). Most of the times, the "added value" of this new dependency is harvesting your data for profit (which won't get passed down to you as a better price, don't worry).
I should have quoted the portion I was responding to. I was responding to "I have yet to hear any compelling reason to make these devices dependent on software."
Yes, you have possibly valid use cases. I should have clarified that my objection is to Internet connectivity specifically, although I am not yet persuaded that a 1% efficiency gain for my refrigerator or other appliance (regardless of connectivity) justifies the additional expense and complexity of using a microprocessor.
"Smart" does not mean computer-controlled, as opposed to mechanical. "Smart" implies that it talks to and is controlled and updated via the internet and usually cell phone apps. Offline non-smart devices are still wholeheartedly welcome to use computers for internal and local control.
This problem should be solved in a legislative way, similar to Europe's GDPR. There should some minimum privacy rights which can't be opted out of and which are protected by government. That's the only viable solution. Markets don't help here.
Why wouldn't the market help? This is a great opportunity for a competitor to offer privacy features and capture market share with a better offering. Promise privacy in perpetuity or your money back, and if consumers care then they will switch.
Because intricate things with downsides that are difficult to understand is exactly where legislation can protect consumers.
The whole 'if consumers care' thing is kinda bullshit. They simply don't have the time or ability to get into the details. It's even more of a problem when companies train users to just accept changes to agreements, so they can keep using a physical device that sits in their home.
Because people already bought the things and it would be profoundly shitty to buy them again? Lock-in is real.
And let's be real: what you've written should be written as "privacy in perpetuity or maybe part of your money back years later after a class-action lawsuit, maybe, if it isn't just store credit." That, as much as anything, is why consumers caring is attenuated.
It's a luxury speaker, so not the end of the world. The consumer could sell on eBay, or if it makes sense a competitor could offer incentives like taking trade ins for a discount, etc.
Which makes your options 'roll it yourself' or 'do without'. Just because somebody chose door #3 doesn't mean they should be expected to get shafted at every opportunity.
I looked at these speakers a few months ago. They look really cool. As soon as I saw that they require phoning home, I said "lolno" and built my own speaker system with RPIs.
I love the idea of smart devices, but only as long as the software is Free and Open. I really don't understand people who think situations like this are acceptable.
Really? Are there certain services you find to be buggy? I feel like Sonos is one of the least buggy pieces of tech in my house. That's what I love about it. It just works, I don't have to explain to non-technical family members how to work around issues, etc. But we almost exclusively use it for Apple Music and Spotify, so maybe there are some rough edges we haven't encountered.
5. "Hi, we think now would be a great time to update the firmware on your Sonos devices. We could have done this at any time during the last two weeks since you used any of your Sonos devices, but your time is worthless to us, so we'll make you babysit the update for the next 5 minutes. Hope you weren't launching the app because you wanted to play music right now."
At a minimum they should have the decency to launch the app-store review flow during this forced delay so that they'd have some public recognition of the supreme annoyance this process causes.
Ok, yeah, that's definitely not a use case I have tried. (In fact, one of the biggest reasons I switched to Sonos from using Airplay is that I wanted to get away from relying on my phone's network connection to have the music play.)
That was my first thought as well. It's clearly not reasonable to assume a customer bought a product without any knowledge of arbitrary future changes in the legal terms but understood that the product could cease to provide the same functionality they bought it for later if they didn't accept those unrelated changes. This ought to be grounds for returning these devices to vendors as unfit for purpose and demanding that either they are fixed to continue working properly or some fair level of compensation is paid.
Also, since we're getting some new data protection laws across the EU next year that are heavily weighted against organisations that process data, someone who is upset by this could probably annoy Sonos by doing things like accepting the policy, getting whatever updates they need to keep their device running, and then immediately giving notice that they withdraw their consent for processing any personal data.
In the long term, I think consumer education may be the best solution to the problem of normal devices depending on fragile remote facilities. It is illegal to sell cigarettes in my country without showing very obvious warnings about how smoking is harmful to your health. Perhaps it's time that any software or electronic devices that rely on someone else's servers or remote hardware to function have to have 1/3 of their packaging (including 1/3 of the total screen area for any web pages or app purchase screens) used for a big statement that this may cause the software or device to stop functioning at any time, or to give an actionable guarantee about how long such support will be provided for as a minimum, and that any advertising for such things has to describe the "purchase" in terms of being a rental rather than buying something.
Isn't Sonos just saying, if you don't accept the new privacy policy you won't get updates? I highly doubt they're going to deliberately (somehow) break devices for users that refuse to update.
The reporting here implies that devices for customers who don't accept the new terms may "cease to function". Does the mechanism for how that happens matter? The bottom line is that either the product continues to provide whatever functionality it was purchased for, or it's now broken.
Typically under consumer protection laws in places like Europe, a product that ceases to work properly unreasonably quickly after it is purchased will trigger certain rights for the purchaser, such as getting the device repaired or replaced so it works again, or getting a full or partial refund as compensation.
Importantly, there is typically no exception to this principle just because the product in question involves software or depends on remote services. In fact, the EU strengthened consumer protections on digital purchases not so long ago, so the direction of the legal currents is very clear.
I suppose you could say there has been some sort of informal understanding that because it's so hard to write software with no bugs or security flaws, it's reasonable for the suppliers of products with software components to supply software updates post-sale to keep things working properly without falling foul of the basic "it no longer works" trap if users don't then apply those updates. But the sorts of shenanigans we've seen recently with software developers bundling unrelated and possibly unwanted changes in with their bug fixes and security patches are stretching good faith here, and at some point I suspect something has got to give.
The same principle applies to products with dependencies on remote services that don't necessarily last as long as the product itself, whether that's a server for a multiplayer game, or a DRM scheme with remote authorisation, or a provider of audio data that makes a speaker system useful.
You're being alarmist; no one is bricking anything. If you refuse to update and Spotify changes endpoints in five years that's not bricking your device.
I think perhaps you're reading more into my comment than was actually there. I didn't say anything about bricking a device.
The principle here is whether the customer is getting what they reasonably believed they were paying for, or whether some part of that benefit is being lost prematurely because of the actions (or inactions) of the device manufacturer/vendor.
To continue with your own example, whether it matters that Spotify changes an endpoint probably depends on how the product was originally presented. If it was advertised as offering access to a variety of specific services and some or all of those services become unavailable earlier than the customer might reasonably have expected, then clearly part of the value that the customer was paying for has been lost.
While I don't like this new development, I will drop in one data point: I bought my first Sonos devices more than 11 years ago, and over this time they all received software updates with increasing functionality. Think about it: my first Sonos players were bought in the pre-iPhone times. A lot has changed in the tech world since then.
This is something other manufacturers could learn from. It seems these days most products are launched by marketing teams: fire and forget, the moment the product is out the door, all software development ceases and it never gets updated.
I do hope they reconsider the new privacy policy, though. It's worrying.
My parents have a couple of Sonos devices in their home. The support is amazing. But this "Accept the new policy or we brick your shit remotely" thing needs a HARD and FAST response, this cannot be a "Well eventually the market will-" NO, FUCK THAT. If we allow manufacturers to do this sort of shit, that's the final nail in the coffin for IoT. It's already a dumpster fire in terms of software.
I might understand this if it was for new customers going forward. But I don't understand how they can tell their existing customers this and not expect a lawsuit.
Anyone have another suggestion for a pair of wifi speakers that can be assigned to Left/Right to get stereo and can be network streamed to and have another device on the network with a line-in?
I was about to buy 2 Play1's and a Connect to do a stereo install in a room where I don't want to run speaker cable. I had researched wackier home-built solutions and was going to give up and go for the Sonos. Now I'm once again considering wackier home-built stuff like 3 raspberry pi's attached to line-in and two dumb powered speakers.
2) Connect all your sources through HDMI (your PC, your TV box, a Chromecast, a raspberry, etc). There are versions with more inputs if you need that. That one has a nice simple remote.
4) Use some powered studio monitors with one of the RF receivers each (there are plenty to choose from)
This way if you're streaming audio+video everything syncs up because the RF link adds very little latency (unlike the Sonos that adds 70ms). The chromecast gives you easy streaming of audio and video from all your apps and if you are only streaming audio you can just turn off your TV/projector and the audio still works fine. The speakers can be placed anywhere there's power. It doesn't have the fancy multi-room and 5.1 possibilities of the Sonos nor the good industrial design.
Indeed. I'm only running a 1080p projector so I was mostly looking for something that was cheap enough and had a very simple remote. That specific one looks great in that I can easily take a black marker and label the inputs 1 through 4 on the remote itself.
It seems that you either: a) haven't used a Sonos system, and/or b) have a lot of free time and don't mind resetting/rebooting your equipment when glitches happen, and/or c) don't care about multi-room synchronized playback. I won't even mention the audio quality, which on an Raspberry Pi for example, is horrible.
Sonos Just Works — some people (like me) care about that deeply. I have better things to do with my life than fiddle with audio systems. If your hobby is building these kinds of systems, then of course it makes perfect sense to roll your own. But if it isn't, I wouldn't waste my time.
My experience is way different than yours. Sonos would never stay connected to wifi and required multiple factory resets over the years until I just got rid of them.
I'm really interested to know what specifically you're concerned about. This article is just inaccurate. You can opt out of usage data, so what is the privacy issue for you personally?
What's described in the article is just one example of how depending on a closed system like the Sonos can burn me further down the line. The setup I've described takes advantage of the HDMI standard to not depend on any specific vendor and even fixes the 70ms Sonos line-in delay. Since I've even priced it out at slightly cheaper than the Sonos with probably better speakers (2x JBL LSR 305 vs the Play1's) I think the only advantage the Sonos retains for me is really the better industrial design.
Seconding. It's a great system if you can set up your own server, and the ecosystem at this point is almost completely open to the point where you can completely build players from other devices like raspberry pis.
You read that and think they're going to tunnel into your network and break your speakers? To me this is clearly lawyer CYA language to ensure that when Spotify changes their API and Sonos only supports it in a future software update, you will have been warned.
And they might. Which would be more frustrating to a user - their Sonos turning into regular speakers, or arbitrarily and randomly not functioning as expected?
Imagine the difference between your phone suddenly bricking itself, or random refusing to dial certain numbers.
That's a good point, there must be a way to block access from these devices to the Sonos mothership. I have seen zero software improvement in the few years I owned my Sonos set, so I can't say that I would miss much.
Run Squeezelite on multiple Raspberry Pis paired with decent USB audio adapters (Berhinger UCA222 - decent analog and also optical out). Music served from a PC using the standard Logitech Media Server software, playback controlled with either the standard web interface or the Squeezer android app.
Plug the RPis into decent stereos (not a powered speaker unless you are some kind of rabid animal) and you've got a good setup that can be controlled from anywhere in the house. Multiple stereos can playback in sync and be controlled from the same UI.
I second this. I've been using various squeezebox devices (and software players) for years, for both listening to my own music collection as well as streaming (spotify mostly). The squeezebox server (i.e the core software that various clients can connect to) has been open-sourced, and is still actively developed/updated. There are also open-source software clients readily available.
Great advice. I've had squeezeboxes since the SB1 in 2003, and recently got a Hifiberry amp running Squeezelite. It's as minimal as it gets -- power brick, RPi + amp in a custom case, and speakers. The class D amp is surprisingly pleasant.
A few of them look familiar, but I don't use that stuff. My advice was given with someone with a digital music collection in mind. Spotify, for example, was available on the Squeezebox Touch (and not the earlier Squeezebox Classic) but I don't know how tricky it would be to make it work with Squeezelite.
Thanks, I know someone who can use this. I also saw a year or two ago some guy was selling some product or service or something aimed at supporting the older hardware with newer streaming services. I just don't generally use the streaming stuff.
What's the latency like? I've got some Qualcomm Allcast gear that seems to do sync properly with no perceptible delay, but it's the only one I've heard that does it properly.
An appropriately-loud sound system that fills the whole house with music. I can hear my Bose radio throughout the entire apartment, without digital interference because everything is wired.
For one... Philips Hue. The lights connect to a Zigbee base station, which has a local API for controlling the system.
(The base station does connect to a WAN server for remote control, but you could always block that at your firewall. The system works entirely fine in local mode.)
I am sincerely curious and maybe a Sonos owner can offer some feedback. what does Sonos offer me now that a streaming music provider, a smart phone and a portable bluetooth speaker doesn't?
I understand that Sonos can stream to multiple "zones" simultaneously but besides the occasion of a house party how often is this necessary?
This news to me is just another reason for me to never buy one.
So, even in a 1100sqft house, I consider the multiple-zone streaming to be of great utility. In fact, I almost NEVER use my Sonos setup without all 5 speakers going. Yes, you can always blast the audio in one room in order to hear it well in others, but it's quite nice to be able to listen at a comfortable volume in all rooms. It allows one person in the house to call out to another and still be heard, for example.
I have it set to wake me to the local streaming radio, so that's a nice feature, but of course it could be replicated.
I can throw my phone into a passing cement mixer and the music keeps playing in the house, and then I can open the controller on my laptop and hit "next track". In this way it's fairly analogous to the Spotify controller where I can change the music from any device in the house, but the "playing" happens on the device itself; it's not actually streamed from my phone or computer.
Also, until sometime in the past couple of years Bluetooth was godawful unusably unreliable. It's gotten REALLY good lately though, and suddenly I love it.
Sonos keeps playing if your phone moves which is a pretty huge plus, especially if you know people and don't lead a life of solitude. Their hardware also has a wealth of hardware features like analog and digital inputs, zero-delay input monitoring which makes them suitable as TV or computer speakers, the ability to monitor those inputs from any zone, even if you aren't listening to them on the physically attached player, phase-locked multichannel playback, a zero-config self-extending wireless network, multiuser queue management, and twelve years of flawless software support (so far).
The idea that you get the same thing from a raspberry pi, an android, and some hacks is strictly for those valuing their own time at zero.
Top things for me are: Excellent sound quality. The fact that Sonos has its own network means I can queue up internet radio or a playlist and it no longer needs to communicate with the phone to continue streaming all day. I take advantage of the multi-room support daily outside the context of a house party, simply so my music follows me from room to room. I do agree the privacy policy is a downer but am pretty sure your smart phone is subject to the same risk.
What is provided to the consumer/user in exchange for agreeing to this contract? I assume, because I am becoming increasingly nihilistic about technology, that challenges to this would fail in court. However, this seems to fail both the consideration and the competency and capacity elements of a functional contract.
mhm, please excuse me all if this is wrong, but isn't this the exact same way it works with pretty much all of the updates from e.g. Apple and co?
Let's say a new Itunes update comes along, this requires the user to opt into a privacy policy, if there happens to have been a change in said policy since the last update, then accepting the new conditions is required in order to install the update? Same for an update in browsers, iOS, Android, ...
I am not in favour, just confused as to why this specific case is singled out? Especially since not updating critical software (Operating systems, browsers, et cetera) seems to have far more serious consequences than w/ a speaker?
"[...] the customer will not be able to update the software on their Sonos system, and over time the functionality of the product will decrease."
Sounds to me like maybe the bluetooth syncing with a recent smartphone or something of that nature might not work if the speaker didn't receive a certain update, which I consider a possibility. The "cease to function" seems like a nightmarish-description of such. It's not like "not updating" will magically brick the device.
Edit: my point being that not updating software is not about not enjoying certain features, it's in many cases being incredibly vulnerable to certain types of exploits, in the case of an OS or browser a far more serious consequence, is it not?
That point is a bit of a red herring. The question isn't the value of the update; it's whether existing customers should have to accept inferior terms of service to get it.
The right path for Sonos would be to open-source the kernel and hardware drivers, then either keep it up to date with a base feature set or budget $100K or so a year to run a bounty-based community contribution program. That will end the complaints that Sonos risked bricking hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of consumer hardware so its marketing department could harvest email addresses. Not everyone would like that choice, but it would be a better choice than the gradual decay of perfectly fine (and expensive) hardware that should otherwise last for decades.
Unfortunately the economics of service-oriented consumer hardware is all screwed up these days. Should buying a proprietary connected geegaw for a single up-front fee entitle me to eternal updates? In what non-pyramid-scheme economic model does that work? Yet in our world where we're still weaning ourselves from the dot-com years, that's typically the expectation.
* Shared playlist/queue between all users of a household.
* No need to have a second device present to stream music. That is, I can start up music with the controller on my phone, and go to the store, but the music still plays since all the streaming is handled by the sonos speaker.
* No need to pair your phone/computer to the device every time you come home. Just get on the wifi, and you're set.
Those are the big ones for me, and honestly they're huge.
On the flip side, the biggest pain point is that you're beholden to whatever music services they include in their controller, and you have to use their controller to play music. So while they support Apple Music, I can't use the Music app on my phone to play it. I have to drill through the Sonos app and find what I want. It works pretty well, but it's annoying. Also, I can't stream Audible books, or Overcast podcasts since they aren't supported by the Sonos controller.
Because you aren't the only one enjoying the music at your home. The most annoying thing about being at a party where bluetooth audio is being used is when the person paired gets too far away from the speaker.
That would be trivial, but the small change in experience diminishes the value. If I want music in my bedroom, I don't want to have to walk to my living room to get the tablet, and I don't want to install a tablet in every room with instructions for how to use with Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Pocket Casts, Apple Music, our networked media SSD, etc. or where I happen to want to pull music from. I don't want to have extra devices everywhere that require their own cords and physical spaces.
Sonos allows my wife and I to simply play whatever music we want, wherever we want, with no hassle. And it sounds great.
Yeah cost is definitely not going to be a reasonable factor wrt Sonos equipment comparison. I think the tablet being misplaced, broken or otherwise abused is more troublesome.
>Also, activating Bluetooth is as frictionless as activating WiFi.
Oh my, no. Activating bluetooth is so frustrating that Apple built a special chip to make it easier. That Sonos work over Wifi and not Bluetooth is the primary selling point.
Sonos offers synchronization between speakers, better range, music still plays when your phone is off, easier for multiple devices to control the music, plays more music sources (e.g. from a NAS).
Sonos has at times deprecated features, yes (for example, you can no longer play music from a Rhapsody UPnP server running on your Windows computer - they replaced it with direct playback from Rhapsody's servers). Other times music services have gone under entirely and Sonos has removed them.
If you are only interested in having one speaker, I would probably agree that bluetooth is the better choice. Much more flexibility. Sonos is better when you've got a whole house full of speakers. Grouping rooms together, playing different stuff in different rooms, and the ability for anyone on your network to interact with all of it is where Sonos shines.
Maybe it's just a naive idea but wouldn't it make sense to have "smart devices" be smart in sofar that they have some local computation power and the ability to communicate near range? Maybe have local orchestrator (e.g., apple tv, google home, what not) dedicated for communicating with companies while the rest stays rather dumb and completely interchangeable. Why is literally every smart device sending back information to another company?? Why aren't Distributed IoT and Smart Objects paradigms more of a thing already?
I'd be interested how those complaining about this "problem" would handle the business decision of how to update your terms when adding software that relies on third party offerings. If they add support for Some Music service, do they make it an awful experience where you have to agree to the terms for each vendor?
As a Sonos (I have close to $2000 worth of products) user this actually doesn't bother me.
To all the people talking about ownership. I find it hard to believe the aux in will cease to work. So worst case is they turn into regular speakers.
What it sounds like is you won't be able to update your firmware. So more likely than not, everything would keep working but random Internet related services (like Spotify Integration) may break over time because, for instance, if Spotify changes their API you won't get the software update to fix it.
And that is why I think it is OK. Software updates over the Internet are always subject to licensing. That is not new and not unique to Sonos.
Everything else is 'clearly' a service? On what basis? You buy a product, it has these features, you can do these things, that's the product.
Being able to play music on a 'smart speaker' from my phone isn't a service, it's just a feature of the product. If you sell a product with features that require you to host some servers somewhere publicly accessible on the internet, that doesn't make that product feature a service.
Don't like that? Don't include those features in your product. Design them better so you don't have to forever maintain these servers.
'Compatible with service X' is a feature. If it stops being compatible with service X because service X changed their API, then you either need to fix it so it's compatible again, or refund to your customers.
If you want to announce you are compatible with service X as a feature, you should have an agreement of compatibility with service X.
I find it hard to believe for technical reasons. From what I can tell in the Network traffic the speaker actually talks directly to Spotify for instance.
They would need to have a remote kill switch and use it.
Secondly, they have done this before (forced agreeing to the terms to do a software update) and every time they have warned "some functionality might cease to work" and every time I kept using it past the cutoff.
Once, I had Spotify stop working on me. I assume because they switched API keys or something.
In fact, for example, they had an update that killed Audible integration. And my Audible integration kept working until I installed the update.
From what I understand that one was more Audible's fault than there's. It sounded like Amazon deprecated the API. I am sure if I kept using it without updating that it would eventually stop working. Anyone who got effected by that should blame Amazon.
The only people that should be affected by it are Sonos. They should sue Amazon for violating their service agreement to maintain Audible so it would continue to work.
