FTC Urged To Stop Tech Makers Downgrading Devices After You've Bought Them (theregister.com) 80
Digital rights activists want device manufacturers to disclose a "guaranteed minimum support time" for devices — and federal regulations ensuring a product's core functionality will work even after its software updates stop.
Influential groups including Consumer Reports, EFF, the Software Freedom Conservancy, iFixit, and U.S. Pirg have now signed a letter to the head of America's Consumer Protection bureau (at the Federal Trade Commision), reports The Register: In an eight-page letter to the Commission (FTC), the activists mentioned the Google/Levis collaboration on a denim jacket that contained sensors enabling it to control an Android device through a special app. When the app was discontinued in 2023, the jacket lost that functionality. The letter also mentions the "Car Thing," an automotive infotainment device created by Spotify, which bricked the device fewer than two years after launch and didn't offer a refund...
Environmental groups and computer repair shops also signed the letter... "Consumers need a clear standard for what to expect when purchasing a connected device," stated Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports and a former policy director of the FTC's Office of Technology, Research, and Investigation. "Too often, consumers are left with devices that stop functioning because companies decide to end support without little to no warning. This leaves people stranded with devices they once relied on, unable to access features or updates...."
Brookman told The Register that he believes this is the first such policy request to the FTC that asks the agency to help consumers with this dilemma. "I'm not aware of a previous effort from public interest groups to get the FTC to take action on this issue — it's still a relatively new issue with no clear established norms," he wrote in an email. "But it has certainly become an issue" that comes up more and more with device makers as they change their rules about product updates and usage.
"Both switching features to a subscription and 'bricking' a connected device purchased by a consumer in many cases are unfair and deceptive practices," the groups write, arguing that the practices "infringe on a consumer's right to own the products they buy." They're requesting clear "guidance" for manufacturers from the U.S. government. The FTC has a number of tools at its disposal to help establish standards for IoT device support. While a formal rulemaking is one possibility, the FTC also has the ability to issue more informal guidance, such as its Endorsement Guides12 and Dot Com Disclosures.13 We believe the agency should set norms...
The groups are also urging the FTC to:
Influential groups including Consumer Reports, EFF, the Software Freedom Conservancy, iFixit, and U.S. Pirg have now signed a letter to the head of America's Consumer Protection bureau (at the Federal Trade Commision), reports The Register: In an eight-page letter to the Commission (FTC), the activists mentioned the Google/Levis collaboration on a denim jacket that contained sensors enabling it to control an Android device through a special app. When the app was discontinued in 2023, the jacket lost that functionality. The letter also mentions the "Car Thing," an automotive infotainment device created by Spotify, which bricked the device fewer than two years after launch and didn't offer a refund...
Environmental groups and computer repair shops also signed the letter... "Consumers need a clear standard for what to expect when purchasing a connected device," stated Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports and a former policy director of the FTC's Office of Technology, Research, and Investigation. "Too often, consumers are left with devices that stop functioning because companies decide to end support without little to no warning. This leaves people stranded with devices they once relied on, unable to access features or updates...."
Brookman told The Register that he believes this is the first such policy request to the FTC that asks the agency to help consumers with this dilemma. "I'm not aware of a previous effort from public interest groups to get the FTC to take action on this issue — it's still a relatively new issue with no clear established norms," he wrote in an email. "But it has certainly become an issue" that comes up more and more with device makers as they change their rules about product updates and usage.
"Both switching features to a subscription and 'bricking' a connected device purchased by a consumer in many cases are unfair and deceptive practices," the groups write, arguing that the practices "infringe on a consumer's right to own the products they buy." They're requesting clear "guidance" for manufacturers from the U.S. government. The FTC has a number of tools at its disposal to help establish standards for IoT device support. While a formal rulemaking is one possibility, the FTC also has the ability to issue more informal guidance, such as its Endorsement Guides12 and Dot Com Disclosures.13 We believe the agency should set norms...
The groups are also urging the FTC to:
- Encourage tools and methods that enable reuse if software support ends.
- Conduct an educational program to encourage manufacturers to build longevity into the design of their products.
- Protect "adversarial interoperability"... when a competitor or third-party creates a reuse or modification tool [that] adds to or converts the old device.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K for sharing the article.
Vote with your wallet (Score:1)
Why can't you assume the next manufacturer cares about you, like you did 50 times before? If people stopped assuming online servers existed because advertising said they existed, they wouldn't be throwing so much money in the no-recycling bin. The problem isn't the device manufacturers being selfish and lazy: It's customers pretending a rich person will be nice because of a little bit of money, they handed-over 2, 3, or 4 years ago.
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
how about we just do what the article suggests and hold companies accountable to the appropriate expectations of selling goods and services instead of letting the market continue to devolve into a wild west of exploitation and deception?
Re:Caveat emtor! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think this is the clever defense of shitbag business practices you think it is. If the company is gone then the problem is solved from a consumer protections point of view.
And yes, you CAN in fact prevent the upper management from taking the money and running away. Declaring bankruptcy does not protect you from debt arising from fraud, malicious injury, or government fines. In those cases, the business assets can be frozen pending trial.
If the CEOs were careless, it's absolutely possible to go after them personally. Filing bankruptcy puts all your business financials in front of a judge. If the CEO had been using it as their personal piggybank, or a judge feels they failed to properly manage the company's capital, then the judge can rule the CEO is personally liable. And of course, if they did anything criminal then the company's legal entity provide no protections at all.
=Smidge=
That's why they invented 'incorporation'. (Score:1)
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Nice Dr Suess-ing there but "tinker" is a verb (to repair metal objects/tools), as are "hack" and "fly" (to move very quickly, or travel through air), so "tinkerer" means 'a person/thing that tinkers'.
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Maybe someone should sneak aboard and ‘brick’ the engines of those multi-million dollar yachts. Perhaps 50lb of sugar in their diesel tanks should do it.
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And yes, you CAN in fact prevent the upper management from taking the money and running away. Declaring bankruptcy does not protect you from debt arising from fraud, malicious injury, or government fines. In those cases, the business assets can be frozen pending trial.
Well, let's apply your logic to an actual current issue: Intel chips are melting because they were engineered to look performant on benchmarks. Do you think that:
A) they will honor any warranties?
B) if they do not honor warranties, will anyone hold them accountable?
C) will Pat Gelsinger be personally held accountable?
If your logic will not work for "accidentally" defective products, it sure as hell won't work for intentionally defective products.
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> Intel chips are melting because they were engineered to look performant on benchmarks
My understanding is they are failing because they fucked up the manufacturing process.
A) They're trying to weasel out of it, but there is absolutely a class action lawsuit in the future. They are absolutely doing their best to appease their major vendors.
B) Yes. Their bread and butter is OEMs who use their chips. If Intel burns them, they start designing products around someone else's silicon.
C) Externally to Intel, it
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companies won't go bankrupt. they will either make slightly less margins of profit (these are companies with double digit margins) or they won't bring unsustainable products to market, or costs will be adjusted to make them sustainable. I'd rather force the people with money to make the changes necessary than let them continue to take advantage. if they take their ball and go home then someone else will come to the court. you can still make a healthy living by standing by your products and maybe havi
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Go ahead, hold companies responsible - that will bankrupt the companies, BTW.
Big companies can afford to support their products, but just choose not to as part of their pursuit for maximum profits.
The actual problem is that these sort of regulations create a barrier to entry which hinders new competition, because there goes that Kickstarter project if a startup company is required by law to support their launch product for X number of years.
Re:Caveat emtor! (Score:5, Insightful)
There will certainly be other ways of support other than official software updates. Opening up the bootloader and allowing others to run custom roms and use the hardware they pay for in any way they see fit could be a reasonable way out. Take away my free voice recognition home automation capability? Only if provide me with a way to install my own assistant. Your a kickstarter, and ran out of money in two years? Fine, open up all the software and give it to the community who paid for it.
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Opening up the bootloader and allowing others to run custom roms and use the hardware they pay for in any way they see fit could be a reasonable way out.
That may not be as trivial as you think. Devices, even ones which are obsolete and no longer supported / manufactured may contain IP both in hardware design and software. Opening up the bootloader may be meaningless if the hardware design isn't capable of running a standard Linux kernel. Opening up software may expose you as a business to risk.
Your a kickstarter, and ran out of money in two years?
This I can get behind. If a company goes tits up their knowledge should be free to grab and use.
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I am reminded of ReplayTV, an early DVR manufacturer that pioneered commercial skip. They slowly whittled away at the modem banks that would work for their old devices, until you had to set up a PPP server (basically) to connect their oldest ones. But when the last remnants of the company were going under, they ran the servers for about six months in a mode where any device that connected was told that it was activated fore
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I think you're suggesting is that a device which dies with its service should have its API opened up, yep agree. But what about an EOL device with an active service? I don't think forcing every company to open every API they have will fly either.
We may pride ourselves on interoperability and seek out devices which are so, but then there are countless closed ecosystems out there where a product and a service are intertwined and the IP in question is actually the API to the service itself.
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Why would we allow the boot loader to be locked from the owner of the device?
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I think you meant 'caveat epmtor'
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Good riddance.
It shouldn't be a business plan.
You shouldn't "fall into" the MO.
So we shouldn't do anything because people will do illegal things if we do?
What are you even saying?
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Go ahead, hold companies responsible - that will bankrupt the companies, BTW.
Except for most of the world, which has strong consumer protection legislation without companies going bankrupt left, right and center because of it.
There's some great quote by someone about "when corporations have managed to get their victims (customers) to defend their untenable positions then ...", but I can't remember the full thing or who said it.
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letting the market continue to devolve into a wild west of exploitation and deception?
The first step is to not let the king of exploitation and deception back into office. He's also really old and really senile.
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how about we just do what the article suggests and hold companies accountable to the appropriate expectations of selling goods and services instead of letting the market continue to devolve into a wild west of exploitation and deception?
The tricky part is that everyone without exception supports what you just said, but everyone has a different concept of "appropriate expectations." That's why Congress has to step in to address the difficult task of legally defining this concept. The courts cannot be expected to settle the question because we have seen that litigant-selected judges that are arguably legal experts but almost always technical novices cannot be expected to be fair or competent.
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Because the tech companies either have asymetric power or they are essentially fungible up to the point of committing to their ecosystem. I do vote with my wallet, and I only go for companies that have accessible products... but that is a big challenge for most people. I bought a Rheem heat pump water heater over AO Smith or Bosch because there is an open source product that lets me integrate it into my home automation and energy managenent system painlessly and cloud-free. How many people can actually fi
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how about we just do what the article suggests and hold companies accountable to the appropriate expectations of selling goods and services instead of letting the market continue to devolve into a wild west of exploitation and deception?
But that's communism... or something. If companies aren't free to rip us off then all those puppies died for nothing.. what's next, expecting a fair days pay for a fair days work... I've had it up to here with your damned Marxism.
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Re: Vote with your wallet (Score:2)
The problem is that as a customer I don't know if the product will stop working at the will of the maker.
More and more products depends on a server hosting some service, sometimes just a licensing server that can go away ouside of the control of the user.
Guarantees are worth nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
Digital rights activists want device manufacturers to disclose a "guaranteed minimum support time" for devices
I bought a Tomtom navigator around 15 years ago with "lifetime" maps advertised on the box, the map update app tells you the maps are expired, when contacting Tomtom support to get the latest map released for the device they just offer you a 35% discount off a new device.
My mom both a Garmin navigator around the same time, hers still gets new maps..
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"Lifetime" and "Unlimited" mean nothing. They are intentionally vague. If a manufacturer guarantees "10 years", that has a lot more legal weight.
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when contacting Tomtom support to get the latest map released for the device they just offer you a 35% discount off a new device.
I suspect you already have the latest map released "for the device". That's the issue with "lifetime". It's not talking about your lifetime. It's talking about the product lifetime which ends when the product is discontinued.
Sucks, but that's how most companies operate in their "lifetime" promises.
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Why didn't you return it? Are consumer laws in your jurisdiction so bad that they can just like about lifetime updates and get away with it?
It's important to always return these things. In the UK it is the retailer's responsibility, no the manufacturer's. That's actually really good because the retailer is typically helpless to do anything if the manufacturer dropped support, so can either refund you or give you a free upgrade. And then in future they will reconsider carrying that manufacturer's products, b
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Why didn't you return it? Are consumer laws in your jurisdiction so bad that they can just like about lifetime updates and get away with it?
Consumer laws are that bad in every jurisdiction on the planet. Even in places like Australia which are paragons of consumer protections the "lifetime - oh we were talking about the expected lifetime of the device, not your lifetime" loophole work. I challenge you to find any jurisdiction on the planet where you can happily use a device for 15 years and return it for a refund at the end.
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TINSSTAAFL.
Consumer protection laws do nothing but amp up prices. The retailer may be forced to take back the
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I didn't have this problem with my first Android - which I used for 7 years.
I don't have this problem with my second Android, which I have had for the past 6 years.
Browser caching worked/works fine and I can install new apps (or updates to existing apps) that are available for my Android version.
Maxing out internet memory? Do you mean internal memory?
Re: Smarrphones are planned obsolescence (Score:2)
Parent poster is drinking the apple kool-aid.
Droids suffer from not getting OS updates after about 2 years and then authentication and banking apps stops working.
Re: Smarrphones are planned obsolescence (Score:1)
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You haven't seen the banking/id apps we have where I live.
Re: Smarrphones are planned obsolescence (Score:2)
The battery is another item that makes phones obsolete.
'The Cloud' strikes again (Score:1, Troll)
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Missing from the proposal (Score:2)
The law should compel the release of ALL source code, schematics, info required to re-create ASIC functionality, website code, etc. to the public domain upon the cessation of the service or product, or upon any change in functionality deemed to make the device or service less useful than it originally was.
Penalties for failure to do so should range from fines totalling five years of the company's GROSS income for ALL divisions, all the way up to dissolution of the company and ALL its divisions.
Governments s
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That seems great! Too bad most lawmakers don't understand what any of that is or why it would be important. You're probably not gonna get away with fines that high either.
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The law should compel the release of ALL source code, schematics, info required to re-create ASIC functionality, website code, etc. to the public domain upon the cessation of the service or product
I'd like to see that too, but it's fundamentally incompatible with the modern body of law. That would provide everything needed to recreate the product, and you didn't purchase that, because of intellectual property law. While I find the whole idea to be somewhat repugnant, it is how our system functions (to the extent to which it does) and proposals have to be compatible with what is, not what we wish.
With that said, I do think it's reasonable that the source code and what is needed to make use of it in th
Does this include Google Services? (Score:2)
https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]
Imagine this (Score:2)
Changing the terms after purchase should be illega (Score:2)
If a product is sold with a "perpetual license" the manufacturer should be required to honour that as long as the product (and company) continues to exist. If a product contains a feature out of the box, the manufacturer shouldn't be allowed to later put that feature behind a paywall for those customers. If it says "lifetime free map updates" then the manufacturer should be required to continue providing free map updates for as long as compatible map updates are being produced.
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We regret to inform our valued customers that legacy products only support the mapDRM2023 format. Only current-model devices support the enhanced security of mapDRM2024. Please accept our offer of 10% off your purchase of a compatible product...
There are some genuinely breaking technical changes; but I suspect it would be way, way, too dangerous to leave 'compatible' up for interpretation in the same regulation that creates a strong incentive
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"then the manufacturer should be required to continue providing free map updates for as long as compatible map updates are being produced."
Nope, it's the companies responsibility in that case to provide, itself, the translation software that will allow their product to still interoperate. This is done all the time.
Why should this be any different?
How far would this cover? (Score:2)
Things like killing the Spotify Car Thing are clear cut
No problem for the maker (Score:2)
Spawn a new numbered company for each major project. Then, instead of discontinuing the device, you can go out of business. After extracting any profits in some sort of service exchange, of course.
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May be difficult in an interconnected world (Score:3)
It's one thing to not intentionally brick old devices, it's quite another to provide perpetual support for devices in an ever more interconnected world. E.g. My previous Samsung TV no longer plays Netflix. The app stopped working about 4 years ago. Does Samsung need to provide software updates for this 13 year old TV because Netflix changed its service? I can tell you there's ****all chance of that old piece of crap decoding AV1.
Same applies to other interconnected things. E.g. Works with Nest was depreciated 5 years ago, and killed for good last year. Do we expect MyFox to update their alarm system to accommodate Google, or more to the point, when Somfy purchased MyFox do we expect them to support these old products they never developed?
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It's one thing to not intentionally brick old devices, it's quite another to provide perpetual support for devices in an ever more interconnected world. E.g. My previous Samsung TV no longer plays Netflix. The app stopped working about 4 years ago. Does Samsung need to provide software updates for this 13 year old TV because Netflix changed its service? I can tell you there's ****all chance of that old piece of crap decoding AV1.
Same applies to other interconnected things. E.g. Works with Nest was depreciated 5 years ago, and killed for good last year. Do we expect MyFox to update their alarm system to accommodate Google, or more to the point, when Somfy purchased MyFox do we expect them to support these old products they never developed?
This is why I don't want a smart TV. the idea that a £600+ TV can become worthless even though the display function still works fine.
Simple solution (Score:2)
When a company discontinues support for a device, if more then 2% of the units originally sold are still in use, it should be mandatory to publish all source code used to provide the service.
Just one of many reasons... (Score:2)
but (Score:2)
m$ stop. (Score:1)
"Urged" Seems Kinda Serious. LOL! (Score:2)
Sounds good to me (Score:2)
So, all you idiots with "smart" household appliances (and thermostats): when was the last time the OEM pushed a security update?