Roku disables TVs and streaming devices until users consent to new terms

The devices those users paid for? That should be illegal.

I'm pretty sure this won't fly in court because this is a significant change to a product long after the product was purchased, which could potentially fly in the face of false advertising laws, since this "feature" was not advertised, and they're not being denied access to a product they purchased. It's clearly coercive.

However, this is the USA and stupider shit has happened. Judges here love to gargle corporate balls. See: Clearance Thomas.
- deleted by creator
- Also how would they prove the owner even saw the notice they supposedly agreed to? This is probably them testing the waters for something worse.
- The point is that few have the money to prove this.

When are we gonna finally nail companies for using underhanded and coercive tactics with consumers?

Oh, never? Okay then.

When we make lobbying illegal in ~~this country~~ the United States
Europe is doing it. Look at Apple vs Spotify, as well as Apple forced to open their app stores to 3rd parties. Those are consumer oriented laws. In the USA, lobbying prevent those from happening.
- And until the EU starts playing hardball, they'll continue to engage in malicious compliance (literally how they've responded to the DMA so far). Time will tell if the EU actually has the balls for this.
US: best we can do is a other corporate tax cut
- Tbf Biden is currently campaigning on raising corporate taxes and the top tax bracket. To actually get anything done though, Democrats would have to take back the house.

Not a lawyer, but 99.9999% sure this violates the CFAA. Correct me if I'm wrong? Would t even matter if they included it in EULA or something, 'no reasonable person...'

This has class action lawsuit written all over it.

There will certainly be many lawsuits about it, no doubt. They e shot themselves in the foot for no reason here. What a dumb move.

There should be a law that any change of T&C after the purchase of a product gives the customer the option to refuse the terms and get a full refund of that product, no matter how old it is.

I have a smart light switch I can't use anymore because they updated the app to force you to make an account to use it and I refused since it worked fine for the last 3 years without them needing to sell my data.
- If the firmware on the switch hasn't been updated to not function with old versions of the app why not just snag an old APK and use the old app version?
  
  At least as long as you own the thing, worth a shot
Especially for physical goods.

Well, my next tv won’t have a Roku in it. I was just about to buy one, and if anyone here has any advice on a dumb TV with no built-in smart features, I would really appreciate some suggestions. They’re surprisingly difficult to find nowadays. I’m looking for some thing 43 inches or smaller, 4K or 1080, and nothing special. Preferably very cheap.(I’m poor)

Maybe just buy a monitor, particularly if you only need streaming.
- I use my "smart" tv as a monitor to stream. It has never connected to the internet and it does not pester me.
- This may be the best advice, esp since I only need small and dumb.
Smart TVs are usually sold at a loss because they expect to make the money back through ads, so if you never connect one to the internet in the first place, you get a cheap decent TV and you cost these cockroaches money
- I have heard that you can't just choose to not connect it, you actually have to route it to a dead end like a pihole. Supposedly some of these smart TVs will make you think you were allowed to bypass completely but have just connected to the nearest unsecured network.
  
  Not an issue for people who have no neighbors, but people who live in a suburb or city?
My setup is a Samsung that doesn’t have WiFi setup. It supports HDMI CEC, as does my game console and streaming box, so I basically never touch the TV remote. It’s effectively a dumb monitor.

I mostly stream via my Xbox and AppleTV since they’re performant systems.
- It’s effectively a dumb monitor.
  
  I may be old-fashioned but that's the only thing a TV is supposed to be. You choose how to use it by its periphery.
Most LGs can be set up without internet at all.
- My fucking Samsung Refrigerator refused to cool until I paired it to a mobile app. It wasn't even one of those fancy tablet screen ones. It beeped at me for hours until I had the time to figure out wtf was wrong with it.
Scepter seems to be the well recommended budget option
- How are they with longevity? Like, if they only last 2-3 years, is there a reliable date I can know they’ll die on? That’s good to know.
  
  Like, a lot of TCLs have a hard 3-year life. It’s good to know what you’re buying.
Rtings is a good site for tv reviews across a wide range of price levels. I’ve used several their reviews to make purchases and have been satisfied thus far.

Best Budget TV’s
- Wonder what their top dumb TV is besides their top budget models:
  
  Hmm, even their monitor TVs seem to all be smart whether $300 or $1000.
Any TV is dumb, if you don’t connect it to the net
- Unfortunately I've seen a few recent TVs that constantly pester you to connect it to the internet. TV makers are trying to crush that.
Commercial display TVs. They are dumb TVs with modern displays.
I tried to find one without Smart TV features and they do exist, just not at the mid tier and above and not from any mainline brands. Good news is, at the low tier you might have some luck. I'm personally getting an LG, but I heard WebOS is easy to root so I won't have those Roku problems.

Shit happened to me yesterday. Pissed me off. Bought this TV years ago and suddenly I can't use it until I accept their new arbitration shit. I'm building a stream box and disabling the internet on this thing. I'm sick of ads anyway.

Do it, its worth the effort
Build a Plex/Jellyfin server while you're at it

I have no idea how US contract law works. Even if you agree to something that says "we can alter the deal at any time", when a change happens to the deal, don't both sides have to benefit, rather than "agree to this change so that you can keep the same thing you had before"?

I honestly think a lot of these terms of service agreements are legally unenforceable, but they don't get contested in court very often.

Like if they say "you consented to the arbitration agreement" I could just argue I never physically signed anything and it was actually my 5 year old who agreed so he could watch TV.
But don't you see, the consumer surely benefits. After agreeing they get to continue using their tv under our new and wonderful terms of service. /s
Hadn’t actually thought about this but it’s a good point, they are varying the T&Cs with no consideration here.

When are the users taking them to court. These guys aren't Nintendo so I expect them to have to fuck themselves.

I expect them to have to fuck themselves

Damn I love that for some reason. Thanks for a giggle
if we could afford to sue them, we would.

My kid consented. I think. Can she make binding contracts that she doesn't tell me about because she's looking for Blues Clues, or am I responsible for every OK she checks when I'm not present?

I let my cat step on the remote. Fucker doesn't pull his weight, so if the lawyers come after him he's on his own.
"Am I legally liable or is logic to be applied here"

Oh c'mon, apply some logic, you know logic won't be applied, money will.

So legally speaking, what happens if it was my 8 year old son, who clicks buttons with no regard for human life, that agreed to this BS TOS? How is that legally binding?

Yeah, this is really dumb. There's no way they can prove the owner clicked on it and they can't hold anyone else to the terms.
It isn't, an 8 year old can't be held to a contract like this. IANAL.
Yeah our special needs child didn't have much to say about the new terms. He probably didn't read the whole thing though
- did you ASK him if he read the entire thing?
  
  NO- you just assumed he didn't. He's probably up in his bedroom thinking about them terms right now

You know what. Pirate everything.

- With jod as my witness, I will download a tv.

My in-laws have all Roku tvs. I had to go over and "fix" the TV's for them cause they didn't understand what the hell this was. I straight up just gave them my modded Nvidia shields and bought myself some more. Fuck that shit. We need a better open source tv like interface. I've used plasma big screen but it's not ready for normal people with not Linux but fixing experience.

What does a moded Nvidia shield give you? Is it rooted or something else. I'm curious because I have been looking at them as a replace for Chromecast android tv
- Maybe modded is the wrong word. They're rooted with a different launcher and my pihole does it's best to block telemetry. Getting rid of the Google launcher with ads on it is a major improvement.

Enshittification continues. I used to evangelize roku bc I want a dumb TV. I guess that's no longer valid.

Dude it's a terms of service update, it's not like watching ads on a subscription you already pay for.
- The terms of service update made you sign away your rights to sue the company if they refused to honour the warranty, that's what people are upset about

Between this and Amazon's recent nonsense with Firetv I think next time I'll just buy a generic Android box or something, maybe even a mini PC.

I spend the last couple weeks looking Into modded boxes and anti ad options and I came to the conclusion that a mini pc with wireless keyboard and mouse is the way to go. No special nonsense required. It's super easy to just find whatever I wanna watch online for free anyways and I don't need any special program or knowledge.

Now my next issue is between finding a dumb TV or a solid affordable projector. I mostly use the TV for movie nights anyways, I game on my pc and watch most stuff on my pc too.
- The main problem with a mini PC is a lot of streaming services won't serve you 4k content. Not an issue if you get your content from other sources though.
- Yeah I'm leaning that direction but I'm also quite attracted to whatever the newest raspberry pi can do.
  
  Mini PC might be easier but yeah I think either way a sbc will be my choice whether it's a Ryzen sbc or something else like a raspberry pi I'm honestly not sure.
  
  Can state for a fact it won't be any amazon or roku device but that's about all.

Glad I never connected mine to the internet, I find the interface too laggy and clunky to use the built in streaming apps anyway. It shall remain offline until it dies which is hopefully a long way off.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Roku users around the country turned on their TVs this week to find an unpleasant surprise: The company required them to consent to new dispute resolution terms in order to access their device.

The terms, of course, include a forced arbitration agreement that prevents the user from suing or taking part in lawsuits against Roku.

This requires anyone with legal complaints to take them to Roku lawyers first, who will conduct a “Meet-and-Confer” call and then “make a fair, fact-based offer of resolution” that will no doubt be generous and thoughtful.

I try to opt out of these when I can, and after reading the terms (to which, of course, by “continuing to use” my TV, I had already agreed), I found that you could only do so by mailing a written notice to their lawyers — something I fully intended to do today.

Though in retrospect, I — and literally every single user of your company’s services — would have preferred a straightforward electronic opt-out instead of this dishonest ploy to increase friction and further coerce adoption of these terms.

Don’t delay; otherwise, when people sue them over how they held devices hostage in order to coerce them into consumer-hostile dispute resolution terms, you won’t be able to join in on the fun.

The original article contains 849 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Is there a FOSS option to turn something like a pi zero into streaming device? My assumption is a flavor of Android is required?

Edit: referring to streaming services such as Netflix. I'm aware of that home plex and jellyfin servers exist

I've been looking for a couple of days. It looks like Kodi is probably the way to go.

You can use any of a number of remote controls, or even a modern cell phone.

Unless your media server is up to the full task of transcoding it needs to have a little bit of horsepower to do transcoding on the client.
do you want to pir8 stuff or watch streaming apps (Netflix, Hulu, HBO max?)
- streaming apps

i literally only use my roku tv to open hdmi1 which has a fire stick on it (which i only use for jellyfin)

Well that is terrible.

laughs in Google Chromecast

Outrage over ticking a checkbox? Was anything in the updated TOS worth being pissed about or are people just that fucking lazy? The article not having the exact wording of the changes but talking about the dispute resolution arbitration--that's in every TOS for pretty much everything ever isn't mandatory and doesn't say you can't sue--is a bit suspicious.

Dude already had to update the article because he misunderstood one thing already. This reads like the knee jerk reaction of a random person which belongs on a blog, and not a news article that belongs on a news outlet site.

If you can't see that the issue is that the TOS could include anything the company wants and that disagreeing means the device I already paid for is intentionally bricked then I don't know what to tell you.
- I have a great business idea - sell a roku-like device for half the price and a .99 cent subscription fee. Then when I've captured the market I force them to accept draconian new terms that cost way more or I brick the device. By then it's too late and I can suck all the money out of it from the people that can't switch.
  
  And if they don't like it? Too bad; they signed away their rights to sue.
  
  It's a foolproof plan! As long as I don't get shot in the street but justifiably angry customers.
- They've always been able to do that; it's often the very first fucking paragraph of a TOS. If you're just now noticing it I don't know what to tell you.
if there was actual choice involved you might have a point but it doesn't really matter what changes when you don't have the ability to decline.

but for the record I believe this update removed your right to legal recourse and forces you through binding arbitration, so yes, this one does have something worth being pissed about.