Belkin shows tech firms getting too comfortable with bricking customers' stuff

I'm not against manufacturer stopping support for their Internet Of Shits devices, but there should be a law making it mandatory for them to release source code, protocol specs and whatever is needed so that a man of the craft could be able to do what is necessary to continue using the product that he bought.

I'd rather a law mandating that all devices include an 'offline' option for any hardware features that could conceivably support one.

I don't want to create an account for my toaster, nor have my lightbulb send updates to an analytics server, nor have my washing machine cease to function when my wifi goes down.

A ban on products tying hardware features to an internet connection would fix all those problems in addition to giving them theoretically eternal life.

I love this idea. But “ features that could conceivably support one.” is going to be the tricky bit to regulate

"Must be fully operational as described in the brochure without an internet connection. Any features that require an internet connection must be priced and sold as optional enhancements."

Done.

I think the problem with this argument is that this is rarely the case.

99% of the time (including incident) they are not requiring an account for your toaster, or lightbulbs or your washing machine ceasing to function when your wifi goes off.

The issue is that you have a washing machine that you bought with a feature that you can watch the inside of the machine while it's running over wifi from anywhere in the world. Then the company "kills" their cloud features (like Belkin is doing wiht Wemo cloud features) and you no longer can watch your 4k stream of the washer working. Not even locally, not remotely, nothing. It's a feature you paid for, and 2 or 3 years down the line it's gone.

Some times the whole functionality of a device is a cloud connectivity, like a bridge or something, or a device that has 0 physical controls (for some design or ascetic reason) then yeah. Those devices would "cease to function"

Aside from really really maliciously designed products, most "smart" products I know of function perfectly fine as their dumb counter parts. The vast shocking majority of smart lights, smart switches, smart outlets, smart locks, and smart toasters I have seen all work as regular "dumb" version. But that's not why you paid the extra $40-$200 on it. Like a regular LED lightbulb is $4 and a Lifx wifi one is $30. It works fine as a regular lightbulb, you never need to do anything to it and you'd never know it has wifi in it.

Rather than regulating features, I'd start with a dependency list.

So a smart plug might have a list saying:

- Functionality requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.

- Provisioning requires the above plus BLE and Vendor's app.

A smart washing machine might be more complex:

- Express wash requires nothing special.

- Regular wash requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.

- Heavy Duty wash requires the above plus a vendor-supplied detergent cartridge.

There are definitely many products that need no account or cloud functionality at all, but still make you sign up for an account. Philips Hue did this recently for their app, when the bulbs only need local WiFi or ZigBee, but then decided to force you into an account “for your convenience” to sync minor things that don’t matter. The bulbs still work without the app, but you can’t control or update the firmware without an account (or some other system like Home Assistant)

In lieu of a law, a class action against Bellingham that publicly states “we will settle for $1 in exchange for you publishing all protocol docs, device firmware source code, and any private keys used to authenticate firmware installed for these devices, so that competitors can pick up where Belkin left off” would absolutely hold their feet to the fire on this.

The last projector I bought would not function until I signed in to a Google account.

One word: Juicero

My Bosh ebike display can't set the clock unless I make an account with theminstall tje app, and agree to a huge, incomprehensible legal thing. It is a lousy time keeper, loosing 20 minutes over a year.

It will display a zillion fancy useless things to me, but my speed and the time are the only things I care about. I installed a speedometer next to it, which costs €10, looks ridiculous, and works.

Sadly in most countries we don't have "class action".