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Nonsense. I bought a hammer the other day and could start using it without signing away any of my rights. It's pretty much only digital products that somehow force you to do that.
If you brought the hammer home and it didn't work as you expected it to, you can take it back. Just like you can with this camera, you can decline the EULA and send the product back.
Write to the company and ask for clarification and an option to opt-out. This has three benefits: 1) they may give you additional information what exactly they are doing 2) they get information that their customers find it suspicious and may clarify it for everyone and 3) they may actually add an option to opt out
They're not going to provide you with more information, because that would limit their ability to do something in the future (especially since the person writing the response isn't a product manager or engineer and doesn't know anything about it anyway).
It's worth a shot, if you don't mind the time to write a quick message; I'm just skeptical that anyone would actually pass the message up the chain that their legal boilerplate noone ever reads is vaguely unsettling.
IANAL but I read "information about .... content" as metadata, not the data itself. Also, based on the size of the videos that thing must make, I don't see any feasible way they could or would exfiltrate the video content you're shooting.
They don't need the whole clip. They can easily grab a single frame, encoded and compressed to minimize the filesize. The camera also has a wifi radio in it which does who knows what behind the scenes. Since the firmware is very much not open source, I have no way to tell what it's doing. It could be constantly trying to phone home over open wireless networks (or partner hotspots). Hell for all I know the thing could have a 3g radio in it, constantly talking to home.
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But that sentence continues with > including but not limited to information about your RED Camera, Camera Module, computer, system and application software, usage, content, and peripherals Should I be reading the "content" part as "information about your content" ? As in, metadata about the content? Lens focal lengths, recording quality, codecs, etc? That would make more sense.
"usage" and "content" are part of a list following "information about", so they are collecting information about content, not content itself. What exactly that means in practice, we are all just guessing unless you go and ask them to clarify. Probably things like what settings you used for your videos so they can analyze which features are most popular/worth improving. At least in the EU, if this EULA was not clearly…
Sure, but that is preceded by “including but not limited to”, so that is a non-exhaustive list of examples.
> assessment of the implications of this license agreement correct It is incorrect--you still have your intellectual property rights, even if they somehow download all the videos off the camera. You're not signing away your rights to the video content.
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If you brought the hammer home and it didn't work as you expected it to, you can take it back. Just like you can with this camera, you can decline the EULA and send the product back.
You're not entitled by law to take a hammer back if it doesn't work as you expect it to.
Actually afaik in most jurisdictions the sale of goods carries an implicit warranty from the merchant that the goods are "fit for purpose" - essentially that it "will work like you expect it to", or at least in the way that most people would expect a hammer to work - as well as that it is of an even kind and quality for the good. So like, if they sell you a hammer and it's actually made of glass, or the head falls off after the first hit - both of those would carry an implied warranty from the merchant and you would get your money back (in small-claims court, if necessary).
The US is one such jurisdiction.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/implied_warranty_of_merchant...
IANAL, but the plain text is pretty obvious. Are you a lawyer, or can you explain how merchantability wouldn't apply?
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I've hired a few, and they're all well aware that sloppy boilerplate is commonplace. They often suggest you take a realist approach to the situation as a whole, and consider the incentives of those involved.
This is exactly the answer. Why would the manufacturer of a professional-targeted camera take an action that would destroy their business?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/eventbrite-apo...
This shit happens all the time. Someone has to call them out and get lucky enough for the calling-out to go viral, before they walk it back.
> assessment of the implications of this license agreement correct It is incorrect--you still have your intellectual property rights, even if they somehow download all the videos off the camera. You're not signing away your rights to the video content.
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> software is as an integral as a component to an electronic device as spark plugs are to a gasoline engine I've never had a spark plug removed from an engine due to quarterly updates.
The relationship here is if a car manufacturer decided to stop selling spark plugs for their car and under the threat of a license agreement prevented anyone else from making a compatible spark plug the government would step in and stomp all over them. Yet there is no similar protections when you buy a device that requires software to run that the manufacturer has abandoned.
Would they, though? I'd be interested in specific cases.
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A hammer showing you how much force you applied per strike would actually be semi useful.
The more I wrote, the more concerned I got that I was talking about a viable product.
Paging @internetofshit ...