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Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

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Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#51

Post by duxup »

godelski wrote: post #16

Any devs here create these types of things? Or other systems that make it hard to repair devices? Why do you do it? Do you see this as enshitification? Just need to pay the bills? (can't find a different job?) Think "someone else will do it if I don't?" (and don't think they'll have to pay more for the other person or that the other person will be of lesser quality or people turning down the jobs/not applying puts pr…

I don't make that stuff, I'm not making any assumptions.

But considering the state of discussion on the internet, I wonder how many takers you might get. Do / say something unpopular and you're just signing up for abuse online, heck even if you don't do anything. HN is better places than most but recently (not on HN) I got down-voted in a discussion where I said I didn't mind the neighbor kids running through my yard, and some folks stopped to e-yell at me how terrible it is ...

I'm more riffing off of a "Can we even have these conversations?" kinda question here, but I am interested if anyone would take you up on your offer if only because of the lay of the internet land.

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#52

Post by DarkmSparks »

throwanem wrote: post #35
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warranties are just normal contracts. If both parties agree to modify a contract, they are pretty much always allowed to do so. In this case, Motorola is offering a second contract, which modifies an earlier agreement (the warranty) in exchange for the key to unlocking one's phone.

Warranties in the US are not normal contracts. They are heavily regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, including those implicit in offering a product for sale, which cannot be unilaterally terminated post facto by a manufacturer: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/businesspers...

Normally I would agree. But there are also very heavy regulations around selling telecoms devices with hard requirements for things like interacting with emergency services, regs that do not apply to general electronics.

Similar also applies to medical devices.

Its the product in its entirety that gets certified as suitable for sale and warrentied against, for example, repeatedly dialing 911 in a fault condition and getting you shot by a swot team.

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#53

Post by tzs »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #17

The no sale requirements in the "contract" is interesting. However, is the following actually legal in the US? > You have only yourself to blame. Once you get the unlock code, your device is no longer covered by the Motorola warranty; in other words, please don't blame us if things go wrong, even if they appear unrelated to unlocking the bootloader. In Australia they can revoke the "Motorola warranty" all they want.…

> In Australia they can revoke the "Motorola warranty" all they want. However, everything sold comes with a warranty that can't be revoked which entitles you to repair, replacement or refund for a reasonable time frame (yes it's intentionally open ended).

Can you sell your warranty rights? For example let's say I've sold you something and later I offer you 150 AU$ to buy back your warranty rights. You decide that is worth way more than the warranty is worth to you and accept. Does this work?

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#54

Post by CptTightpants »

godelski wrote: post #16

Any devs here create these types of things? Or other systems that make it hard to repair devices? Why do you do it? Do you see this as enshitification? Just need to pay the bills? (can't find a different job?) Think "someone else will do it if I don't?" (and don't think they'll have to pay more for the other person or that the other person will be of lesser quality or people turning down the jobs/not applying puts pr…

I don't care for companies dictating what can and cannot be done with MY property. I may not agree with certain decisions the OEM made on how things operate, and I should be able to change them to fit my needs. If I physically destroy the device by whatever I do to it, then I don't expect warrantee service (but this should not be possible by changing the software alone, or it's a design flaw the OEM should be held accountable for). Otherwise, I should be able to customize my device to my needs and desires without losing coverage for a faulty device, just like we've been able to do to PCs for decades. Never mind the environmental concerns of being forced to trash a device because the OEM won't provide what's necessary to resuscitate it should something go wrong. Providing basic information and software necessary to do so is simply the right thing to do.

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#55

Post by axoltl »

charcircuit wrote: post #40
ajross wrote: post #15

Absent a winning court case on some very novel arguments, this is pretty obviously illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine You can put anything in a click-through license, but that doesn't make it a contract nor override established legal paradigms.

I can see how trademarks could allow for them to restrict the selling of such phones. This is to fight against people who buy Motorola phones, unlock them, install a new operating system on them including malware, and then sell them to consumers as a Motorola phone. Normal consumers think they are getting a Motorola phone, but in actuality they aren't and they are buying a device that is compromised. The attackers ar…

Agreed, though that certainly _feels_ orthogonal to unlocking the bootloader? If I modify the hardware some other way (a la a modchip) and achieve the same thing, it'd be illegal for the same reasons.

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#56

Post by axoltl »

tzs wrote: post #48
ajross wrote: post #15

Absent a winning court case on some very novel arguments, this is pretty obviously illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine You can put anything in a click-through license, but that doesn't make it a contract nor override established legal paradigms.

First sale just says that if you sell a copy you legally own of a copyrighted work that does not infringe the copyright owner's distribution right. That just means that if the copyright owner wants to stop the sale they will not be able to turn to copyright law to do so. It does not mean that they can't turn to some other method to stop the sale. In this case they would turn to contract law. You defense to that would…

This is what I understood the first-sale doctrine to be as well. Turns out there's a whole separate section for trademark law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Overview_o...

Does that prevent you re-selling a device with an unlocked bootloader if you clearly indicate that it is unlocked? Probably not, but it's more complicated than I thought at first glance.

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#57

Post by charcircuit »

axoltl wrote: post #55
charcircuit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how trademarks could allow for them to restrict the selling of such phones. This is to fight against people who buy Motorola phones, unlock them, install a new operating system on them including malware, and then sell them to consumers as a Motorola phone. Normal consumers think they are getting a Motorola phone, but in actuality they aren't and they are buying a device that is compromised. The attackers ar…

Agreed, though that certainly _feels_ orthogonal to unlocking the bootloader? If I modify the hardware some other way (a la a modchip) and achieve the same thing, it'd be illegal for the same reasons.

>Agreed, though that certainly _feels_ orthogonal to unlocking the bootloader?

Unlocking the bootloader is what makes it possible. The security model protects against hackers installing malware on the device otherwise.

>If I modify the hardware some other way (a la a modchip) and achieve the same thing

Good luck opening up the SoC and trying to modify it that way. This is not a concern as the security is good enough where this isn't a big concern.

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#58

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

oneplane wrote: post #43
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #17

The no sale requirements in the "contract" is interesting. However, is the following actually legal in the US? > You have only yourself to blame. Once you get the unlock code, your device is no longer covered by the Motorola warranty; in other words, please don't blame us if things go wrong, even if they appear unrelated to unlocking the bootloader. In Australia they can revoke the "Motorola warranty" all they want.…

Does the warranty in Australia deal with the manufacturer, or is it related to the reseller/point of sale? There are similar laws in the EU in various implementations, but most of them make the party that sold it the one to warrant the product, and the manufacturer isn't really involved (unless the manufacturer is the one that sold it).

Point of sale. Although, if I'm getting into the weeds, I should probably use the terminology "consumer rights and guarantees" rather than warranty, since I believe that's how we make the distinction locally.

What's actually really interesting is the same guarantees apply even if the item is a gift[1].

[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic...

Re: Motorola's legal terms claim to strip owners of their right to sell their device

#60

Post by samatman »

8note wrote: post #46
saxonww wrote: post #25

This feels like they don't want to be liable if someone roots a phone, installs malware or something, sells it to another person, and then proceeds to exploit the compromised phone they just sold. Which would be entirely understandable. IDK if that's what this is, or if this is the best way to do that. edit: in a way, once you do this it's not "a motorola phone" anymore. They are selling you a device and software con…

If you buy it second hand, I don't see why you'd have a warranty regardless. The manufacturer has a contract with the original buyer; they never made an agreement with the secondary buyer

Warranties are frequently transferable, in point of fact.
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