Announced immediately after they updated their terms to require forced arbitration and removes all your rights to sue for damages.
HOW FUCKING CONVENIENT.
Throw your roku devices in the trash.
I don't think those terms are binding in court.
they aren't.
Arbitration clauses are very binding in court.
But asking a party to amend the contract after you're in breach and the other party doesn't know it is a good way to get your contract rewritten by the court or worse.
Depends on the court, but the problem is you have to go to court to challenge whether the arbitration clause is valid. Usually it's less expensive just to engage with arbitration.
Well, now there’s 576k people who can do it as a class action :)
I don't remember signing any contract.
Then you’ve never used a Roku.
Clicking accept on a EULA does not a contract make.
I think forced arbitration should be illegal. I’m suing an old employer. They had an arbitration clause hidden in the contract. It just allows them to ignore federal Eeoc laws since they can just arbitrate it.
It just allows them to ignore federal Eeoc laws since they can just arbitrate it.
That sounds suspect. EEOC is federal. I find it doubtful a company can simply choose to opt-out of those laws.
They can. The Feds can sue on behalf of you but thy rarely do. They admitted in writing they ignore the ada since they can’t be sue. Judge still forced it to arbitration.
When I talk about working with senators. This is one of the topics I’m discussing. Federal laws should not be forced into arbitration. It allows companies to abuse federal law
Personally I don't think forced arbitration should exist for any law. It's a way for large corporations to avoid legal responsibility.
I always find it odd how easy it seems to be to just sign your rights away in the US.
Agreed. Forced arbitration is so shady...
Arbitration should only be allowed when you get something for it. They’ll give you 10k for going to arbitration or something. Otherwise it’s just abusive or you get to pick the arbitrator.
Signing your rights away should never be possible, even if you get something in return. Allowing that is just making the system ripe for abuse.
At what point would you say you've met the threshold of something being valuable enough for forced arbitration to be allowable?
I was one of those stubborn bastards who typed out a physical letter with all the necessary information and snail-mailed it to the address they listed in that bullshit forced arbitration agreement. Though I doubt that will do me much good.
That said, I agree with you about Roku being garbage now. I used to be a big fan of their products. But that company has made it increasingly clear that they don't respect their customers in many ways.
I'm looking at moving to something else. Maybe an Nvidia Shield? I don't know. I don't really like Chromecast or the Amazon stick/box options. I need to find some time to look into open source options. I have a decent Raspberry Pi sitting idle.
Anyone got recommendations or pointers to open source solutions that would give me a decent streaming box with a good UI and remote control functionality?
Honestly, a Pi or small Intel NUC running Linux + Kodi is probably all most people including yourself need just to access locally hosted/stored content as well as YouTube and netflix. It covers the basics. The only benefits things like Chromecast have is the less "techy" setup process and maybe a little more drm support foe higher quality streams.
Downside to using nonstandard hardware without Big Brother Media approved drm spyware: streams will be limited to 720p from corporate sources, and some (HBO I think?) Will refuse to work entirely.
If using a Pi you can buy an IR blaster hat so you can use traditional remotes with it, or use something like a Bluetooth keyboard/TouchPad combo. Or even remote control it from your phone using something like LinuxRemote. There's a lot of options.
Announced immediately after they updated their terms to require forced arbitration and removes all your rights to sue for damages.
HOW FUCKING CONVENIENT.
Throw your roku devices in the trash.
I don't think those terms are binding in court.
they aren't.
Arbitration clauses are very binding in court.
But asking a party to amend the contract after you're in breach and the other party doesn't know it is a good way to get your contract rewritten by the court or worse.
Depends on the court, but the problem is you have to go to court to challenge whether the arbitration clause is valid. Usually it's less expensive just to engage with arbitration.
Well, now there’s 576k people who can do it as a class action :)
I don't remember signing any contract.
Then you’ve never used a Roku.
Clicking accept on a EULA does not a contract make.
I think forced arbitration should be illegal. I’m suing an old employer. They had an arbitration clause hidden in the contract. It just allows them to ignore federal Eeoc laws since they can just arbitrate it.
That sounds suspect. EEOC is federal. I find it doubtful a company can simply choose to opt-out of those laws.
They can. The Feds can sue on behalf of you but thy rarely do. They admitted in writing they ignore the ada since they can’t be sue. Judge still forced it to arbitration.
When I talk about working with senators. This is one of the topics I’m discussing. Federal laws should not be forced into arbitration. It allows companies to abuse federal law
Personally I don't think forced arbitration should exist for any law. It's a way for large corporations to avoid legal responsibility.
I always find it odd how easy it seems to be to just sign your rights away in the US.
Agreed. Forced arbitration is so shady...
Arbitration should only be allowed when you get something for it. They’ll give you 10k for going to arbitration or something. Otherwise it’s just abusive or you get to pick the arbitrator.
Signing your rights away should never be possible, even if you get something in return. Allowing that is just making the system ripe for abuse.
At what point would you say you've met the threshold of something being valuable enough for forced arbitration to be allowable?
I was one of those stubborn bastards who typed out a physical letter with all the necessary information and snail-mailed it to the address they listed in that bullshit forced arbitration agreement. Though I doubt that will do me much good.
That said, I agree with you about Roku being garbage now. I used to be a big fan of their products. But that company has made it increasingly clear that they don't respect their customers in many ways.
I'm looking at moving to something else. Maybe an Nvidia Shield? I don't know. I don't really like Chromecast or the Amazon stick/box options. I need to find some time to look into open source options. I have a decent Raspberry Pi sitting idle.
Anyone got recommendations or pointers to open source solutions that would give me a decent streaming box with a good UI and remote control functionality?
Honestly, a Pi or small Intel NUC running Linux + Kodi is probably all most people including yourself need just to access locally hosted/stored content as well as YouTube and netflix. It covers the basics. The only benefits things like Chromecast have is the less "techy" setup process and maybe a little more drm support foe higher quality streams.
Downside to using nonstandard hardware without Big Brother Media approved drm spyware: streams will be limited to 720p from corporate sources, and some (HBO I think?) Will refuse to work entirely.
If using a Pi you can buy an IR blaster hat so you can use traditional remotes with it, or use something like a Bluetooth keyboard/TouchPad combo. Or even remote control it from your phone using something like LinuxRemote. There's a lot of options.
Thanks, this is very helpful.
It's like they do everything they can to destroy their reputation as much as possible.
Because there are no repercussions.