Sonos Company Ethicacy, Morality and Integrity Core Values?

Clearly either 1. you don't understand the meaning of *analogy* or 2. you're a lawyer or lawyer-wannabe who enjoys using logical fallacies to further their agenda. (I'm betting on 2.)

Wrong and wrong. I just happen to think straight and am not able to suffer visible logical fallacies, instead of using these to further an agenda as you seem to be clearly fond of doing.

I have no agenda, other than keeping my highly paid for, working technology, in working condition despite an unethical company that thinks *they* own the piece of equipment that *I* bought and paid for, which resides in *MY* home which requires a key to open the lock, and they have broken and entered and altered *my* bought and paid for technology to make it stop working.

The analogy was to express the emotion I felt when they committed breaking and entering and destroyed my property.

You, on the other hand, clearly have an agenda. I am not interested in your agenda, so go away, troll.

so go away, troll.
Nahh, that would involve dealing with a troll:D

Sonos offered an option over three months ago, on Feb 2, that would have allowed people to keep the CR100 in use with all the functionality that was present on it when they bought it from Sonos prior to 2009, along with many new features released free thereafter till 2018 Q1. Those that chose not to opt for that option are the ones that did the killing, not Sonos.

It just takes some straight thinking to come to this conclusion. No further value to add to this thread, so it is time to move on.

Clearly you do not know how to read, because you are wrong and wrong. SONOS has stated that the product is faulty and should be disposed of because the battery will blow up. Then they said hey, well maybe you could stop updates, but we're going to make sure that that option doesn't last long.

So no, SONOS hasn't offered *any* option. A sort of, temporary, "at your own risk," won't last and won't work well one. Not a REAL option.

BUT that is not what this thread is about. I feel VIOLATED that SONOS came into my home and destroyed my property. This violation, this breaking and entering that SONOS committed, is unethical and immoral.

Nahh, that would involve dealing with a troll:D

Can't stand to look in the mirror, eh???

So no, SONOS hasn't offered *any* option. A sort of, temporary, "at your own risk," won't last and won't work well one. Not a REAL option.

BUT that is not what this thread is about. I feel VIOLATED that SONOS came into my home and destroyed my property. This violation, this breaking and entering that SONOS committed, is unethical and immoral.
Utter rubbish. For example, the Sonos offered option to prevent YOU from violating YOURSELF merely said this where the batteries were concerned:
"If you do go this route, you are acknowledging the risk of the aging lithium ion battery in your controller."

And just because you don't like the inevitable cons involved in an option that prevents YOU from killing your beloved CR100 does not mean it is not a REAL option.

In any case, there is nothing you can do about this except live with it. Or file a suit if you have the gumption to do more than rant here in a completely ineffectual way.

All the conversations here throw up in sharp relief one I had a few months ago with a savvy member here on the subject of the irritatingly frequent controller updates that Sonos puts forth these days for what is just a home audio system at the end of the day. He had explained how he had set up his multi zone local NAS based system so that it was immune from these Sonos antics, by denying the internet and therefore Sonos any access to any parts of it and using it thereby in the manner he bought it, as a stable home audio system for many years now. Obviously, it in turn had no access to the net and he was fine with that state of affairs; neither had he any need to buy more Sonos kit for his home. It isn't something that I would like to emulate, using internet music services as I do, but it was a viewpoint to respect, for being supported by effective actions and not just words and rants.

I can't recall if the CR100/200 were part of his set up, but if they were I am sure all this noise and heat over the CR100 would not be even a small cloud on his horizon.

And a question addressed to the community regulars only:

Suppose someone was to choose the Sonos explained option of keeping the CR100 alive, apart from the battery issue, what would be the downsides that will be faced? What dire things will happen if someone was to choose to not get any further updates? I can understand adding new units will not be possible, but what else?

He had explained how he had set up his multi zone local NAS based system so that it was immune from these Sonos antics, by denying the internet and therefore Sonos any access to any parts of it and using it thereby in the manner he bought it, as a stable home audio system for many years now.
Now that I have found them, his exact words quoted below, that explains the above in his own words, from one that has chosen to get off the Sonos upgrade path for good:

"In this case I like the hardware the way it was designed, fit for its original purpose. I resent any company removing features I use in order to implement features I don't want without my permission. Especially on hardware I own.
But I am content to keep the system, preserved, walled off from the internet. I am seperate from Sonos now, I have purchased my last hardware.
Leave my system intact. I see no reason for it to degrade outside of hardware failure and as the owner of many ZP80's and CR100's I am quite adept at repair.
That's all I'm asking for...to be left alone."

So he does have CR100s as I expected, and isn't raving about losing them because - he isn't going to lose them. But he does not want any new features either, so he understands that he can't have his cake and eat it as well by wanting the Cr100 to work, but also wanting everything else Sonos does to enhance the system after April 2018 to also do so.

As I said, this isn't something I would do, but I can see the rational and clear thinking in his behaviour, something that seems missing in many posts on this thread.

BUT that is not what this thread is about. I feel VIOLATED that SONOS came into my home and destroyed my property. This violation, this breaking and entering that SONOS committed, is unethical and immoral.

And you are 100% wrong on this. I have no doubt you feel this way, but it's completely inaccurate. First off, Sonos isn't updating their software on the products you own without your consent. You have to accept the updates and/or turn on auto updating. So it would be more accurate to say that you 'invited them in'. And has been mentioned already, you can avoid the software update simply by not inviting them in.

As far as destroying your property, that's incorrect as well. The CR100 is your property. The software on it is not your property. You have a license to use the software given to you by Sonos, that they actually give to you for free. If you actually owned it, you could legally modify it and do whatever you want with it. Even sell it. You can't do that though, because you don't own it. So, since the CR100, the hardware, has not been damaged in any way, your property is not damaged. For that matter you could repurpose the CR100 for whatever you wish, even using the APIs Sonos provides to allow it to control your system in some fashion.

And in case, you're thinking Sonos is unethical because they gave you a software license instead of giving you the software or letting you buy in outright, this is how software has worked for decades. This is why you're always asked to sign a license agreement before using software. It's even more relevant in today's world with cloud computing.

All that said, there is no doubt that Sonos sold it's hardware with a relative understanding that the free software would be available and support for several years.to come. Sonos knows that and clearly has attempted to meet that expectation. To the satisfaction of some, but clearly not all. I'd say this is where it gets into the issue of morality. It's subjective. A person can decide not to purchase from Sonos again and/ot sell all they have for whatever reason they want.

Personally, I think this sort of thing is going to happen more and more with networked appliances. 5-6 years from now, I would not be surprised if original echo's, google home, etc. are no longer functioning because they can't handle the latest tech. Either that or there is an Alexa 2.0 or something, and the original echo's can't work with it.

As for the dog analogy, it looks like it works for describing how you feel, but doesn't come close to matching reality. A dog can't get software upgrades. You own the dog, you don't have a license to use the dog's functionality.

Interesting thread, here’s my take on it for anyone that’s interested.

Coming at this as a CR100 owner (just the 2 of them) there are potential legal and moral / ethical issues here.
Legal first, I’m not in the law profession and there are obviously different laws across the world, but I’m assuming that legally (at least here in the uk) sonos have license conditions sewn up in such a way that they can legally send updates to my own purchased equipment in my house and render them useless whenever it decides to do so.

Moral / ethical next. I’m one of the vast majority of people who don’t have time to read dozens of pages of licence conditions in legal speak whenever I buy or upgrade something so I may have unwittingly signed up to conditions that allow them to do this. However, if I’d been alerted to a condition that stated that a company held the legal right to terminate the use of a product that I had legally purchased at a time of their choosing, guess what... I would not have bought it.

There’s plenty of parallels being drawn in this thread but I’m not sure they hit the mark for me. A parallel for me would be if Apple or Microsoft decided that they didn’t want anyone using legacy operating systems any more, so they sent out an ‘upgrade’ that rendered machines that used it unable to function ever again. They don’t do this and there are plenty of XP and NT systems out there, trust me I work in IT. Heck, I even have an old commodore Amiga that still works for the purpose it was purchased for - I accept I can’t do anything modern on it, but that’s fine. Another parallel I’ll draw is viruses... stuxnet last year was a virus that rendered people’s PCs useless, this was seen as a virus and treated as such by the international IT community, it had the same effect of running the ‘upgrade’ to 8.5 for those CR100 owners that were not aware of the effect it would have on their hardware - of which there are plenty.

Final point on this is that I have walled off my network (thanks to the advice of other sonos users, not on the advice of Sonos themselves might I add) and I’m still concerned I might have missed something that may result in an update being applied and therefore rendering my kit useless. In other words, I’m scared of the company that sold me my kit and who have now tried to send an update to it to stop it working and doing the thing I bought it for in the first place. They may as well send someone around to my house with a hammer to trash it when I’m not looking, it’ll be exactly the same outcome.

Therefore is it moral or ethical. Absolutely not in my book.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve been affected by something like this. Some years ago, I had a Sony pvr hard drive recorder that worked like a dream. That was until Sony decided to send a update and remove the pvr functionality, leaving me with a box that worked as long as I was there to press the record button when my tv show was about to start... similar behaviour from a corporate that left me with a device that didn’t do what it did when I bought it. Funnily enough I’ve not bought anything with a Sony badge since then and I’ll never do so again as I have a lack of trust in that brand due to this behaviour.