Television sets

Posted Feb 18, 2019 17:28 UTC (Mon) by excors (subscriber, #95769)
In reply to: Television sets by nybble41
Parent article: Avoiding the coming IoT dystopia

In the context of a smart TV, I don't think telling customers "you can replace the firmware, as long as you don't want to watch Netflix or any subscription channels" is much good. I wouldn't consider the firmware to be meaningfully user-replaceable if the user has to sacrifice core features of the device. The goal shouldn't be to have a blank SoC in TV-shaped plastic that you can run your own code on (else you might as well just buy a cheap SoC dev board and glue it onto the TV), the goal should be to have a proper working TV with code that you've modified.

GPLv3 says:

> If you convey an object code work under this section [...] the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. [...] "Installation Information" for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.

I'm not sure what "continued functioning" legally means, but if your TV is intentionally designed to stop supporting Netflix solely because you made an insignificant modification to the firmware, it seems plausible to argue to the TV has not continued functioning.

On the other hand https://events.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/201... argues that GPLv3's anti-tivoization clause doesn't actually prevent what Tivo did - it's okay if a vital part of the product is proprietary code that stops functioning if the GPLv3 code is modified, because it's not the GPLv3 code that has stopped functioning. But that sounds like it's exploiting a bug in the GPLv3, because the rationale was obviously to prevent what Tivo did, so it seems pretty dodgy to rely on that argument.

Television sets

Posted Feb 18, 2019 18:11 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (3 responses)

In the context of a smart TV, I don't think telling customers "you can replace the firmware, as long as you don't want to watch Netflix or any subscription channels" is much good.

I think a lot of people would be OK with that. My personal experience is that the "smart" TV is pretty useless, and I'm much more likely to use features through an add-on device than through the TV. Popular ways of getting smart features not through the TV include dedicated devices like Roku or Chromecast, video game consoles, home media PCs, and smart DVRs. In my experience, all of those things have better UIs than smart TVs, and many people are going to get them for the convenience and added features without even considering the issue of TVs spying on them.

Television sets

Posted Feb 18, 2019 18:19 UTC (Mon) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (1 responses)

Why replace TV's firmware then? It's a dumb display.

Television sets

Posted Feb 21, 2019 22:47 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Because the firmware's broken, maybe?

Now binned because it broke, but I had a Logik / JVC TV that used to crash when you tried to record to USB. It did it somewhat at random but that's obviously very annoying.

My car stereo now seems to spend an inordinate amount of time "scanning USB" which impacts quite seriously on its usability - I think that's a bug ...

And trying to get this sort of stuff fixed is a nightmare, as it's almost impossible to contact the manufacturer, and the retailer's attitude is "well almost everything works". The fact that the bit that doesn't is very important to you, isn't important to them.

Cheers,
Wol

Television sets

Posted Feb 18, 2019 18:49 UTC (Mon) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

> My personal experience is that the "smart" TV is pretty useless, and I'm much more likely to use features through an add-on device than through the TV.

The same issues apply to the add-on device. I don't think telling customers of a Roku streaming stick "you can freely replace the firmware, as long as you don't want to stream anything from Netflix" would be useful. There's nothing particularly special about the hardware; if you just wanted a small programmable box with HDMI output, you could run your code on a Raspberry Pi instead. The interesting part is the device's original fully-functioning firmware; that's the thing you'd want to modify out of curiosity or for security.

> without even considering the issue of TVs spying on them

If you're concerned about that, the streaming sticks could spy on you just as easily as your TV could - there's often a microphone in the remote control (for voice search).

Television sets

Posted Feb 18, 2019 21:07 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> I'm not sure what "continued functioning" legally means...

I'm not sure *anyone* knows what "continued functioning of the modified object code" legally means, including the people who wrote that clause. However, I would say that both the modified object code and the TPM are each functioning exactly as designed. I would consider this analogous to the case of a GPLv3 client for a private third-party web service: You can modify and execute the software as you please, but you'll have to make your own agreement with the third-party service to use their APIs. That third party might require you to use only approved software to access their APIs as part of their terms of service. You can either implement your own API-compatible service (use only DRM-free media) or negotiate to get your modified software approved.

Whether "the TV has not continued functioning" is beside the point. The GPLv3 doesn't talk about the functionality of the device as a whole, just the modified object code. Systems with modified code may not have access to the keys in the TPM which would be necessary to play DRM'd media, but the system isn't actually blocking the modified code or interfering with its execution.

> In the context of a smart TV, I don't think telling customers "you can replace the firmware, as long as you don't want to watch Netflix or any subscription channels" is much good.

What you're really objecting to here is that Netflix and subscription channels require DRM. I agree with you on this, but in practice they're never going to entrust their content to software they don't control (even though the empirical evidence says that whatever they're obsessing over can almost certainly already be found online without the DRM). The best you can reasonably hope for is that the parts which handle their content are sufficiently isolated from the front end that the front end software can be open-source and user-replaceable without getting involved with the "protected" media path. Since that requires more expensive hardware, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath for such a design in mass-produced consumer electronics.