Has wealth been distributed from exploiter to exploited? Doesn't seem like it. It just seems like the 99% are being exploited a little more evenhandedly.
That's a highly creative interpretation of events. The software license agreement usually upfront covers what can or cannot not change. It is pretty rare in most countries to see successful legal action for changed features, but best of luck.
They will just fine them into oblivion; they are known to fine companies AUD10M to AUD50M for this sort of thing, and from 1st April this year they can now fine up to AUD100M.
Will this mean that Bambu will withdraw from the Australian market? Possibly maybe probably, but the ACCC takes a very hard stance against bait and switch.
The largest ACCC fine to date for a company undertaking anti consumer practices is $483m against an educational provider for misleading students.
I'd be reasonably happy to lodge a complaint if I could find a version that's reasonably articulated. As a Bambu customer in Australia I switched my printer to local mode and its been great.
It's a whole lot better than the US, but AUD100M isn't enough to scare a lot of companies. A law with real teeth would go after an increasing percentage of their revenue for each offense.
As a percentage of global revenue, sure, it's not much. But as a percentage of what that company is likely to make in the Australian market, it can be significant.
Taking functionality away from a product after you bought it is a scum move. If the law lets them get away with it, the law should be changed.
When I buy a product, I look at reviews and make my purchasing decision on the features and functionality at the time of sale. If a software update later ruins that, I want the option to get my money back.
No, it’s not creative at all, it’s what happened — I have first hand experience to corroborate this.
Regardless, at least in the US, not only are software-based ToS becoming unenforceable, but there’s a large upswing towards “right to repair” legislation, which, I think, is what you’re arguing against here… and I really think you’re going to be on the wrong side of history with your current line of thinking (despite what Bambu Labs does).
No, it is with you -- the legislators are doing "fine" (and, again, are heading in a fine direction wrt RTR and software ToS).
I have no idea why you think copyright violations apply here? You seem to be throwing legal terms around without regard for their actual meaning. It's clear you're here to argue for the sake of argument, but I'd really encourage you to reflect and think about why you're so loyal to a corporate entity instead of your fellow consumers (of which there are many in the parent and sibling comments... hint: you may be on the wrong side).
Just for fun, pretend you bought a propane grill for cooking on Monday. On Tuesday, you cooked some bbq chicken and some corn. Later on Thursday, and without your knowledge or authorization, the grill no longer allowed you to use the propane apparatus for cooking non-meats unless you call a special telephone number and said a magic word whenever the call was answered. As a minimum, I feel, it'd be very confusing because, even though you're doing the exact same thing as Tuesday, the outcome is not the same.
Your freedoms have been restricted by someone else; if you are okay with that, then have fun licking boots. The rest of us will still be here advocating for your freedoms.
The "agreement" is at best coerced, and under blackmail of hardware you bought and paid for.
At worst, its a fraudulent indefinite rental masquerading as a 'sale'.
And lets discuss 'updates that fuck over your hardware'. In dwcent countries, thats hacking, and a serious criminal charge. But lol, companies are somehow exempt.
Maybe legally, but morally “you have permanent physical access to this but don’t ’own’ it” and anti-circumvention are debatable.
There’s a small benefit of anti-circumvention where businesses sell hardware for cheaper with restrictions and a TOS that prevents bypassing them. But even that doesn’t apply here because Bambu changed the software after purchase.
This reminds me of RMS and GPLv3. Now I personally don't use GPLv3, but this here is literally a case-in-point, and it is not even only limited to the "cloud-only". Because this now includes a company threatening to sue a developer. If they sue one developer, they, by proxy, sue all of them in principle. So RMS was kind of right.
> If you want to use Bambu's software against their TOS
How does the TOS get involved here? I don't use their TOS. Why would or should they be able to enforce it? Note that it also depends on the jurisdiction. For instance, Microsoft's EULA never had any legal bearings in the EU.
"Bambu's software" is forked from an AGPL project and is therefore itself AGPL. I have a right to fork, modify, and use it how I wish subject to the terms of the AGPL. Bambu's TOS is irrelevant. Their TOS is superceded by the terms of the AGPL.
It would have been so easy for Bambu to embrace freedom and privacy and continue to enjoy our loyalty all the way to the bank, but apparently they've got to burn down what they've got.
I've got an a1 mini myself, and I'm not aware of anything comparable on the market, but there's a clear need for some competition now.
For the market overall this is great: Bambu is forcing the other manufacturers to innovate on features, ease of use and affordability in order to keep up. At the same time Bambu's antics prevent them from completely dominating. Any new printer that can compare to a Bambu (or exceed it in interesting ways) gets rewarded with customers that want anything but Bambu
It's a much more interesting and dynamic place than before Bambu's market entry
I find it interesting that many commenters here do not regard anything as 'competitive' unless it offers the same price/performance, while completely disregarding these lock-ins and privacy invasions. It seems that the reason we have all these restrictive and otherwise problematic companies is that you folks just do not assign a cost to their behaviour.
I was not aware of this behaviour when I bought it.
But you raise a good issue: are they selling these at a loss in order to leverage some sort of lock-in? If that's the reason they're so cheap, that's important to know.
I honestly wouldn't mind paying twice as much for something that's more open. But it's also an issue I haven't looked very deeply into. For my first 3d printer I just wanted something cheap and foolproof.
I do not want to be in a business relationship with a company for a trivial amount of money, be it $29.99/yr or $69.99/yr or $249.99 lifetime. None of that is real money. You have no leverage, you do not own your own destiny. Complaining about the price hike is missing the whole point - Plex does not care about any individual customer, and that's the real problem (and the problem with just about every B2C business).
This matches my experience. Keychain + fully unattended increases the complexity and adds a bunch of landmines that need to be dodged (e.g. GUI prompts like you mentioned).
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