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The Courts Advertising Television Entertainment

Class Action Filed Against Sling Media 112

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-take-the-law-into-your-own-hands dept.
New submitter DewDude writes: In case you missed it; Sling Media has been forcing advertisements into video streams from Slingbox devices unless you pay for a client application, which is only an option for Apple, Android, and Windows 8 devices. The issue will now head to the courts, as two plaintiffs have filed a class action suit against Sling Media, claiming the company participated in 'bait-and-switch' tactics by charging users for the hardware, then monetizing the streaming of content. The suit notes that Sling does not own the rights to the programming into which they are inserting advertisements.
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Class Action Filed Against Sling Media More

Class Action Filed Against Sling Media

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  • Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Sunday July 19, 2015 @11:06PM (#50142687) Journal

    Guess it's going to be interesting to see if the court allows Sling box to insert advertising on streams it doesn't actually own or pay to have rebroadcast rights.

    If they are not broadcasting the original commercials and are adding their own into them, then it's sounds to me like that would be illegal. Wonder if this decision will have ramifications on how advertising is handled via hardware makers that are not content producers.

    • Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast (Score:5, Informative)

      by arbiter1 ( 1204146 ) on Sunday July 19, 2015 @11:18PM (#50142741)
      What they do is when you connect to your slingbox to watch. An add will play at the start kinda like youtube has some times. They don't replace the comercials on tv channels.

    • Re:Sling me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Sunday July 19, 2015 @11:24PM (#50142769) Homepage
      Putting an advertisement could constitute as monetizing the stream; and Aereo got shut down over basically monetizing streams they didn't have rebroadcast rights to. Sling doesn't have retransmit consent; but a judge ruled that the nature of the service was a private link that only served one viewer at a time. Still, that ruling was made back when you weren't getting forced advertisements either.

      They aren't inserting ads over the video stream; what they're doing is inserting an advertisement before it will play your live TV stream. These ads range from :30 to sometimes 3 minutes in length; and you have zero way of opting-out. There's no ability to skip; and even adblock is becoming a tad useless.
      • Aereo got shut down because the judge ruled they were retransmitting the signal which they didn't have a right to do. Sling, SimplTV and Tablo do exactly the same thing as Aereo but the device is at your house so no retransmission issues. This is a different issue and yet to be vetted through the courts.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DewDude ( 537374 )
          My logic to all of that is stations opted for retrans consent because cable companies were often using the ability to get out of market locals due to their big towers and highly sensitive equipment to get customers in; and the networks felt someone else shouldn't be able to profit off that. I mean, for the first 40-some years of "cable" TV it's entire concept was picking up local and/or distant stations and selling a connection to it. I mean...the guy that came up with the concept did so to sell more TV's i

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

            I agree with what you're saying about Sling, but your part about Comcast is false. No one is forced to run a hotspot for Comcast's network. For one, you don't have to use their wifi router/modem, or you can run it in bridge mode and use your own wifi router. Even if you do use their wifi router, you can disable the hotspot:

            http://customer.xfinity.com/he... [xfinity.com]

            • Um, yeah, they were sued. http://www.sfgate.com/business... [sfgate.com] You didn't honestly think Comcast suddenly grew a sense of ethics, did you?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

                The option to disable the hotspot was there before the lawsuit... the article you linked even says so. I think it was harder to find back then though. Still doesn't change the fact that nobody is "forced" to act as a hotspot.

                • no it's the technically legal way of having to opt out of something that most people don't even realize they are doing in the first place.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Lumpy ( 12016 )

              Comcast themselves are claiming you CANT run their modem in bridge mode. they are trying like hell to force the XfinityWiFi access points out there even with bold lies.

              Sadly the FCC wont force them to stop this crap. you can lie to your customers without recourse.

              • I moved recently and owned all the equipment I needed. The cable modem I own is an older DOCSIS 2.0 version, and I bridge it to a wifi router. I ordered internet and got it up and running by myself the same day. Comcast didn't say a thing.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

                That's baloney... you CAN run their modems in bridge mode. Check their forums, people do it all the time.

                • i'm doing it right now. i wanted to keep my old network config and open a new network for guests at my house.

      • Putting an advertisement could constitute as monetizing the stream;

        They could, you never know what a judge will rule, but there is a good case also to be made that the ad is monetizing the access app and not the stream itself, as the stream doesn't start till after you access it. I could see it going either way, but unless the broadcasters get in the fight, and I doubt they will, it won't be part of the case. In fact, that would be a different case altogether.

        I think Slingbox should have at least put a 'skip' feature on the ads that pops up after a few seconds. Long ads

        • ^of course, 'already in progress' thought was kind of short sighted, as the program is DVRd... so much for thinking while typing.....

    • I wonder how this compares to Microsoft's Xbox and their Live service. When I first bought my Xbox 360 and subscribed to Live, the device had NO paid advertisements on it. Since then, they've revamped the Xbox interface in order to allow a massive amount of advertisement (on some screens, the majority of the screen is nothing but advertisements now), and all this on a paid device while subscribing to their paid premium service. If I wanted to keep using Xbox Live to play with friends, I had no choice but

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

        "What would happen if Microsoft patched the OS so that you saw a streamed advertisement at the beginning of each game you played?"

        Microsoft would lose a ton of customers to Sony and have to stop doing it. It would be a different story if Microsoft was the only console maker.

    • The question of rebroadcasting rights is irrelevant to this case, since the class does not contain broadcasters and thus would have no standing on that issue.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DewDude ( 537374 )
        Yeah..but there's the hope someone in the legal department of various networks who were looking to throw Sling against the wall might join in. I know Fox was really aggressive at one point; but the judge said if it didn't bother them for the last 8 years, they didn't see a legitimate reason it should now. But they could probably spin that in to a valid reason now.
    • Wouldn't this case be the same/similar as the Malware in the 90,s that put ads on everyone's web site as long as you had their toolbar? The ads covered the ads of the web site cant remember the name of it. I guess what im saying here is, hasn't there already been a ruling on this kinda behavior?

  • Other people make nice derivative works, not add ads. I wonder if they're getting nailed for $10,000 per infringement, or is that only for the little guy?

  • This is why i still use the windows program they killed off some time ago when ever possible. that webui crap they forced on us with ad's is complete bs.

  • It's been going on...for months (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Sunday July 19, 2015 @11:21PM (#50142755) Homepage
    The ads started appearing back in like, November. It started out as a youtube-like ad in the browser client; which at the time was the only PC based way of watching the units. Then they started hard-coding them in to the new desktop application. At first, you had the option of skipping after so many seconds; but lately they've been advertisements between :30 and 2:30 that have no way of skipping them.

    They are not actually inserting advertisements in the video stream; but what they are doing is requiring you to watch one before it will begin playing your TV. As many pointed out Youtube does this; I also point out to people that I don't buy hardware to watch youtube; where as I've purchased a physical piece of hardware as well as subscribe to a TV service to utilize the hardware.

    To make matters worse; Sling has seemingly gone downhill in customer support. When you question the advertisements to them on social media, you don't get a response; you get silenced and banned from that social media page. If you talk about it on the forums; they will delete the posts. They're going to great lengths to not only hide the fact you will get advertisements from them in this manner; but even greater lengths of blatantly ignoring customers.

    The whole issue with this is they are in fact monetizing your viewing; which is the exact same thing Aereo got shut down over. I'm getting the feeling that they were taking the one judge stating Singbox is not retransmission in a manner they weren't supposed to; and decided to monetize every time you connect.

    I get that they have server maintenance to pay for; but it's not like they quit selling Slingboxes; and no one was actually complaining when it was an un-obtrusive banner ad displayed on the client plugin. But the fact they're basically making you watch an entire advertisement that does nothing but benefit them; so you can watch TV you pay for, on hardware they own; they've just taken the "evil corporate" route.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      I get that they have server maintenance to pay for;

      Maybe I don't understand how Slingboxes work, but the general concept of a "home DVR you can access from anywhere" doesn't seem to require that the vendor maintain a server or stay in business for that matter for the basic DVR and remote-viewing functionality to work.

      This whole thing is really too bad. If I get to the point where I need to remote-view my DVR, shenanigans like this are going to make a home-brew box attractive by comparison.

      • If you want to make it consumer friendly you need to have vendor server for one puprose: finding your device from the internet. Otherwise to get it to work you would need to input some magic numbers* (that may even change sometimes randomly!) or setup some strange services** you dont understand. With vendor server its just few simple clicks.

        * IP address
        ** DNS

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DewDude ( 537374 )

        Maybe I don't understand how Slingboxes work, but the general concept of a "home DVR you can access from anywhere" doesn't seem to require that the vendor maintain a server or stay in business for that matter for the basic DVR and remote-viewing functionality to work.

        Here's basically how Slingboxes work: you have a piece of hardware that is connected to your network and the A/V connections on your cable box (it even has pass-through ports); the box then digitizes and compresses the A/V stream being spit out of the cable box. You also have a small IR emitter (built in to later boxes) that relays remote control commands to the box. It's not exactly a "home DVR you can access from anywhere"; it's quite literally a device that streams whatever your set-top-box displays whil

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      I suppose that, sort of technically, you do buy hardware to view YouTube be it a PC, phone, tablet, etc... However, that has nothing to do with your Sling device I would imagine. This seems like it may be bordering on illegal but I would check the terms of service carefully to see what they have to say. You may not have a leg to stand on in court but the content supplier's rights may be infringed. A bit of a conundrum really - do you want copyright to work in this case?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Monoman ( 8745 )

      Please don't put Aereo in a category with Sling. Aereo rented hardware and provided a service that delivered broadcasted content (unaltered) only to the people that already had the permission to view the content. Unfortunately the SCOTUS did not see it that way.

      Sling is inserting ads in some fashion.

    • Yes... the hardware distinction is important. I have a Hopper V2 from Dish with integrated Sling. Its also utterly damn infuriating that I have a device behind my home firewall that I have to log onto a CLOUD service to be able to access. I should be authenticating to my Sling, not to their shit.

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So the obvious question here, is why would anyone subscribe to this? If I had been using a service like this and it started inserting ads everywhere, I'd drop it immediately.
    Advertisements are something I simply will not tolerate in any media. Ever. It's done. I quit watching advertisements the moment I got cable TV back in the 80s and abandoned even that when all the stations became just like the crappy network channels. I've never tolerated ads on the internet.
    I'm just not going to watch ads. I can't beli

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @12:09AM (#50142935) Homepage
      Because most of us didn't "subscribe" to it; we have a piece of hardware that cost between $180 and $300 sitting on our AV racks we did for this same purpose. It's a little more difficult to justify "dropping it" when there's physical hardware you've shelled out money for involved.

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Drakonblayde ( 871676 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @12:32AM (#50143019)

        Yup. that's why folks are kind of pissed about it and claiming bait and switch. Most folks purchased a slingbox as a device to act as video forwarder so they could watch their tv service when they weren't physically present, and Slingboxes have been really good at that for a long time. If folks knew they'd be getting extra ads on the device, they may have opted not to purchase.

        I personally think that Sling should be forced to issue refunds if they're not going to stop the ads.

        • I'm attempting to do just that. However, I bought mine a year ago and didn't really get a chance to use it until a couple of months ago, when, to my horror, ads were all over it. I attempted a return, but SlingMedia doesn't handle hardware returns, instead directing me to their hardware partner. I requested a return, but it was rejected 3 weeks later on the basis that there wasn't anything wrong with the hardware. (I COMPLETELY abhor advertisements and would not have bought the device if I had known they we
          • Hold the phone. Looks like the company *did* respond and the case was closed, but I was not informed of the response or the case disclosure. I also can't view the case at all, in any way shape or form online- although I can see my case (it is the only one) filed. I'll be calling the BBB soon enough to figure out what is going on.

  • Amazon Instant Video (Score:4, Informative)

    by bl968 ( 190792 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @12:21AM (#50142985) Journal

    Amazon tried doing that to me with prime instant video on my Kindle, until I pointed out that I paid good money for the option of not having advertising on my Kindle, and that in my opinion that included while watching prime instant video. They quickly modified my account so I no longer see those ads.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )
      As I've said; when you complain about this to Sling; they not only ignore you; but they delete any existence you said anything to them and then ban you if it's on their forums or social media pages.
      • Of course, Amazon have a different business model. They know they're going to make a lot more money from the average consumer from media sales than hardware. It costs them a lot more to piss of customers.

        Not that I think it makes sense to Sling to do this. These days it's harder than ever to cover up bad corporate behaviour, and this is going to bite them.

  • I was wondering... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Drakonblayde ( 871676 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @12:27AM (#50143005)

    ...when someone would get around to this.

    I work for one of the big cable companies. We use slingboxes at hub sites which are remote or just not staffed 24/7 in order to be able to verify whether or not video service is working, particularly after maintenances which may affect video.

    A couple weeks ago was the first time in awhile that I've had to verify it myself, and I was very surprised to see ads popping up before the live tv stream kicked in, and I was thinking 'that's.... not right'. I'm not terribly surprised that there are some consumers who are pissed off enough to sue.

    It's one thing if the service is free. With Youtube, we kind of understand that they have to show ads in order to keep the service free. But when something I paid for in order to use starts shoving ads at me, I tend to get a little ticked off too.

    I'm curious, does Netflix do the same thing? Show ads before you start streaming? I don't remember that being the case, but I stopped using Netflix after their price hike fiasco.

    If they don't currently do this, and Sling Media wins the suit, I'll bet my bottom dollar they will.

    • What did you expect when Dish bought them?

      You should have expected it.

    • Re:I was wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @01:33AM (#50143221) Homepage
      I actually know a couple guys in the broadcast and cable industry who have made heavy usage of Slingboxes for various tasks; one guy I know works for a fiber co-op and they use them to quickly verify if a problem exists at whatever partner is down-linking it, a couple of others use them for remote monitoring, and I've heard of a case or two where they were used for verification of ad-insertions.

      I first noticed the ads creeping up back in like, November; it's only gotten even worse as the months have drug on.

      Hulu shows ads even on the paid service; Netflix doesn't though; and it's probably against their contracts on content to do so. Sling has no contract over the content we're watching...because it's a private stream and we bought hardware.

      Even if the class-action doesn't go through; I'm pretty sure it will have attracted the attention of the content providers...who will likely start their own suits.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Interesting thought about the content providers... But don't you have to show "harm" of some sort. They'd never be able to prove that they lost out on revenue because the application forced a 30 second wait on a slingbox owner before connecting to a device that may or may NOT have been showing their programming in the first place.
        I hope if someone does try that, I see the results, though. Very interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

      Netflix recently started showing ads (just ads for their own original shows, they aren't selling ad space) at the start or end of videos, but they are rare, rare enough I've yet to see one myself.

    • I have yet to see any commercial advertisement while utilizing Netflix.

      Which is a HUGE reason why I utilize their services. I loathe commercials and will go without television completely before I return to that bullshit.
      I put an HD antenna in the attic for local channels if / when we need it for news. Crystal clear reception from ~50 miles out from the transmission towers.

      Netflix pricing, if you haven't used it in a while, is pretty decent for what you have access to.

      I pay $12 USD / month which allows fou

  • look how far we've come ma! (Score:3, Funny)

    by don_combatant ( 1039232 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @01:22AM (#50143181)
    broadcast tv: free
    original cable tv: paid, but commercial free
    mature cable tv: paid with commercials
    sling: paid hardware, paid cable tv and commercials
    new sling: paid hardware, sling commercials, paid cable tv, and cable tv commercials!

    • The opiate of the masses......

      Big Media is hoping everyone needs their fix bad enough to overlook the way their being monetized.

      It's shit like this that makes me lose not one second of sleep when my favorite shows happen to fall off the back of the internet, miraculously commercial free

  • Long-time Slingbox user (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattsday ( 909414 ) on Monday July 20, 2015 @03:03AM (#50143427)

    I've owned a Slingbox since the mid-2000s and been very happy with the service. For those unfamiliar, you hook it up to your set top box and it rebroadcasts your signal over the internet and provides things like a remote control library so you can manage your device 100% remotely.

    When I first got it, it came with Desktop software for Windows and Mac. This was replaced with a plugin based web interface a few years ago. For iOS and Android devices you have to buy a (rather expensive) dedicated app. I thought this was good value for money so invested. It's especially useful as I travel abroad a lot and UK-based services are almost all geofenced.

    In the past 6 months they have been putting advertisements in the web app. Because Chrome has deprecated NPAPI, they released a Desktop application again (the old one doesn't work properly on recent versions of OS X). This Desktop app now inserts mandatory advertisements.

    As a long-time customer it's infuriating! I paid good money for my Slingbox which originally had a Desktop app with no ads. The sale promise was "Watch TV anywhere with no subscription". I consider advertisements a subscription.

  • I can smell this one a mile off. The MBAs aren't interested in making a profit. They learned at school that the only goal is to maximize profits. So, they had the brilliant (yeah right) idea to start putting ads in their service. They then consulted the attorneys, who as always take the attorney's view that "if it doesn't specifically say we can't do that, then we can do it, and even if it does specifically say we can't do that, a good attorney can always find a way." The MBAs loved that one, so they s

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You've obviously never dealt with a corporate attorney. They are the most risk-averse people on the planet. This is not the action of a strong player with hubris, this is the action of a weak player with nothing to lose. Sling media were dead in November, this is just their death throes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      It reminds me of something I read about when MBAs buy apartment buildings. They said if your building has a full roster of tenants, you're not charging enough in rent. You should be raising rents frequently enough that you always have 1-2 empty places that result from people who can't afford the rent increase.

  • This is actually the reason I did not purchase a slingbox. It was to be one of my seven year-old's birthday gifts (the other being a tablet). However, I went with Amazon Prime instead when I saw you have to pay $15 for each app and then they throw their own advertisements (which may or may not be age appropriate) over the top.

  • USD 280 + USD 15 a pop per app, per device + extremely curated user experience - no thanks. It seems that Hauppage has a similar offer. Don't know how it compares to the Slingbox, though.
  • Anyone interested should look into one or more of the following alternatives. They don't add any ads to the experience as far as I know. The exception being Tivo, but my understanding is that their ads don't interfere with watching the content. Each of these alternatives have varying levels of openness and freedom ranging from truly FOSS to not FOSS/OSS at all...

    Ceton's products: http://cetoncorp.com/ [cetoncorp.com]
    Silicon Dust's products: https://www.silicondust.com/ [silicondust.com]
    Kodi's offerings: http://kodi.tv/ [kodi.tv]
    Tivo's produc

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