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Comment by Villodre | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad this is the first comment, because there's no way these terms of use would (should?) fly in the EU. I don't know about the USA, but it is plain deception to advertise a service along a product and then proclaim that you're in no way responsible of how it works or if it does at all.

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> there's no way these terms of use would (should?) fly in the EU

Do you have an actual concrete reason to believe that, or is this just "the EU is morally superior to everywhere else" vibes?

Stuff like that is covered by the Sales of Goods Directive (2019/771)

does that mean it could fly if it's free? (for example, a lot of OSS license has similar disclaimer)

I don't know wd's case in particular, but just curious:

1. would it fly if the cloud service is also free (no additional subscription fee)?

2. or is it that even if the cloud service itself is "free", they only allow people with wd hardware products to use it, so it's considered part of those hardware products, so it's not really free and is still covered by that directive?

Simplified, the seller is responsible as long as the buyer can reasonably expect the feature to work based on public statements by the seller and their supply chain (including the manufacturer).

As I understand it you can legally create a "sale" without money changing hands.

How is it a sale if no money has changed hands? It's not even a barter. It's nothing.

What "goods" do you get from a cloud service? Buy some HW next time someone else's computer fails.

Recent (Jan ‘22) EU legislation now also applies to digits services and content

https://commission.europa.eu/business-economy-euro/doing-bus...

Europe tends to have good consumer protection and isn't completely captured by lobbyists unlike the US.

> proclaim that you're in no way responsible of how it works or if it does at all.

This is pretty much any software license, since they existed.

By contrast, it's the case with nearly all products here. It's part of the standard boilerplate that comes with any software product license to explicitly disclaim all warranties, even the implied one that would otherwise exist. Usually phrased like:

> [Company] specifically disclaims all indirect or implied warranties to the full extent allowed by applicable law, including without limitation all implied warranties of, non-infringement, merchantability, title or fitness for any particular purpose. No oral or written information or advice given by [Company], its agents or employees shall create a warranty.

So, you can sell software with claims that it does anything, and if it does nothing at all, is useless, and actually burns your house down, the standard industry practice is that your TOS should make explicitly clear that that's not your problem.

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