Texas court blocks Samsung from tracking TV viewing, then vacates order
bleepingcomputer.com
bleepingcomputer.com
Samsung's chicanery taught me this, but other manufacturers are no better. Those TV apps may seem nice, but they can be run on hardware you have more control over. I'd recommend only buying "dumb" TV's, but they've become increasingly rare and expensive. Less costs more!
No it's not.
Am I supposed to counter every action taken by a conglomerate against me every time?
Do all the consumers have to align to this as well?
a TV must be a TV, in the same sense that orange juice must be made from oranges.
Looking forward to EU reining in on them.
Makes me want to Spotify Beethoven.
Soon we'll have a popup before every individual show on Netflix asking us if we accept the cookies before we watch, all in the name of consumer protection
I don't agree they're malicious compliance though. I think it's just regular compliance.
A ton of websites don’t even track users but have the cookie popup because they think that’s what you’re supposed to do.
more devices over time are getting plain cellular connections, let alone these newer cheaper versions.
Are you getting as good a deal? No, probably not, but trying to compare them to the cellular service you pay for is problematic in many ways. You too can get a $14 10 year prepaid plan from 1NCE for your Pi to send sensor telemetry from on occasion if that's what you want instead of "normal" cell service.
I wouldn't mind companies having to disclose everything and anything about the telemetry they collect though. Just putting the dollar figure on it is unlikely to shock anyone as it is low for you to do the same thing too.
Maybe they are, with Android UIs and whatnot? I actually don't have any "smart" TVs (main TV is a 43 inch monitor driven directly by Kodi), so I'm still picturing the car model where there is a separate component that does WAN communications, and the software developers made the system tolerant of it being disconnected (for development ease and also resiliency to failures). But maybe my model is horribly wrong for TVs.
For the tech users yes, simple. But for the non-technical user it's not.
The ISP given router don't normally provide the options for such. Nor would my mother, father, brother, sister even know about the slightest about networking, isolating networks.
Sky TV the typical UK household satellite service now comes via your ISP as IPTV rather than dish. WiFi unfortunately then becomes the requirement.
They’re colloquially called “idiot box” in Australia for a reason.
Not really, TV in my experience it's all propaganda/stuff to keep you engaged and mad plus ads mixed in with some small content.
You're better off without broadcast TV... reading books, watching movies, socializing etc.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Monitor/S55U
Once a company like Iiyama, Dell or Philips releases a 65-75" model with Display Port, I'm just going to buy it. Fingers crossed they do.
Yeah sure eventually the "don't give your TV network access" might stop working but it works today and for the foreseeable future. You're more likely to get a TV that refuses to operate without a network.
> One day after granting the TRO, the same judge ruled that it should not remain in effect and vacated the order.
> “The Court finds, sua sponte, that the [TRO obtained by the State of Texas against Samsung] should be set aside,” the judge wrote in the order.
"ruled that it should not remain in effect" links to https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26462588-20260106-or..., but my desire to understand what's going on does not yet extend to reading the order.
1. Make some big noise and token action about an issue that has been festering for decades, while their own party has been the primary opposition to any kind of substantive lasting reform (eg US GDPR)
2. Rally the useful idiots to rally around the cause of widely-desired reform, backfitting all the ideals behind the issue as if fascists have any appreciation for lofty ideals
3. Let the target company marinate and roast under the pressure until they capitulate and send a bribe and/or other tribute
4. Drop the token action after the attention spans of their useful idiots have expired and they've moved on to the next spectacle
5. If the issue comes to a head again, the useful idiots blame the "libuhruls" rather than having an ounce of self-awareness to realize their own leaders sandbagged and sold them out
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
There is no written decision on the vacating other than what you already linked.
Reading the TRO, a lot jumps out at me. To pick a single thing:
"The Court HOLDS that because the State seeks injunctive relief pursuant to an authorized statute, which supersedes the common law, it need not prove immediate and irreparable injury, nor does the Court have to balance the equities when the State litigates in the public interest."
Certainly the DTPA (https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/?tab=1&code=BC&chapter=BC...) authorizes temporary restraining orders, but if you read it carefully, there is nothing in it that explicitly overrides or replaces the typical TRO standards.
A quick search doesn't show me that texas courts have interpreted it to do so anyway, but maybe they have - i'm not familiar enough with texas law to say for sure.
There are other issues with the TRO
Hard to find the details.
Hopefully the Vizio lawsuit that is going to trial soon will help make that more possible.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
Two recent LWN articles about that:
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1052842/52c45fb8bcc3fade/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1052734/5903e175673caeef/
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2025/dec/24/vizio-msa-irrelev... https://sfconservancy.org/news/2025/dec/04/tentative-vizio-r...
Par for the course for Ken Paxton, one of the most blatantly corrupt politicians in the US.