Appliances giant Haier reportedly issued a takedown notice to a software developer for creating Home Assistant integration plugins for the company's home appliances and releasing them on GitHub.

I’m not really big on “let’s make a movement”, but this independent dev has been hit with a cease-and-desist from making a FOSS Home Assistant addon for their Haier air conditioners.

Haier claims that they are losing out on millions of dollars due to this plugin which… lets you control their air conditions from home assistant. They haven’t bothered to explain how that’s possibly worth millions of dollars - they’re just claiming it.

So of course they hit the Streisand button and are demanding that he takes it down. He of course is complying… in a couple of days. Maybe you see where this is going.

It would be an absolute shame if any of you just happened to create a fork, or clone the code, or mirror it in your own instance. An absolute shame.

Just so everyone here knows which repositories NOT to clone or fork, here are the two links:

and please, don’t repost this anywhere, or share it in other communities, or anything like that. It’s a shame that so many people already know and are making clones. I’m just letting you know so you don’t do anything like telling others who may make their own copies.

(sidenote: Haier owns GE Appliance, so for our American folks it may affect you folks too)

  • the_beber@lemm.eeEnglish
    39·
    10 months ago

    I hate how cease and desist are essentially blackmail. Even if you did nothing wrong, you can still get fucked over by costs of a potential legal battle.

    • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
      20·
      10 months ago

      It’s a bigger problem in the States than elsewhere. In the US, awarding legal costs is the exception, not the norm, so someone with a lot of money and access to lawyers can basically intimidate a defendent into avoiding court. In the rest of the world, courts are much more likely to award costs to a defendent who has done nothing wrong - if you file a frivilous lawsuit and lose, you’ll probably have to pay the costs of the person you tried to sue.

      This guy’s in Germany, so I think he’d be alright if he clearly won. The issue, however, is that courts aren’t really equipped for handling highly technical cases and often get things wrong.

      • density@kbin.social
        13·
        10 months ago

        But the defendant still has to put the funds up in the first place? It’s a huge gamble and most people don’t even have the ante available.

        Is there anywhere in the world that has a robust and comprehensive public funding for legal entanglements of all types?

        • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Yes they do have to fund their defense to begin with, however there has to be some balance struck. Until the court proceedings are concluded it isn’t known which side is in the right.

          I think most countries’ public funding for legal representation is limited to criminal matters, and even then you have to qualify (eg have a very low income or be unemployed). With civil matters, it’s up to you to find a lawyer you can afford, or one who will take it on pro bono.

          If the defendent is obviously in the right, then it should be more likely that they can find a lawyer who will work pro bono.

          • density@kbin.social
            1·
            10 months ago

            it isn’t known which side is in the right

            vs

            If the defendent is obviously in the right

            • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              Before the trial happens, it could really go either way, even if the defendant is obviously in the right - there could be some procedural slip up that causes them to lose anyway.

              However, a lawyer isn’t going to assume that they will make some slip up, so if it is obviously in the defendant’s favour they will work pro bono. There is still some risk for them, because if they lose they don’t get paid, but they’re confident they’ll win.

              Edit: wrote the reply thinking this was a conversation about awarding costs to the defendant, that was a different thread. The first paragraph remains unchanged though.

              I wish Lemmy showed you more of the context than just the last reply.

              • AeonFelis@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                10 months ago

                I wish Lemmy showed you more of the context than just the last reply.

                You can keep pressing on “Show context” to load more replies, up until the top level one.

                • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  10 months ago

                  Yeah I know, however when you reply to someone from a notification you just want to reply.

                  Also, when you move up the context on a Lemmy thread you see each comment and all its other comments. If the comment chain you’re replying on isn’t the top thread, then you get cluttered up with all the others. On reddit, context meant you only saw the comments that directly lead to the comment you were deriving context from. Furthermore, context was derived from the comment URL with a ?context=3 suffix, so you could easily specify how far up the chain you wanted to go.

                  Lemmy does context differently, but I prefer reddit’s method.

        • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          But the defendant still has to put the funds up in the first place? It’s a huge gamble

          Good point. Actually it isn’t a huge gamble in Germany, other than in Usa (which is again the extremely worst example).

          Costs of legal defense are moderate. There is a public tariff for lawyer costs and for court fees. So the only areas where you even have a chance to spend huge amounts are finding or creating evidence (private investigators etc), or hiring too many lawyers.

          • density@kbin.social
            0·
            10 months ago

            It seems that hourly rates of german lawyers are €100 to €500 which is about what I would expect. Even a few hours of time is a lot. To explain the case, have the lawyer or their designate review it, prepare for a case and show up to court is many hours at a minimum. Even if it is a simple matter.

            • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.worldEnglish
              01·
              10 months ago

              That linked text is very, very wrong.

              Better delete your comment about it, from lemmy and from your brain.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      8·
      10 months ago

      That’s the problem of the legal system. You can get acused of a crime falsely but still end up bankrupt and alone.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Honestly its just a symptom of a bigger problem with the justice system entirely.

      It has always completely favored those with the most money and lawyers.

  • RalphWolf@lemmy.caEnglish
    22·
    10 months ago

    There we go. Haier is now on my personal “do not ever buy from” list. Congratulations, Haier.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      That’s not how legal matters work.

      Firstly, imposing on someone else’s intellectual property is not “illegal”, because that usually refers to crimes. This is a civil issue, as in the some company is demanding the dev stops or else they’ll sue him or something.

      Secondly, it doesn’t really matter whether the dev is “right” or could prevail against a legal claim - because you just wouldn’t bother trying. Imagine you have an ok job, take care of your family, and made this plugin on a whim just because you can. Your days are full of taking your kids to the park, spending time with your wife, playing around with your hobbies, that stuff. Maybe you’re not wealthy, but your salary is enough to look after your family and make your mortgage repayments. Then Haier threatens to sue you, and although you could likely prevail mounting a defense would probably cost you a years worth of mortgage repayments. Maybe you could represent yourself but that might take a years worth of saturdays writing and responding to legal stuff that you don’t really know much about. Bear in mind that there’s no financial support from the open source community.

      It just doesn’t really matter whether Haier has a legit claim.

      • FiskFisk33@startrek.websiteEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, you’re right, that’s the problem. That system makes sense if big corpos use it to “test” each other for copyright infringement, but when an individual gets involved they just get steamrolled wether they’re in the right or not, since the system assumes they have a team of lawyers on retainer in order to work as intended.

    • ShortN0te@lemmy.mlEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      Sadly it does not matter. The company could keep the battle going for close to a decade until there is a final decision. It is financially draining and you have to give up a lot of time in order to attend the hearings (or even travel to the correct jurisdiction).

  • qjkxbmwvz@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    Not a lawyer; would this likely stand up in court? Obviously I wouldn’t risk it were I the dev, but just curious.

    It’s pathetic that I’ll happily recommend my Emporia Vue2 energy monitor to folks running HA — not because it works out of the box, but because the company is aware of the community integration projects and seems ok with it, even if they don’t actually support it. (ESPHome Firmware flash gives you local control — It’s been pretty great!)

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      8·
      10 months ago

      Not a lawyer; would this likely stand up in court?

      I’m not a lawyer either, but I don’t think so.

      The developer of this Home Assistant integration is German. European law allows people to reverse engineer apps for the purpose of interoperability (Article 6 of the EU software directive), so observation of the app’s behaviour or even disassembling it to create a Home Assistant integration is not illegal.

      In general, writing your own code by observing the inputs to and outputs from an existing system is not illegal, which is for example how video game emulators are legal (just talking about the emulator code itself, not the content you use with it).

      If it’s a Terms of Service violation, it’d be the users that are violating the ToS, not the developer. In theory, the Home Assistant integration could have been developed without ever running the app or agreeing to Haier’s Terms of Service, for example if the app is decompiled and the API client code is viewed (which again is allowed by the EU software directive if the sole purpose is for interoperability).

      The code in this repo is likely original Python code that was written without using any of Haier’s code and without bypassing any sort of copy protection, so it’s not a DMCA infringement either.

  • JCreazy@midwest.socialEnglish
    71·
    10 months ago

    GE has garbage company for a very long time. It’s a shell of its former self. If I’m paying for a product I am going to do whatever I want with it because it’s my money. And if a company has a problem with that, it sounds like the company needs to fix it on their end. If it’s possible to create a plugin that cost your company millions of dollars is obviously you’re not running your company properly.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    I don’t know if there is a non profit to help devs with legal but there should be.

    Maybe the Free software conservancy?

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techOPEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      I don’t know how to edit Wikipedia, but it’d be great if somebody would edit the Streisand effect Wikipedia page to include this

    • LifeBandit666@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I had 5 minutes so I’ve just sent em a snotty email. I don’t have an air conditioner and won’t buy one anytime soon, but shit like this gets my goat.