Comment by CoastalCoder
2 years ago
Does advertising a product as adhering to some standard, but secretly knowing that it doesn't 100%, count as e.g. fraud? I.e., is there any established case law on the matter?
I'm thinking of this example, but also more generally USB devices, Bluetooth devices, etc.
> there any established case law on the matter
Always makes me laugh.
Anyways, not in the US where you're probably asking for, but yes, the vast majority of the developed word has that. It's called "false advertising", and exists at least in the EU, Australia, UK. You can't put a label on your product or advert that is false or misleading.
So if the box says this is a WiFi6E router, but it's actually only 5 because it's using the wrong components to save on costs, you can report them to the relevant authority and they'll be fined (and depending on the case and scenario you get compensation). The process is a harder bordering on the impossible if you bought from AliExpress from a random no name vendor though, but as long as the vendor or platform or store exists in the country with the sensible regulation you can report it.
That’s not really what the commenter was asking. That’d be false advertising in the US too.
I think the question is less “if they skip on parts and lie” and more along the lines of incompleteness. Like “it’s an HTTP server, but they saved on effort and implement put as post, which works fine for most of use cases”.
That said, I’d guess this would be a pretty hard case to win. The law typically requires intent when false advertising, so if they didn’t know they didn’t follow the spec they might be fine. And it depends on the claims and what the consumer can expect. Like, if you deliberately don’t say explain the exact spec your SSD complies with, and you make no explicit promises of compatibility, it’s a harder win. Like I bet few SSD manufacturers will say “Serial ATA v3.5 (may 2023) tested and compatible with OpenXFS commit XYZ on Debian Linux running kernel version 4.3.2”. But if they say “super fast SSD with a physical SATA cable socket”, then what really was false if it doesn’t support the full spec?
I was under the impression that a lot of off-brand USB devices didn't use the USB logo specifically to get around certification requirements. Basically, they just aren't advertising adherence to a standard. No idea about NVMe or BT.
The USB trident logo doesn't need certification. The other, usually coloured, logos do need certification.
https://ftdichip.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/TN_114_USB-D...
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb-if_original_logo...
I’ve similarly seen a lot of “TF card reader slots” instead of “micro SD card” slots.
Actually, I think that one has technical merit - the SD card spec includes non-storage IO - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#SDIO_cards - that isn't supported by slots that only care about storage. At least, that's my understanding of the situation.
Hardware vendors are known to swap to cheaper lower performance hardware after reviews are out which in my eyes is fraud, whether or not the law agrees is a different story.
Please name the vendors that do this so I can avoid them.
LTT documented it happening to at least: ADATA, Kingston and PNY in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07sEM6y4Uc
Samsung was caught doing this with their 970 pro( plus? Their naming is awful) - they swapped out the controller in a good portion of devices which resulted in significantly lower read and write performance.
Not a lawyer, but I doubt it – otherwise you might have a case against Intel and AMD regarding Spectre and Meltdown?
It might be a different story if the spec was intentionally violated, though (rather than incidentally, i.e. due to an idea that should have been transparent/indistinguishable externally but didn't work out).
"Oops we didn't mean to do that" isn't a defense from liability for product not doing what you told the purchaser it would.
It's their responsibility to do develop the product correctly, do QA, and if a defect is found, advise customers or stop selling the defective goods.
The greatest scam the computer industry pulled was convincing people that computers are magical, unpredictable devices that are too complex for the industry to be held responsible for things not working as claimed.
To be fair, I’m not even sure if the majority of consumers would prefer a “power outage safe” SSD that is however significantly slower over the alternative.
I do agree that there should be transparency, though: Label it “turbo mode”, add a big warning sticker (and ideally a way to opt out of it via software or hardware), but don’t just pretend to be able to have the cake and eat it too.
Merchantability and implied fitness? You absolutely could try sue the in small claims court for damages.
For extra fun: if the box carries a trademark from a standards group, you could try adding them into the suit; use of their trademarked logo could be argued to be implied fitness, if there are standards the drive is supposed to meet to use it.
At the very least they might get tired of the expense of the expense of sending someone to defend the claim, and it would cease to be profitable to engage in this scammery.
I don't think it's even implied fitness. Declaring you support SCSI commands is probably a direct advertisement of conformance.
I would probably use stronger words than that, data persistence is a big deal, so the missing part of the spec is a fundamental flaw. What's a disk whose persitence is random? You can probably legally assail the substance of the product.
For IT products, I doubt it. For sectors where regulation is more mature of course: take food, automotive, etc.
I wouldn't say fraud but this issue should trigger a recall.
I think it's more or less the same thing, the recall is the way to legally prove you didn't intend to disseminate the flawed product, wheras leaving it on the market after learning of the problem shows intent to keep it there. I would be surprised if a discovery at those companies would not surface an email form engineers discussing this problem.