[HN Gopher] Cricut Wants Users to Pay for Unlimited Use of Cutti...
___________________________________________________________________
Cricut Wants Users to Pay for Unlimited Use of Cutting Machines
They Already Own
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-03-16 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| patrickyeon wrote:
| It's interesting that the moment RMS speaks about really
| crystalizing software freedom in his mind was when he couldn't
| access the software running a printer so that he could add a
| feature. It seems like every generation needs their own evil
| printer (or printer-like) manufacturer to radicalize the next
| round of user rights advocates.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| This is just an instance of a whole class of problems which I
| doubt will be solved by movements like "right to repair". A
| higher level of approach is required to eliminate all of these
| issues in a generic manner. "right to repair" is an attempt to
| solve a whole class of problems but is fundamentally incoherent
| and will be easily circumvented. New ideas are required in this
| space otherwise the cycle will repeat indefinitely.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Isn't the traditional approach a class-action lawsuit? As long
| as the damages were high enough to cause other companies that
| might engage in equally nasty tactics to think twice.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| You are assuming that the EULA does not fully cover
| everything done here.
| w-j-w wrote:
| This has to be bait and switch, right? Does this run afoul any
| current consumer regulations? If not, we should probably write
| some new ones.
| LocalH wrote:
| Services that require a cloud connection without a compelling
| reason are rent-seekers. There's absolutely no reason why the
| client software can't do the calculations that the server is
| doing to "optimize" cutting, other than for the purpose of
| turning something into a subscription that most assuredly should
| not be as such.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| > There's absolutely no reason why the client software can't do
| the calculations that the server is doing to "optimize"
| cutting...
|
| Well, there is _one_ reason: the cloud is more powerful. A
| computationally heavy task _can_ run locally, but if uploading
| to the cloud and sending the results back is 10x faster, most
| users would probably prefer that. However, the best way to
| solve that (IMO) is to by default do local computation and have
| a subscription for cloud access.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Given how much compute is available locally today (especially
| if your task is amenable to leveraging a GPU) there aren't a
| lot of consumer-level applications that can't run locally in
| an acceptable amount of time.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| "Own." This has been going on for a long time. A hacker space I
| belonged to in early 2011 had a Cricut and were using third party
| software for it (Make The Cut?). There was a big warning on the
| machine to not upgrade the software because Cricut had forced the
| publisher to drop support in a subsequent version. (ETA: details
| are hazy, but this is broadly correct as I understood the
| situation as a non-user)
|
| Nowadays, it looks like you can use MTC with "your" Cricut, but
| you have to pay Cricut for the privilege.
|
| I say fuck 'em. This isn't new, and it's not going to stop if
| people keep buying the machines.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > it's not going to stop if people keep buying the machines.
|
| Reducing citizen's power to mere consumes, limited only to buy
| or not buy, is exactly what allows corporations to get away
| with these practices. It starts with one, and soon they all
| collude and you have no choice but to suffer their abuse or go
| without an entire category of products (spying smart TVs
| displacing dumb TVs, telecoms selling traffic data, etc.).
|
| It's not going to stop until they're _forced_ to stop, with
| legislation.
| lupire wrote:
| Why should they be forced to stop making a product at a price
| customers enjoy?
|
| A laser cutter isn't a life saving device.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > Why should they be forced to stop making a product at a
| price customers enjoy?
|
| When you ignore all the objectionable parts, it sure makes
| consumer protection look unreasonable, doesn't it?
|
| Besides, the ultimate price consumers pay isn't any lower -
| it's just hidden, delayed, and probably higher.
|
| Let me ask you - why shouldn't citizens be allowed to
| collectively bargain, expressing their terms in the form of
| legislation? If companies don't like the terms, they're
| free to sell their products elsewhere.
| benrbray wrote:
| What I don't understand is why a company like this doesn't
| embrace maker culture. They're already selling some seriously
| expensive hardware, so raise the price a bit if necessary to
| ensure a safe profit margin, while making all the software free
| and open source. The community would design an ecosystem of
| software around the Cricut _for free_ and they wouldn 't need
| to maintain a garbage web app that can't even parse SVGs
| correctly.
|
| Their business model should be closer to 3d printers than to
| inkjet.
| kec wrote:
| The machines are expensive but durable. Their main revenue
| streams outside of software are materials (which obviously
| have stiff 3rd party competition) and accessories (most of
| which are durable, even those that aren't have 3rd party
| substitutes). They have no other reliable way to extract
| additional value out of customers. It's not right but it also
| isn't exactly surprising they'd choose to go down this path.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Because maker culture represents a very small niche within
| the broader category of people who enjoy making things, and
| the things that maker culture wants run counter to the
| company's own business interests.
|
| For example, Cricut probably has a very strong interest in
| _not_ opening up their devices, because, while they 're the
| most popular consumer device in this space right now, they
| don't have much of a natural moat. Keeping things closed
| makes it harder for current users to switch, which, in turn
| makes it harder for a competitor to compete. Even if they
| have a technically superior product. This artificial moat is
| probably much more valuable to them than the lost profits
| from being less attractive to people who are into both
| scrapbooking _and_ Hacker News.
| patrickyeon wrote:
| This is unfortunately the current state of consumer hardware:
| "monthly recurring revenue" is the number everyone chases,
| subscriptions are the hotness, and you sell hardware as a
| loss leader to get people hooked on the subscription.
| Customers aren't a community you're creating, nor people you
| serve, they're a natural resource from which you extract
| dollars.
|
| It's hard to compete against this. If you try to sell
| hardware at an honest cost, you'll likely be the more
| expensive option (or you can price-match but you'll have to
| reduce your quality) and the vast majority of consumer
| decision making is driven by the immediate price tag.
|
| It's even worse if you're in the venture-funded world. Money
| is cheap and you're rewarded in the short run by how many
| "customers" you have, not whether they can be turned into
| customers whe pay you more than it costs to acquire them.
| hellohello1 wrote:
| Our most esteemed economic mind wrote that businesses exist
| solely to maximize profit for shareholders. So that is the
| right business model for our economic system.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-
| doctr...
|
| Whether you believe that should be our economic system is
| another matter altogether.
| ddingus wrote:
| I think we need to modify how we value things.
|
| And it is not "the" right model, just a possible and I
| would argue short sighted one.
|
| What they did was model up a rental business and seeded it
| as if it were an ownership type one.
|
| That is predatory, depending on what experience level
| people are buying. They run a very real risk of not
| understanding what they are buying.
|
| And that, along with better ways to value externalities,
| would render that model higher cost and risk, as it should
| be.
|
| Anyone with sufficient experience sees those costs, risks
| and also sees them as external to the enterprise, and that
| it all comes at their own expense.
|
| That expense renders the value proposition far less
| compelling.
|
| Exactly why this bait and switch happened too.
|
| Just because it is legal, does not make it right or
| ethical.
|
| Given the rise in these trends, yeah. Time to revisit what
| is legal.
| jbothma wrote:
| Yup. The current economic model encourages the path that
| maximises profit, ethical or otherwise. That might mean
| predatory behaviour and then blame shifting or just
| moving on to the next brand and dumping the company with
| the rotten reputation and its workers.
|
| Until enough people are willing to adopt a different
| value system, we're stuck with this.
| ddingus wrote:
| Well, not all of us are stuck. I do spend time educating
| people, and in my own life I don't buy into any of this
| garbage. It's totally not worth it.
| brianwawok wrote:
| 90% of the people I know are not what most hackers would
| qualify as makers. Think of like teachers, who use it at home
| after work to make something cute for their classroom or a
| friend.
|
| By going this route, they almost certainly make more money.
|
| Hacker news users are not normal users.
| ddingus wrote:
| Truth. And we are the firewall too.
|
| Those ordinary people, who may not realize it even, depend
| on us to push back hard.
|
| Nobody else will. Few are qualified even.
|
| It is strange to be living in a time where law, government
| is so damn unaware and apparently, uncaring about these
| things.
| brianwawok wrote:
| The downside is, we aren't even united.
|
| Many of us really smart geeks thinks Stallman is the way.
| If we can't see the source code of every single thing we
| have, we don't have it. Free or die!
|
| Many others of us think that it's more important privacy
| is respected. Smooth user experiences are more important
| than perfect freedom of code. So Apple is the way. You
| may not know the code on your device, but at least it
| isn't being sold to the world.
|
| And still others think the Google/Facebook way is right.
| They provide great services to users! Yes they make money
| selling private data, but their free tools are invaluable
| to our life.
|
| With such a divided view among the "tech elite", how
| could we really stop anything?
|
| Agree that federal law is really the only hope for this
| kind of stuff, but that is rather hard to do for many
| reasons.
| ddingus wrote:
| The path to solidarity is when we realize all of those
| ways have a time, place, manner where they are right, or
| good, or can be tolerated.
|
| This is not about "the one, right way" at all.
|
| It is all about what makes good sense for humans and that
| it continues over a longer period of time.
|
| And many of these things are not exclusive.
|
| Smooth does not have to mean closed.
|
| Free with ADS does not have to also mean no privacy.
|
| Etc...
|
| Open, in the Stallman sense, is not always important.
| Open data vs open code, and machines, who owns, what is
| actually a rental, etc... can be resolved to something
| more livable without being draconian, or useless.
| tomxor wrote:
| Yes, it's like an informal representative democracy.
| Those who specialize in something should consider they
| are part of the minority capable of representing the
| interests of those who do not specialize in it - tech or
| otherwise.
|
| The nice thing about tech is that it's possible for us to
| push back by hacking on stuff and opening it up rather
| than resorting to legislative tools, and this can have
| the same effect of forcing those manufacturers hand but
| without the artificiality of law.
| ddingus wrote:
| Sadly, legislation will need to be a part of the whole
| effort.
|
| Tons of us won't like it. And when we don't, we can also
| point to why we just can't have nice things.
| anm89 wrote:
| It's depressing to me that strategies like this seem to work for
| these companies. Any time someone tries to force me into a
| subscription, I hard cut ties, unless there is literally no
| alternative to the product and I need it for my livelihood. And
| in that case, good game.
| rolph wrote:
| the legal remedy goes something like " it is an offense to sell a
| device then retroactively reduce function or demand further
| payment beyond the original purchase price "
|
| now we need the legal team and the class action, good thing for
| me im not a lawyer.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| I think when this is actually looked at that cricut is going to
| be found to be locally processing the images and the only cloud
| aspect is data farming.
| rblatz wrote:
| On another thread I saw a lot of people recommending the
| Silhouette Cameo as a freer alternative.
| aequitas wrote:
| Dutch/EU users should probably keep a lookout for a blogpost
| later this week here[0]. Arnoud is a Dutch legal expert on
| technology related topics and I've been told he might be looking
| into this.
|
| [0] https://blog.iusmentis.com
| cricutexplorer wrote:
| Cricut owner here. Immediate work-arounds that come to mind are
| packing lots of assets into one SVG upload. Once it's in Cricuts
| cloud you get copy/paste for free. The 20 file upload limit could
| be expanded that way.
| avipars wrote:
| Basically, if the company goes bankrupt, your machines would be
| paperweights... This is unfortunate
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Have you heard of Baumol's cost disease? It's the idea that if a
| sector of the economy experiences productivity growth, wages in
| that sector grow; as a consequence, wages in the other sector
| grow, because otherwise workers would flee to the higher wage
| sector; but because those sectors have not seen productivity
| growth, the price of what they produce will go up.
|
| I think we are experiencing a similar problem in the world of new
| enterprises. Software companies can produce huge
| growth/profit/market valuations/etc. To attract the capital
| required to create the company, they have to promise and do
| everything in their power to achieve the same money-printing
| results as software ones. But they are not inherently high-
| potential as software companies, so the price and quality of
| their products suffer.
|
| Everyone wants to be a tech company because that's the way to
| survive and thrive in the current capital climate. Banks,
| airlines, real estate leasing companies, hotels, etc. mimic tech
| companies, because otherwise, capital looks elsewhere and the
| company won't get funded.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Burn out the non-believers to solidify the customer base pre-IPO?
| Bold move, Cotton. Hope it wasn't 'brexit' logic fueling this
| decision.
| hctaw wrote:
| Time to reverse engineer it and release an open source version of
| their software.
| kop316 wrote:
| It looks like it has been done for a fair bit:
|
| http://jimlund.org/build-to-spec/Setting%20Up%20Libcutter%20...
|
| Cricut's USB exposes itself as a serial USB port, and it looks
| like the library is there to make SVGs cut for it.
|
| EDIT: It looks like there is some sort of encryption between
| the host and Cricut as well? So Cricut makes it intentionally
| unfriendly to make it work with thir party vendors.
| 542458 wrote:
| IIRC this stopped working quite a few years ago. Now it
| appears every device has a factory-installed key, and cut
| files are encrypted with that key by their cloud software.
|
| Extremely scummy stuff.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The makers of Cricut have sued those who have tried to market
| alternative software before. I'm guessing they'd issue DRM
| related takedown notices for any open source projects. Won't
| block the effort but make it less useful to the non-technical
| audience that usually buys Cricuts.
| [deleted]
| prefrontal wrote:
| My wife and I are _so_ irritated about this. She bought a Cricut
| Maker last year to make masks for friends and family. Custom
| images were cut for every person she made a mask for. Now, nine
| months after we bought the machine, we will have to start paying
| $10 /mo for the same privileges we enjoyed when we first got it.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| If you used a credit card, make a warranty claim that the
| hardware was changed after delivery.
| atian wrote:
| I bought a Cricut Maker just a week ago to see if I can save on
| buying a full-on laser cutter for some thin acrylic sheets. The
| machine and software are incredibly locked down. Can't use
| anything to work with the Cricut other than the jank desktop app
| it forces you to use. You have to be a bit creative with custom
| cuts by uploading an image to the design software and having it
| threshold the image to identify cut lines. It's workable but
| seriously it's just a toy for scrapbooking.
|
| It's not surprising though. The machine is probably sold at
| breakeven like printers [0]. It's a shame. The machine is
| decently built and can do a lot more.
|
| [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/why-all-printers-
| suc...
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Have you returned it?
| nullserver wrote:
| Perhaps your not the target audience.
|
| My wife has one, absolutely loves it. Never ending supply of
| trinkets and gifts for people. Keeps her busy.
|
| Not cheap, but a lot cheaper then random shopping trips.
|
| So she's happy, and my wallet is mostly happy.
|
| She's not remotely technical. That she can operate it means
| they did something right.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Not to mention you need an account on their system.
| toxik wrote:
| Oculus does this too, you can't use the product _at all_
| without registering it with your Facebook account. Should be
| illegal.
| ddingus wrote:
| I will never, ever own one. And that is the primary reason.
| cwkoss wrote:
| They are also very hostile to the mod system. They really
| don't want you to play outside of their walled garden.
|
| Hardware is nice, but their software decisions completely
| ruined it. Have a quest 1, will never buy oculus again.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Not sure what you mean, SideQuest (sideloading apps and
| mods, like custom beatsaber songs) has been working for
| the last 2-3 years. I haven't seen any of this hostility
| you refer to.
| cwkoss wrote:
| They have released at least two auto-updates which have
| broken sidequest functionality. First time I had to
| reinstall sidequest, second time they removed the way to
| access BMBF and now quest is collecting dust because I'm
| not faithful that they wont keep automatically installing
| breaking changes.
|
| I guess I'll just turn off autoupdates once I get it
| working again so they don't break it a third time.
| phonon wrote:
| SideQuest has now directly partnered with Oculus, for the
| new "App Lab".
|
| https://www.androidcentral.com/how-find-and-download-app-
| lab...
| duckfang wrote:
| Well, this is what we get when financed by Scam-a-con
| Valley companies.
|
| Selling hardware to do a thing well is so passe. So we
| force hardware to the cloud where we can then exert a toll
| booth for usage.
| cwkoss wrote:
| If they are pricing their hardware based on expectation of
| being able to rent seek, I wonder if someone could make a
| little side business buying their hardware, replacing or
| flashing firmware or control board, and reselling a open
| version of the same hardware.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Until they get DMCA'd out of business, sadly.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| With the amount of sophisticated open source 3D printers and the
| amount of outrage at such a change, I have to wonder why there
| isn't as much of a market for an open source cutting machine in
| the same price range. Clearly there's a lot of interest, and I
| was once dependent on a Cricut myself. It sounds like there's
| more investment being put into hacking Cricut's existing devices
| to be open.
| marcinzm wrote:
| There's also customer support responses saying that if you try to
| sell your machine then they will brick it.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Where did you hear this? This would seem to be the more
| egregious sin ...
| curryst wrote:
| I really wish the CFAA applied here. It's infuriating that if I
| got into Cricut's network and bricked their rendering farm, I'd
| go to jail for God knows how long. But they can threaten to
| brick who knows how many Cricuts and that's all fine and dandy.
| mcv wrote:
| Instead of selling it, it's probably better to return it for a
| refund.
| pfortuny wrote:
| So you buy a machine but can only use it by means of a web-based
| software?
|
| Big no there. Or big "caveat emptor".
| ddingus wrote:
| Mental note: Never, ever buy anything that team is involved with.
|
| I go way back with various machines. Cutting, bending, printing,
| whatever.
|
| If it won't take gcode, or some other open data to operate with,
| whatever it is, no matter how good it is, the answer is no.
|
| Always no.
|
| It has to take, gcode, svg, dxf, real postscript, hpgl, png,
| something. And it has to do that offline, period.
|
| There are great machines made in the 80's still making money, and
| I saw one just yesterday. Wonderful to see.
|
| Yes, I realize these are consumer grade machines, but what will
| also happen is these things will get abandoned.
|
| Maybe someone will reverse engineer them and they become useful
| over the longer term.
|
| I hope someone does.
| benrbray wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations for machines that someone could
| reasonably fit in their home to replace a cricut?
| atian wrote:
| https://glowforge.com/our-products
|
| https://flux3dp.com/beamo/
|
| Glowforge Pro - $5,995
|
| Glowforge Basic - $2,995
|
| Beamo Desktop (30W) - $2,000
|
| All-in-one laser cutter on your desk. Otherwise modifying a
| 3D printer (e.g. Ender 3/5) with CNC/Laser attachments work
| as well if your budget is much lower. :)
| duckfang wrote:
| Please note that Glowforge ALSO requires the obnoxious
| cloud to actually cut. And being forced to rely on "cloud"
| is how Cricut is able to bait-n-switch users and
| effectively demand more money for purchased hardware.
|
| There is absolutely 0 reason why a CNC laser cutter needs
| commodity internet at all. And I'd argue that an internet
| controlled fire-causing laser is a Bad Idea.
|
| Because Glowforge requires their server farms online,
| Glowforge could pull a Cricut at any moment's notice.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Beamo is local only through USB, I may or may not have
| been tempted to buy it just for that.
| cproctor wrote:
| Glowforge is cloud-based too though, and doesn't accept
| gcode (ddingus's criterion from another comment on this
| post [1]). What evidence is there that Glowforge isn't just
| at an earlier phase of the same pattern?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26479791
| ddlsmurf wrote:
| One evidence is that glowforge open sourced their stuff,
| not saying it would be easy, but it does make it possible
| to avoid their cloud thing https://github.com/Glowforge .
| ddingus wrote:
| If the cutting op protocol is exposed, that is really
| good. We can make a library.
|
| Nice to know.
| makomk wrote:
| That all looks like the bare minimum they're legally
| required to open source due to using GPLed code (the
| Linux kernel, uboot, etc).
| ddingus wrote:
| Well crap.
|
| I need to edit while I can.
| ddingus wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| There is no evidence.
|
| Anytime there is lock in on machines, there will
| eventually be rent seeking.
|
| I have zero trust on this.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Those are not even close. A Cricut starts at $200.
| ddingus wrote:
| The rental begins at $200, right?
| scoates wrote:
| The reasonably-priced response to this is the CAMEO from
| Silhouette.
| monknomo wrote:
| US Cutter MH series cutter would probably fit the bill. they
| range from small to quite large
| matt_the_bass wrote:
| I have extensive experience with a nice Roland at a local
| Fabian. And I recently bought an MH series for home
| projects with the kids. I'm pleasantly surprised how good
| the MH is for the money! Assuming $20/birthday present, the
| machine will easily pay for itself in a year of gift
| making. Plus I get the kids to help make their friends
| gifts unique rather than buying something from a store.
| That is priceless to me!
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| What is a Fabian?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Perhaps a typing / autocorrect error for Fablab:
| https://www.fablabs.io/
|
| In other words, a type of maker space / hackspace.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Used to run one and it was quite capable.
| sllabres wrote:
| Happy user of silhouette.
| duckfang wrote:
| We're trying to make it so existing Cricut devices can be
| unchained from their vaporous bullshit (aka: cloud).
|
| https://discord.gg/KsReJ3cN Come help!
| ddingus wrote:
| I would love to. Unfortunately, I am maxxed out.
|
| The fuck you would be worth it! Good luck!
| okprod wrote:
| Stallman is right again
| ddingus wrote:
| Solid. Gcode, svg, dxf, png, hpgl, real postscript
|
| If I do not see one of those, the machine is a hard pass.
| Everytime.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Are they alone in this market? Are there viable alternatives
| within 2x the price?
| necovek wrote:
| I've got Silhouette Portrait myself (think version 2), and that
| one prints under GNU/Linux too: it was a bit clunky to get
| going though (with Robocut).
|
| I don't use it heavily, but it works :)
| asinoastuto wrote:
| my girlfriend uses https://www.silhouetteamerica.com/ for her
| side cake business. speaks highly of them but the software is
| pretty clunky.
| Fwirt wrote:
| For those looking for an alternative, Silhouette machines are
| affordable and can be driven completely offline using an open-
| source Inkscape plugin. (So you can cut any file type that
| Inkscape can convert to a path, which is pretty much anything.
| SVG, DXF, PDF, raster image tracing...)
|
| https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette
|
| Silhouette's proprietary software comes with a "store" like
| Cricut for buying designs, but it's a resource hog and you have
| to pay for an SVG cutting feature. Inkscape is a little hassle to
| setup but once you get it working it's great.
| jarbus wrote:
| This article just made me start a no-buy list: A list of
| companies I need to remember to never buy from. Can't believe I
| never thought about this until now.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Mine started when Sony distributed root kits on CDs. Had been a
| fan of the company until then.
| boublepop wrote:
| Seems like a company suicide right when they are leading up to
| IPO. What on earth are they thinking?
| [deleted]
| worik wrote:
| Is this not what law is for? To stop this sort of thing.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Is this not what law is for? To stop this sort of thing.
|
| Nope.
|
| That's what voting with your dollars is for, as in: don't buy
| the effing thing.
| leowbattle wrote:
| Is that even legal? Cricut does not own those machines any more,
| the people who bought them do. So by what right can they restrict
| the owners access to their own property?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The restriction is not on the machine, it's on the cloud based
| software that you have to use to send a design to the machine.
| (and there's no limit on printing designs that you create
| within their software, only on images that you upload and
| convert).
|
| So technically, this isn't a limit on the hardware, but on the
| software, even if realistically it's the same thing if you
| print a lot of uploaded designs since you can't use the machine
| without using their cloud software.
|
| So legally they are probably in the clear to put limits on the
| "free" software, even if morally it's the equivalent of a
| hardware restriction.
| playpause wrote:
| I can't see that defence standing up if it is brought before
| a judge. The law isn't always about enforcement of smallprint
| technicalities in favour of the unscrupulous. Equity law
| exists.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I assume Cricut had their own lawyers
| vet this and that it's well covered by their terms of
| service. I'd be surprised if a court reverses this. But
| public opinion might.
| playpause wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer either, but I know that putting
| something in your terms of service doesn't give you legal
| carte blanche to deceive people. The law understands that
| most people don't read the whole ToS before clicking "I
| agree". This doesn't mean a ToS has no legal effect, but
| it's supposed to be for clarifying details. Any obviously
| major conditions (like "We might make your device stop
| working at some point in future and you'll have to pay us
| to make it work again") usually need to be stated in
| plain language, not buried in section 8 paragraph 9 of
| legal waffle. This sort of thing is what equity law is
| for, and why judges are paid so much - they often have to
| make rulings on what is 'reasonable'.
|
| I agree Cricut must have had their legal team vet this
| decision, but that does not mean they necessarily believe
| they'd have a watertight defence if taken to court over
| it. It just indicates they made a business calculation
| and decided it's a good risk/reward ratio. Not many
| disputes make it to court. For example (pure
| speculation): maybe their lawyers estimated a 90% chance
| that they make lots of money out of this scam, just
| giving a few refunds and apologies to the angriest
| customers; a 9% chance that a serious lawsuit emerges (in
| which case they can probably just backtrack on the whole
| thing at some small cost); and a 1% chance that they
| somehow end up in serious hot water with a regulator.
| ddingus wrote:
| Lets phrase this differently.
|
| People who buy a machine, ultimately buy the work product of
| said machine.
|
| How that happens is a layer above the core value proposition.
|
| Technically, it is a limit on what they want / need to do,
| which is why they bought the machine.
|
| Nits being picked higher up are not germane.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Nits being picked higher up are not germane._
|
| Isn't that a key distinction? Users can create unlimited
| designs of their own and print (or whatever it's called)
| them as many times as they want. The restriction is on
| importing external files, but once those are imported,
| there's no restriction on printing them.
|
| So users have unlimited use of their machines which they
| paid for and own, but metered use of pattern imports using
| the cloud software that they license but do not own.
|
| I think it's slimy business move and even unethical to
| charge for what was once free, but I'd be surprised if it's
| found to be illegal.
| ddingus wrote:
| How exactly does one create designs of their own without
| importing? How do they have others design for them
| without importing?
|
| Secondly, the data involved in the entire process being
| open means we don't have to talk about these silly
| things. And that is what an unlimited looks like.
|
| Actual open machines that take open data, are limited.
| Ones that are not open, that do not take open data are in
| fact quite Limited.
|
| And I didn't say anything about legal. It probably is,
| and I'm sure they're team vetted it too.
|
| I am all for revisiting what is legal and what is not,
| and or how we value things so Market forces determine
| that in a better way too. I don't care how it goes.
|
| I care very much about machines being limited by
| software.
|
| And be really clear, if there is preferred software for
| use with the machine, and it adds some real value of some
| kind, that's all fine and good. The perfectly Fair way to
| compete, and people will benefit from that value.
|
| That isn't what's going on here.
|
| The fact that the operation data stream isn't open,
| creates artificial value, but they're trading on. That'll
| ultimately comes at the expense of anyone who bought into
| this.
|
| The real standard should be a decade from now someone
| finds one of these in a dumpster fixes it up and can
| drive it with whatever tools they feel like to make the
| data that they need.
|
| Meta: I use voice input on this one sorry for the random
| capitalization typos.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _How exactly does one create designs of their own without
| importing them?_
|
| I'm not a Cricut user, but Cricut said:
|
| "Any project created within Design Space with images or
| fonts found in Design Space can be modified and do not
| count as a personal image upload. If users want to use
| images from other applications, such as a .jpg or .png,
| and upload those images to Design Space, that counts as a
| personal image upload."
|
| _And I didn 't say anything about legal. It probably is,
| and I'm sure they're team vetted it too._
|
| Then I think we're arguing the same point -- what Cricut
| did is bad, but probably legal and well within their
| rights and it is what happens when people embrace closed
| platforms without understanding the drawbacks.
|
| It's the same thing that leads people to buy $80 inkjet
| printers that only work with DRM'ed inkjet cartridges
| that cost $60 for a set of cartridges that contain $3
| worth of ink.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yeah for what it's worth I don't buy those shitty
| printers either.
|
| My favorite printer of all time with a PostScript printer
| my tektronix, made later by Xerox. You could literally
| FTP a PostScript file to it. And it without put a page.
| Loved it.
|
| Printers pissed me off so much I don't currently own one.
| And I have a need coming up so I'm shopping around for
| some open basic printer that I can get used, or even pay
| a little more for new, that doesn't hassle me in these
| ways, and that can be driven with relatively open data.
|
| Otherwise, it's cheaper just by few pages down then, or
| print where there printers available and deal. Which is
| exactly what I've done.
| ddingus wrote:
| Ultimately, work done that way is work done entirely
| within the scope and limitation of their software.
|
| Ask anyone in design about how good those kinds of
| solutions are. There's a lot better software out there
| for doing design work. That makes all of what you put
| here a very severe limitation on how useful the machine
| actually is.
| avs733 wrote:
| This is what I have never understood about 'clickwrap' on
| hardware (like my car).
|
| I have already bought it...shopped, signed a contract, paid for
| it, agreed with a bank in some cases on financing it...before I
| encoutner or have access the the licensing agreement.
|
| If I disagree with licensing can I juts take it back? Am I just
| precluded from using my smart driving features?
|
| I bought it, you don't get to establish rules after the fact...
| paulgb wrote:
| There used to be (possibly apocryphal but seemingly true)
| stories about people who manage to get the OEM cost of
| Windows refunded on a new computer purchase by telling
| Microsoft they did not agree with the terms. They were going
| to install Linux on it anyway so didn't need it.
|
| I'm not sure if it was official policy (out of fear that
| clickwrap isn't enforceable if you can't opt out) or if it
| was just worth it to pay off people who went to that much
| effort, but either way good for them.
| [deleted]
| ectopod wrote:
| There was a case in Italy the other day. Lenovo fought hard
| but had to pay, plus EUR20,000 damages for being a PITA.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26456524
| flatiron wrote:
| http://marc.merlins.org/linux/refundday/#:~:text=For%20thos
| e....
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > will now start charging users a monthly subscription for
| unlimited printing, _which prior to now had been free_.
|
| This is line is just infuriating to me; phrasing this change as a
| "we were giving you something for free before, but you should be
| paying for it".
|
| Of course it was "free"; the thing had already been paid for.
| This is about as ridiculous as Samsung charging me a subscription
| fee for unlimited watch-time on my TV, which previously was free,
| or Apple requiring a subscription for the unlimited use of my
| Macbook.
|
| Wrapping perfectly-functional-locally devices with a "cloud
| service" in order to maintain control needs to be reigned in. The
| cricut argument here of "[the cloud is needed to] optimize the
| design and the cutting instructions" is a problem of their own
| making.
| dawnerd wrote:
| The only thing that makes this different is you're uploading to
| cricuts servers which do processing so I can see why they'd
| want recurring revenue for that. But it shouldn't be forced on
| customers that have already purchased before the plans were
| introduced. That's just scummy.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| A few apps have done this and they only did it to take a full
| advantage of the pandemic. Two of my daily driver apps went
| this route during the pandemic (that is more fuckup when you
| think about it) and I uninstalled it immediately. One app
| took really cool features and completely nerfed/degraded it
| and hide it behind the subscription. Seriously, they put the
| crippled feature behind a subscription, wat the...
| ddingus wrote:
| The servers doing processing are completely unnecessary.
| There isn't anything happening on those little machine that
| requires it be done that way.
|
| Just a little food for thought:
|
| Say their servers did a lot of processing to ensure that your
| designs were cut optimally or were successful along with the
| time or some other criteria. That's an actual real value-add,
| and people may be willing to pay for it.
|
| How do we know whether it's a value-add or not?
|
| Open data is how we know. Free tools and do those job
| perfectly well. We've got a ton of them. None of this is new.
| curryst wrote:
| > Wrapping perfectly-functional-locally devices with a "cloud
| service" in order to maintain control needs to be reigned in.
| The cricut argument here of "[the cloud is needed to] optimize
| the design and the cutting instructions" is a problem of their
| own making.
|
| Yeah, this is why it "prior to now had been free". They were
| basically packaging unlimited uploads into the hardware (which
| is almost universally a stupid idea). They did bring this on
| themselves.
|
| I'm curious why the opted for cloud optimization. Is it too
| hardware intensive for their target audience? My CAD software
| doesn't struggle too hard unless there are a _ton_ of polygons,
| but my desktop is probably specced more than the average
| consumer.
|
| > Of course it was "free"; the thing had already been paid for.
| This is about as ridiculous as Samsung charging me a
| subscription fee for unlimited watch-time on my TV, which
| previously was free, or Apple requiring a subscription for the
| unlimited use of my Macbook.
|
| Here's the thing, though. It costs Samsung nothing for you to
| watch TV (they actually might make money if you watch more
| ads). Likewise, it costs Apple nothing for you to use your Mac.
| Updates cost them money, but that's a fixed cost. The amount
| you use the Mac doesn't make it cost more. Cricut is actually
| paying for these, so it does cost them money. Not saying what
| they did was right, but these things aren't the same.
|
| One potentially reasonable answer is that their optimizations
| are a significant part of their value add, and they weren't
| comfortable letting people run that software themselves. If
| that's the case, this doesn't bother me as long as they add the
| ability for it to use an open format.
|
| We need some kind of a consumer protection law that triggers a
| return window any time the functionality of a device that you
| have already purchased substantially changes (for a reasonable
| period of time after purchase). People who bought a Cricut
| should be able to return them now, and Cricut should have to
| eat that cost. If it's no longer viable to provide that cloud
| service for free, give people a version they can run on their
| desktop or add the ability to print open formats, or accept
| that a substantial number of customers are going to demand
| refunds that Cricut will have to process.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/cricut/comments/m4x536/consolidated...
| atian wrote:
| Farming circuit accounts may amount to a small fortune after
| 2021.
|
| > A Letter to the Cricut Community, From Ashish Arora CEO
|
| > We will continue to allow an unlimited number of personal image
| and pattern uploads for members with a Cricut account registered
| and activated with a cutting machine before December 31, 2021.
| This benefit will continue for the lifetime of your use of these
| machines.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Unless things have changed with Cricut, I've always found their
| machines to be a huge ripoff - even more so than inkjet printers
| because at least those will allow you to print whatever you want.
| I remember looking into Cricut and realizing it was made to force
| you into buying designs from their store rather than giving you
| the ability to provide an SVG(or even gcode?) of your own. It's
| possible to use your own designs, but the support for it is
| terrible since they clearly want a percentage of whatever designs
| you end up buying. In other words, it's not a useful device to
| own. If you think you're going to use a Cricut to make things you
| can sell on Etsy or the like, you will be sorely disappointed.
| mgarfias wrote:
| Wish I'd know these things before I bought a circuit for the
| wife last year
| curryst wrote:
| I'm not super surprised by that. They're almost the only
| company competing at this low of a price range. I looked at
| laser cutters that could cut acrylic, and I don't think I found
| a single one cheaper than $2k or maybe $1.4k and that was for
| offbrand Chinese stuff.
|
| These cutters live in a weird market segment of people that
| want to work with a complicated device, but who don't want
| working with it to be complicated. It's, in some ways, an
| inverse of 3D printing, which has a lot of people who revel in
| the complexity of the device. I love my 3D printers, and
| putting them together from scratch so I kind of know how it
| functions. I can't imagine my girlfriend buying something like
| a Cricut that she has to assemble herself.
|
| > If you think you're going to use a Cricut to make things you
| can sell on Etsy or the like, you will be sorely disappointed.
|
| Do people really do that? I always presumed that Cricut's were
| for one offs or prototypes, and that by the time you had an
| Etsy store, you would just order printed and cut stickers from
| China. I may well be wrong, I just figured there would be huge
| cost savings for doing so because of the factory's economy of
| scale.
| 542458 wrote:
| > looking into Cricut and realizing it was made to force you
| into buying designs from their store rather than giving you the
| ability to provide an SVG(or even gcode?) of your own
|
| In ye old days that was the case, then the explore line came
| out (with them advertising that you could bring your own SVGs),
| and it worked okay for a while... But now we're back to locked
| down.
| handmodel wrote:
| I've personally been annoyed by this. About six months ago Cricut
| wouldn't let me open if I didn't update the software but my WiFi
| was having trouble working to get the connection long enough. As
| a result - I had to wait an entire day to use it.
|
| I will never buy Cricut again
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Pre-Internet: capitalism is bound by the physical constraints it
| was developed under
|
| Post-Internet: capitalism has to turn evil to survive
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