These types of things typically play out with lawsuits which increase liability for the producers. The problem is that it's (currently) difficult to prove damages when it's only privacy.
Uh, that's how it sorta works -- for better and for worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed
"On March 22, 1966, GM President James Roche was forced to appear before a United States Senate subcommittee, and to apologize to Nader for the company's campaign of harassment and intimidation. Nader later successfully sued GM for excessive invasion of privacy. It was the money from this case that allowed him to lobby for consumer rights, leading to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, among other things."
* Pushing common actions in a standardized way (e.g. turn on light, flip channel on TV, raise thermostat to 28 degrees).
* Sending / receiving streams of data via UDP.
* Service registration / discovery & authentication.
* Encryption.
* Upgrading firmware.
And which has a diverse set of servers which can talk these protocols.
I do however also think the gplv3 sphere needs to offer better netguis for the non cli-heroes.