I'm saying there should be a law where the govt punishes the company.

If the law needs me as an individual consumer to procure my own team of lawyers to go up against a multinational every time I buy a new TV, then that law might as well not exist.

The damages would probably only qualify for small–claims court. These cases don’t take much time to present or judge, and the evidence you need is quite straight forward. Consulting with a lawyer on the matter, if you wanted that extra assurance, wouldn’t cost much.

I was exaggerating a bit for effect.

I consider my time for a day off work, travel to court, preparation, irritation, etc more than the value of the TV, and they probably wouldn't pay me damages for those things.

The point is that I shouldn't have to do that as an individual for every purchase.

We need a blanket rule that they can't remotely modify purchased items in a way that cannot be rolled-back by the consumer to the functionality at the time of purchase.

I agree with you there, but you won’t get it if you don’t force them to refund you. Things will just continue as they are.

Just buy the company-tethered stuff and return it. It's your right as a consumer, and one of the few ways to take action and make it hurt.

I can't just automatically return stuff.

I'm in Australia. Although we're covered by what I consider to be pretty good consumer guarantees, you can still only demand a refund in the case of a "major problem" with the product.

I don't think simply being unhappy with it connecting outside would qualify, although IMO it should.

https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/products-and-services/refund...

What are the rules on returning stuff where you are?

Can you just buy a TV, use it for 6 months, and return it no questions asked?

If so, it sounds ripe for abuse, and surprisingly lenient especially if it's the US where I thought there were much less consumer guarantees.

It depends on the retailer, but probably you won’t be able to return it for a refund. You should attempt it though, or at least be able to present the retailer’s return policy as evidence in small–claims court.

This is why punitive damages exist. Because you can sometimes get a lawyer to work on your case with no cash. So they can collect a large percentage of those punitive damages.

Looks like this was partly successful against Sony but it took six years in court and people didn't get the whole price back when they removed Linux support from the PS3:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/if-you-used-to-r...

Litigation is expensive, pretty much the only way it can be done in the US is as a class action where the number of people ripped off is large.

Those damages were assigned with the assumption that most people didn't buy a PS3 to run Linux on it. If you opted out of the class action I have no doubt you would have gotten a full refund.