You No Longer Own What You Buy: Arlo Cameras Lose Updates, Cloud Storage

One of the common themes here at Techdirt over the last decade is how the very meaning of “ownership” and “property” has changed — often for the worse. In the broadband connected era, firmware updates can often eliminate functionality promised to you at launch, as we saw with the Sony PlayStation 3. And with everything now relying on internet connectivity, companies can often give up on supporting devices entirely, often leaving users with very expensive paperweights as we saw after Google acquired Revolv.

The latest example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Arlo, which has announced that the company is eliminating numerous features from their Arlo cameras courtesy of a new penny pinching measure.

The update is part of Arlo’s new “end-of-life policy,” which reserves the right to eliminate all cloud functionality — including push notifications, email alerts, or other “bundled services or features” — for any camera more than four years old. Many of these users bought these products specifically because they promised free cloud functionality.

Reddit users shared the email from Arlo which puts it this way:

These cameras may continue to be operated after April 1, 2023 by all existing Arlo owners to live stream video, receive motion notifications, and store video clips locally with a compatible Arlo base station. These cameras also can utilize Arlo’s new cloud storage, which is available with the Arlo Secure subscription service, though the EOL’d cameras themselves may lose some functionality over time, as they will not be provided with further firmware upgrades.

Basically, Arlo is informing users they need to pay a subscription fee if they want the camera they purchased to continue working normally. If not, it’s up to them to use local storage (a feature that may not even work with many of these models). All basically because Arlo wants to both drive users to subscription services, and cut costs when it comes to supporting its own products.

It’s generally not a great trend, as this kind of penny pinching also often extends to security updates for such products. It’s likely to result in a class action lawsuit for Arlo, which is usually what awaits companies that begin charging users for functionality that used to be free.