{"id":250664,"date":"2026-05-20T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/vizio-smart-tv-owners-leading-the-fight-for-control-over-your-idiot-box\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:05:07","slug":"vizio-smart-tv-owners-leading-the-fight-for-control-over-your-idiot-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/vizio-smart-tv-owners-leading-the-fight-for-control-over-your-idiot-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Vizio Smart TV Owners Leading The Fight For Control Over Your Idiot Box"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vizio Smart TV Owners Leading The Fight For Control Over Your Idiot Box<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/pcper.com\/2026\/05\/vizio-smart-tv-owners-leading-the-fight-for-control-over-your-idiot-box\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-20 14:55:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: pcper.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Could We Get Access To The Full Code Running On Our Linux TVs?<\/h2>\n

The legal fight between Vizio owners and Vizio itself started in 2021 and it seems Vizio\u2019s lawyers have finally run out of ways to delay the court case, as it will be going before a Californian court this year.\u00a0 Their legal argument doesn\u2019t stem from the privacy concerns of Vizio owners, though it is definitely a driving reason behind the case.\u00a0 Instead they argue that Vizio is in breach of the\u00a0terms of GPLv2, seeing as how the TV\u2019s operating system is based on Ubuntu.\u00a0 That is a major problem for the defence as GPLv2 is legally binding and definitely applies and can be enforced.<\/p>\n

Vizio\u2019s lawyers have made some successes, or so they seem to feel, such as not having to provide \u201cguarantees a TV will continue working properly if a user reinstalls a modified version of the OS.\u201d\u00a0 They seem to think that will discourage Linux gurus and speaks to the depth of their ignorance of the community.\u00a0 Vizio and Walmart have also tried to argue that the Software Freedom Conservancy \u201cdoesn\u2019t have the right to sue Vizio to enforce license terms\u201d and that \u201cGPL is a software license, not a contract\u201d.\u00a0 These do not seem like strong arguments; but we will finally see them properly tested in court.<\/p>\n

The argument that making their source code available could reveal DRM keys that Netflix and other streaming companies provide TV manufacturers, however SFC has repeatedly pointed out that they are not seeking access to those keys.\u00a0 If they are so poorly encrypted as to allow someone with access to the source code the ability to figure out the DRM keys, that seems to be very much a problem for the providers and is not involved with their breach of GPLv2.<\/p>\n

If the SFC succeeds in their legal battle, it will have huge implications for the market as LG\u2019s webOS, Samsung\u2019s Tizen, and Roku\u2019s Roku OS are all also based on Linux distros which are covered under GPLv2 or other versions of that license.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vizio Smart TV Owners Leading The Fight For Control Over Your Idiot Box https:\/\/pcper.com\/2026\/05\/vizio-smart-tv-owners-leading-the-fight-for-control-over-your-idiot-box\/ Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/pcper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/gplv3-logo.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[30,71,211,79],"class_list":["post-250664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-breach","tag-linux","tag-tizen","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250664"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250668,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250664\/revisions\/250668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}