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Comment by sparky_z | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't seem fair. What's a company supposed to do in that situation? Just close up shop?

Makes me wonder if it would be possible to intentionally drive a company out of business by convincing a bunch of people to use their products incorrectly.

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I don't know about Fitbit per se, but there are cases where a company says one thing in it's legal interface, but does another with it's sales interface. IOW (pure speculation on my part), Fitbit could say "don't use this for such and such" and the sales people say "yeah, we say that (wink, wink), but we don't really mean it." To be clear, I am not saying Fitbit does that, but I am familiar with other companies that have done such and gotten in trouble for it.

Oh they totally do it, but even more sneakily. After the whole Internet hypes itself up, the salesmen don't have to say a word. Random blogs, newspaper articles and word-of-mouth have already done it for them.

GNC Pill Pushers

This is where legal concepts (in the US) such as 'reasonable person' come into play. Courts usually hold that any use of a product that a 'reasonable person' would do is an acceptable use (regardless of what the instructions say - a reasonable person, it would seem, doesn't read the instructions :P). However, a company doesn't need to be held responsible for an un-reasonable use.

In this case, would courts find that a reasonable person would assume that a heart rate monitor can accurately monitor their heart rate? My guess is, yes.

So this would be similar to where a lawn more is designed to cut grass. And a reasonable person would assume that it can also cut weeds that are growing in the lawn. But it isn't reasonable to assume that you could pick it up in the air and use it as a hedge trimmer.

If you sell a device that monitors heart rates, and that device doesn't properly monitor heart rates... then you need to fix it or stop making it. I don't see why that is unfair?

If I buy a desk lamp and it doesn't work reliably then you sold me a lemon and I want my money back. It doesn't matter why I need light on my desk.

For a measurement device, "accurate" and "reliable" aren't binary conditions, they're continuums. Not every sensor in the world has to be medical grade. There are plenty of applications where a less accurate sensor at a much lower price point is the right choice.

Remember, I'm talking about situations where the company actually says "not for medical/diagnostic use". They're not trying to get away with selling lemons.

To use your analogy: If I sell you a small LED (say for use as a power indicator on a computer) and you try to use it as a desk lamp, you shouldn't be able to sue me on the grounds that "you should have known I was going to use it as a desk lamp and made it fit for that purpose". That's what seems unfair to me.

That's technically fair, but everyone knows it's not what's going there. A small LED equivalent of a heart rate monitor is your optical mouse hacked into being a crude pulse oximeter. By the way, you know your mouse is also a 1-D camera / scanner, and can be used to somewhat digitize something?

They totally advertise it as a working heart rate monitor. If they have a problem with accuracy, they should not be making it. Otherwise it's like making a tape measure that has marked distances within +/- 20% of the real value (i.e. 1cm becomes anything from 0.8cm to 1.2cm), and marking it with a small caption that it's not for construction use. Oh, and having the product website say "it measures distance" and elaborate on the benefits of measurements for building stuff.

I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand, I feel like people should be free to build whatever trinkets their like (as long as they are safe). OTOH, I feel like they should totally not be free to sell crap tools.

>your mouse is also a 1-D camera / scanner, and can be used to somewhat digitize something?

On a totally unrelated note, the image sensors in optical mice are actually low-resolution (16x16) 2D arrays.

https://pickandplace.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/2d-positioning...

Come on. They put a heart rate monitor into the device, and they plastered information about it all over their website. I didn't manage to find a single mention that it's crap.

You don't do that unless you want people to believe you're selling a working heart rate monitor. So if it turns out the monitor is not usable for its stated purpose, then they either fucked up the engineering, or they're literally scamming people. In both cases the comapny is supposed to either address the problem or close shop. That's exacly what should happen.

They could try harder to influence who buys their product and how those buyers use it before they just close up shop.

It's not like Fitbit has gigantic text on their web site and product packaging saying "NOT FOR MEDICAL USE." In fact, I challenge you to find any such statement anywhere on their web site. I couldn't, but maybe I suck at it.

They could try a little harder to educate their buyers, here.

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