Smart TV Terms Tracker

About this archive

Smart TV Terms Tracker stores manufacturer and partner legal documents as versioned files in git. When two snapshots disagree, it shows a text diff. Recurring clause patterns get a plain-language note that deep-links into the corpus.

No accounts. US English in v1. Public research site.

Not legal advice

Nothing here is a lawyer, a clinic, or a substitute for the agreement on your own television. Firmware, country, and on-TV wording diverge from web PDFs. Implication notes explain why a pattern is worth reading, cite sources, and point at quotes. They do not tell you what to do in a dispute.

Status badges are part of the record. Archived means we stored text fetched from a public URL or PDF. Placeholder means the live page was JS-walled, 403, or missing, so the file describes what belongs there and cites coverage instead of inventing clause-level quotes. Sample is used when we only have a vendor’s public description of a change (for example LG’s August 2026 arbitration update) and need a before/after for the diff UI.

How versions are stored

Documents live under content/brands/{brand}/{doc-slug}/versions/YYYY-MM-DD.md (partners under content/partners/). YAML frontmatter records brand, title, US jurisdiction, source URL, retrieved date, optional effective date, SHA-256 of the normalized body, partner names, and implication tags. A new file is written only when that hash changes. See npm run ingest.

Implication explainers live in content/implications/*.md and point at brand + document + version + a quoted excerpt. The document reader highlights matching quotes.

What v1 captured

Fetched where HTML or PDF was reachable: Hisense EULA and data-protection policy; TCL privacy and site terms; Samsung US privacy policy and SmartTV supplement; Sony Electronics privacy policy and website terms; Sony My BRAVIA app privacy; Alphonso Smart TV and OS policies; Samba TV Terms of Service plus Privacy Handbook / Principles / opt-out notice; LG’s September 2026 privacy statement; a public PDF of LG’s Viewing / Voice / advertising / Who.Where.What? agreements plus the January 2024 Smart Media Product Terms of Use, Legal Notice, and February 2024 Privacy Policy. The live US Sony Samba FAQ (article 00182856, Last Modified 02/10/2026) was captured in a browser after expanding every accordion; the 06/05/2025 Wayback snapshot is the prior version. Samba’s June 24, 2026 Privacy Policy was captured in a browser from the Privacy Center (the same URL is a marketing shell to curl).

What v1 did not capture

Still missing: the unpublished August 28, 2026 LG on-TV Terms of Use rewrite (support copy is stored as sample); live JS Privacy Center body at privacy.us.lg.com; US lgappstv.com/main/terms (JS shell; AU mirror rendered Legal Notice only); Samsung Smart Hub notices (403). The on-TV BRAVIA privacy notice (Help → Privacy setting) is still not published as HTML. Remaining gaps are marked placeholders or samples.

How to contribute a correction

  1. Capture the real text (on-TV screenshot OCR, saved HTML, or official PDF).
  2. Run npm run ingest -- --url <url-or-file> --owner lg --kind brand --doc viewing-information --title "…"
  3. If the hash matches the latest version, nothing is written. If it changed, a new dated markdown file appears.
  4. Update or add an implication note if the clause pattern shifted. Do not invent quotes that look like official ToS.
  5. Open a pull request with source URL and retrieval date in the frontmatter.

Why this exists

In 2026, independent reporting (notably Gamers Nexus, with follow-ups in The Verge, Ars Technica, and others) put LG webOS under a microscope: LAN discovery, ACR, standby microphone questions, and User Agreements that run tens of thousands of words. Optional ACR, partner ad graphs, arbitration, and household consent show up across Sony (Samba), Samsung Smart Hub, Hisense (Nexxen), and TCL. This project keeps the paper trail.