Revenue from self-driving Teslas only allowed through the Tesla Network
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Traditionally, goods are subject to the first sale doctrine--once I buy a shirt, it's my property, and if I want to sell or rent it, I can. It's mine.
But software is licensed. When I buy a piece of software, I'm actually paying for a limited and revokable right to use someone else's property. And now companies are putting software into more and more goods.
As software is eating the world, it is also eating our concept of what it means to buy and own things.
Amazon in 2009 remotely deleted George Orwell books (you can't make this up) from customer Kindles without asking first. Amazon didn't need the customers' permission because a Kindle book is legally a license, not a piece of property.
John Deere tractors have been prized by farmers for their durability and flexibility. Now they come with software and a prohibition against customer modification or repair.
It sounds silly but the right to repair our own property is under threat. It's now something that we need to fight for.
And now apparently even paying $100,000 will not be enough to give full ownership rights to a car.
> Traditionally, goods are subject to the first sale doctrine--once I buy a shirt, it's my property, and if I want to sell or rent it, I can. It's mine.
> But software is licensed. When I buy a piece of software, I'm actually paying for a limited and revokable right to use someone else's property. And now companies are putting software into more and more goods.
That's a pretty good summary.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that is true either. I am probably more politically active than most, in that I will actually contact my representatives about issues I consider important. My representatives have, in some cases, been more tech savvy than most as well. And yet still there is little real change in technical fields, because the overwhelming majority of politicians are not aware of the real issues and implications and the briefings they get come from the very big businesses who stand to gain the most from additional laws and variations on the theme of regulatory capture. If the only people running in an election are all like that, who do you vote for if you want something else?
I see a few plausible ways to improve the situation. Firstly, voting with our wallets works if and when there are better alternatives available, and sadly is often far more flexible, far more effective and far more quickly effective than voting in an election.
Secondly, if we can raise the issues to a high enough level of public awareness that they start to become politically relevant, then the politicians will start caring enough to get better briefings and explore more points of view. The danger with this one is that with technology issues, people often only start to care when something significant and bad happens to them personally or to someone close to them, and it may be far too late to fix the underlying problems by then.
One of the possibilities I find most interesting is that in the current political climate in the West, the established political classes are deeply unpopular, and in some cases rival movements are picking up serious interest even if they're a little bit crazy just because they're not the old guard. This also leaves the door open for much more savvy people to enter politics who might never have considered doing so before, and if even a few people who care deeply about some of these issues manage to get into power within national governments, we could start to see some real change.
And of course, there is always the option that many people will take in real life: ignore the restrictions/laws and get away with it. I don't like this one at all personally, because it means those who work within the system are always losing out to those willing to break the rules, but there's no point denying the reality. For example, what are Tesla really going to do to someone who violates this rule? If they start routinely breaking the cars somehow then they're going to face an existential threat to their brand. If they sue the customer, there's a fair chance that they will lose after their terms are found to violate consumer protection laws in enough jurisdictions to kill their whole strategy.
The sad thing is that the final option is often "good enough" for enough people that we don't build enough momentum to push for the other better ones, so the law-abiding but better-wanting citizens lose out as usual.
1) Goods powered by software are frequently much better than goods without. I mean, compare a phone with software vs. without. Compare a car with software vs. without. Which one would you rather have?
2) Entire industries are converting to software-based capability. Speaking of phones and cars, try to find a new one these days without software in it.
I think we have to adjust, as a society.
Or, we start demanding that software, when purchased as part of a physical device, does not reduce the rights customers have to their physical device.
Im not saying its hard to find them yet, but at this point 2 out of 3 toasters at my local grocery store have software in them - simple software, not connected, but software nonetheless, in a device that needs none, a device that has worked mechanically for decades with no issue... Everything is going that way though, becuase its easier to design something with software rather than figuring out how to make a piece of machinery make a decision mechanically - it easier to just use sensors and software...
It's an issue of patent, copyright and rent seeking. We are so far down that rabbit hole globally, and governments have given far too much for it to be recoverable. Who do I vote for to get wholesale scaling back of IP law? What do I do knowing there's unlikely to be candidates promoting this stance?
Imagine if Consumer Reports could access the code and do a code review when testing a car. We know from lawsuits that Toyota software is absolutely horrible, for instance. I'd think that insurance companies and consumers would benefit from knowing that up front.
Or imagine if repair shops could get certified for access to the software to modify it. Mod shops already do this on the sly--they're just hoping to fly under the law. Maybe they have to carry a bond, like home contractors.
On an Android device or Chromebook there is a user-adjustable setting that permits root powers. If there was a liability standard about this capability, then maybe more companies would feel comfortable offering it.
The ideal would be full source access to everything, but I think there probably will have to be some intermediate steps or limits, as a means of compromise.
I think you mean 'wallet'.
But it's hard for consumers when as individuals they have little choice.
Mobile OSs come in 2 flavours. Wherein there is lack of competition, it's nary impossible for consumers to 'vote with their wallets' because there's few other places they can go.
I think this might call for some intelligent regulation.
If you support it, why? Otherwise, your comment adds no more substance than me saying "I'm against this." and offering no further explanation.
This is just the Apple iOS walled garden again.
"If you want to make money using our car, we get a cut".
And I like my iPhone walled garden just fine.
When our government catches up with the idea that if it looks like a purchase, it is a purchase, we'll re-evaluate that decision.
How do we handle software ownership? If I sell you a piece of software that you now own, you can go and resell copies of that software to whoever you want. What is the best way to handle that?
Warranties on physical goods have a long history (in the US) of being void if the owner makes certain changes. Should that apply to software?
(great comment btw)
(Yes, I'm aware that part of the above means that software engineering needs to grow up and become a real engineering discipline. I'm OK with that, in fact I think it's overdue.)
Warranties on physical goods have a long history (in the US) of being void if the owner makes certain changes. Should that apply to software?
I'm struggling to think of an example where this doesn't apply already. Can you give an example where a software company has honoured a warranty request even with custom modification? Or even where a warranty request for a pure software product was honoured? Even Firefox, a good example of a software product that thrives on third-party modifications, requests that you try to reproduce bugs in safe mode, with all add-ons disabled, and they give no guarantees about following up on your report.
The only example I can think of right now is Microsoft's support strategy: they will bill you for the support request unless you can successfully convince them that it's a genuine bug in their software. But I don't think MS support tickets are an example of product warranty, since it's provided as an additional service anyway.
The idea that copyright law should prevent things like format shifting or making personal back-up copies of a song or movie someone already paid for is absurd to me. It's just the legal version of scope creep.
The idea that copyright law should allow people who sell software to impose arbitrary restrictions on how it may be used or whether that copy can subsequently be passed on to someone else or any other unrelated conditions for that matter, all because of technicalities about making transient copies when software is installed on a device or executed from RAM, is just the worst kind of legal sophistry.
I think there are reasonable arguments about alternative business models, particularly permanent sales vs. some sort of temporary rental arrangement. There's a danger here that for pure knowledge works we may shift towards a system where everyone has to rent everything, but I think it's too early to say that the market can't sort this one out on its own and the success of services like Netflix and Spotify suggests that other models can be useful as well.
In a some very limited cases, I think there are also valid reasons to restrict what the general public are allowed to do with software, but these are mostly regulatory issues where we already have similar concerns with physical devices, such as preventing someone who doesn't know what they're doing from bringing down a communications network by transmitting noise and effectively DoS attacking everyone else. But IMHO these cases should invariably be addressed with their own suitable laws or regulations, issued by the relevant government authorities for the common good, not by the original developers subverting the principle of copyright for their own purposes.
Otherwise, for a physical product that only includes software incidentally anyway, I just don't see any ethical basis for restricting what the customer can do with it just because of the software element, and abusing copyright law for that purpose just shows how broken copyright law has become.
It's up to us.
If people feel its desirable to combat this trend, they need to be willing to take more legal responsibility for how they choose to use their products. Otherwise, compromising on full unrestricted ownership is the price paid to cover manufacturers' insurance costs.
Note: this isn't absolute - there are many cases of corporations simply abusing this outright, like snowwrestler's Amazon example - but it's certainly the case for Tesla and a lot of others.
However, they know that won't hold up in the court of public awareness/opinion, and that if people messing with their Teslas end up causing lots of problems, that legislatures and regulators are more likely to clamp down on self-driving cars generally. Which is the opposite of what they want.
That wasn't protecting themselves from litigation. That's saying "this car is ours, you just get to use it, and we control how".
Just like you cannot get a service manual for Tesla vehicles. Except in MA, where it's required by law. Where you have to make an appointment, go into their office, and view the manual on-site, and can't take it with you. I believe you also have to pay a fee to do so, or at least did.
If their response is merely, "Okay, but we're not responsible for damages," then that's great, who cares. But if they take any sort of measure to remotely disable your car or to hamstring your car's software, that would be a very slippery slope to start down.
What happens when they, say, strike a deal with McDonald's and ban drivers from going to Burger King locations? It sounds far-fetched, but I don't see any difference. Where we take our cars and why should not be Tesla's business.
And I don't think they'll ever ban people from going to places - as long as you use approved Tesla tools to request that destination.
If Tesla's APIs can't handle input spam, that's on them. That's a very predictable and easily-solved problem. The entire point of an API is to expose a limited surface area so that you can easily interoperate while maintaining control and responsibility.
> Or screws up the location and sends a passenger a dozen miles from their intended destination? Or where the Tesla algos find a route it's been given to be undriveable and just turn back? Sure, you and I would rightly hold the modder accountable, but that's because we understand how this stuff works. Everybody else will see "Tesla cars" not working right, and that's a huge headache and liability for Tesla.
If Uber sends your car to the wrong location, then that's that. No big deal. People go to the wrong locations themselves all the time. I don't see how this is an Uber-specific problem, and I don't buy the argument that people are smart enough to hook their Tesla up to Uber but too stupid to understand who's at fault when the car correctly navigates itself to an incorrect location.
> And I don't think they'll ever ban people from going to places - as long as you use approved Tesla tools to request that destination.
There is no "approved Tesla tool" to connect to Uber. What happens if they modify their "approved Tesla tools" so they won't auto-drive you to a Burger King?
Sure, it's on them, and it appears they've solved that problem by cutting out other apps entirely. Certainly I'd prefer it if they would let people experiment with their product, but I can see why they wouldn't want them to, considering that it's a rapidly evolving, high-stakes product.
> If Uber sends your car to the wrong location, then that's that. No big deal. People go to the wrong locations themselves all the time. I don't see how this is an Uber-specific problem, and I don't buy the argument that people are smart enough to hook their Tesla up to Uber but too stupid to understand who's at fault when the car correctly navigates itself to an incorrect location.
It's not "Uber-specific", it's just an example of the sort of thing that could happen if a third-party app makes errors. Reasonable people will understand that it's the app at fault, but most people will just see the headline: "Panicked partiers trapped as Tesla self-driving car goes on a robot joyride!"
> There is no "approved Tesla tool" to connect to Uber. What happens if they modify their "approved Tesla tools" so they won't auto-drive you to a Burger King?
Tesla disallowing third-party apps and self-driving-for-revenue outside Tesla Network doesn't make a difference to whether they could do such a thing. But you can see that they have sensible reasons to not want these things (software concerns, commercial insurance, public/regulator perception) and there's no real reason that they would block you from going to particular destinations. Internet Explorer could block you from using anything but Bing, but they don't. That would be ridiculous.
Why not? It flies just fine now with physical goods. If someone hand-builds their own bicycle wheel, and installs it on their bicycle, and then the wheel breaks and they crash... no one is blaming the bike manufacturer. No one is saying "that bike company should have welded the safer wheels on and issued a license prohibiting wheel alterations."
Everyone gets that the customer took the liability in their own hands once they started using their own hands to modify the product. It's the classic trade-off of freedom vs. security.
This ability to allocate liability to the customer is part of what we DO need for software, IMO. Right now there is a popular perception that software cannot be modified or interacted with by anyone but the company who wrote it. I don't think that has to be true forever though.
I'm not saying that it's ideal for Tesla to lock down the system like this. I'm saying that, given the risks they face, in terms of legislation, regulation and public opinion, their approach is very understandable.
Why not? It's how everything else works. If you buy a house and then install your own electrical wiring which causes your house to burn down, you have no claim against the construction company and nobody blames them for it because it was your fault, not theirs.
This recent attitude of "people won't understand, therefore corporations have to be paternalistic" is patronizing and factually incorrect. People do actually understand. The worst outcome is that technology-ignorant bureaucrats require companies to clamp down on modding. But having companies do that to begin with is no improvement.
The basis of this seems to be the conceit that manufacturers can actually control their products after they've been sold. It can be true for a time, in the sense that it takes people that long to figure out how to break back into the things they own, but it happens. If you can jailbreak an iPhone then you can jailbreak your car.
Which means that we have a choice. The first option is to accept the inevitable and support it. Expect people to make changes and take responsibility for their own changes, and facilitate that. The second is to try to lock everything down, so that the people making modifications have no access to documentation and have to be running out of date software because the old version with the jailbreak vulnerability is the same old version with the anti-lock brake glitch, which makes it much more likely that people will die. What does that do for your brand?
I think you're really overestimating both the level of technical comprehension generally, and people's attitude towards "due diligence". People understand what a house is and what wires are. They are not, as of yet, that clear on how neural nets, sensor systems, and dynamically updated software come together to make a self-driving vehicle. If modders cause problems, especially with something as mobile and potentially destructive as a car, the general reaction could easily be "this is mostly the fault of the self-driving Tesla, and the fact that they didn't do due diligence in preventing misuse." It is not a very reasonable reaction, but it is a likely one - and one that could have serious consequences for Tesla as a company.
>The worst outcome is that technology-ignorant bureaucrats require companies to clamp down on modding. But having companies do that to begin with is no improvement.
It's not the same. A bureaucrat's rules are mandatory for everybody. Tesla has competitors who may choose a different route.
> The basis of this seems to be the conceit that manufacturers can actually control their products after they've been sold. It can be true for a time, in the sense that it takes people that long to figure out how to break back into the things they own, but it happens. If you can jailbreak an iPhone then you can jailbreak your car.
A self-driving Tesla is not an iPhone, because an iPhone is unlikely to run somebody over or block a freeway. Risks are relevant. Self-driving systems are also dynamically updated and dependent on networked information. It already is a service, not a fixed product. You don't own a self-driving system (at least Tesla's idea of it) any more than you own an Amazon Web Services server rack by having something hosted on it.
> Which means that we have a choice. The first option [....] which makes it much more likely that people will die. What does that do for your brand?
Maybe in the future, when such things are more familiar, Tesla will feel confident enough to open their products up to modders. But right now? When even the idea of self-driving cars is a challenging sell, and they're being criticized for it not being secure and consistent enough? No, not now.
They don't have to be, for the same reason that you don't have to understand Maxwell's equations to understand that it's possible to cause a fire with bad wiring. The concept of "the user modifications caused the problem" is not beyond the public understanding. Anyone who cares about more details than that can take the time to understand them but those are not the people you have to worry about.
> It's not the same. A bureaucrat's rules are mandatory for everybody. Tesla has competitors who may choose a different route.
Your arguments either apply or they don't. Their competitors are not in a different situation and there are not very many of them. They'll likely all make the same choice.
> A self-driving Tesla is not an iPhone, because an iPhone is unlikely to run somebody over or block a freeway. Risks are relevant.
That's the point. You don't want a black box in control of life or death situations. You want something the user can understand when they're capable of it, so that the 2% of users who are can identify and fix problems that will affect the other 98% before it turns into deaths and liability.
Opening up the car could reduce their liability, because it gives them somewhere else to point the finger sometimes, and a large population of people willing to find and fix problems. If they control the car entirely then all the liability is always on them and no one can help them when they make a mistake.
> Maybe in the future, when such things are more familiar, Tesla will feel confident enough to open their products up to modders. But right now? When even the idea of self-driving cars is a challenging sell, and they're being criticized for it not being secure and consistent enough? No, not now.
Right now is when the precedent and expectations are being set.
>They don't have to be, for the same reason that you don't have to understand Maxwell's equations to understand that it's possible to cause a fire with bad wiring. The concept of "the user modifications caused the problem" is not beyond the public understanding. Anyone who cares about more details than that can take the time to understand them but those are not the people you have to worry about.
You try convincing the public of that. Every time a Tesla has caught on fire, it's been reported on in numerous news outlets. Despite the fact that thousands of gasoline cars catch on fire every year, people are worried about much rarer, milder lithium-ion battery fires. It's a new thing, so it gets way more scrutiny. People aren't always reasonable, and regulations are often made based on perceptions of danger, not actual risks. I think Tesla is not being unreasonable in thinking that "well, it's the owner's fault for messing with it!" is going to come off as anything but mealy-mouthed blame deflection. Even if they're in the right.
>Your arguments either apply or they don't. Their competitors are not in a different situation. They'll all make the same choice.
So whatever choice Tesla makes, all their competitors will also make? Or, in the case of Uber's in-development car, probably already have made? I think you're according them more influence than they really have. The point stands that whatever Tesla's choice on this matter, it does not apply a legal obligation on their competitors to do the same. So it is not "no improvement".
>That's the point. You don't want a black box in control of life or death situations. You want something the user can understand when they're capable of it, so that the 2% of users who are can identify and fix problems that will affect the other 98% before it turns into deaths and liability. Opening up the car could reduce their liability, because it gives them somewhere else to point the finger sometimes, and a large population of people willing to find and fix problems. If they control the car entirely then all the liability is always on them and no one can help them when they make a mistake.
But that's the thing - they don't want to be pointing the finger anywhere because that's almost always bad press for them. Throwing blame just looks bad. While helpful users are certainly an asset, it's mostly as a resource for identifying problems, not attempting to solve them on their own cars. Trying to aggregate, understand, vet, and integrate users' solutions is a huge and difficult undertaking, and not something that I think they want to attempt while trying to roll out a reasonably consistent product.
The reply link doesn't appear right away on new posts. If you click the post time next to the poster's name it will open the post by itself which has the reply link.
> Every time a Tesla has caught on fire, it's been reported on in numerous news outlets.
And in every one of those stories there are ten people asking why this is a story because battery fires are less common than gasoline fires. System working as intended.
> So whatever choice Tesla makes, all their competitors will also make?
They don't have 10,000 competitors. It isn't a stretch to imagine that the small handful all make the same choice.
But suppose they don't. You can't have it both ways. Either someone allows modifications and whatever hypothetical bad reactionary laws that causes will come to pass, or nobody does and the laws are never passed but the result is the same.
> Or, in the case of Uber's in-development car, probably already have made?
Uber is going to make a self-driving car and then sell them to the public so that members of the public can lease it back to Uber and Lyft?
> But that's the thing - they don't want to be pointing the finger anywhere because that's almost always bad press for them. Throwing blame just looks bad.
You're assuming the net problems as a result of openness are more rather than less, which is wrong. People fix more problems than they create, because people don't like having problems. You open things up and you get a lot of people fixing trouble and a smaller number of people causing trouble. The net result is less overall trouble and the ability to blame the troublemakers for the trouble they cause. None of that hurts you.
> While helpful users are certainly an asset, it's mostly as a resource for identifying problems, not attempting to solve them on their own cars.
Well first of all that's false, having them fix the problem saves you the trouble of doing it. But even identifying problems doesn't work without understanding. 99% of the fix is thoroughly understanding the problem.
If the system is a black box then the user doesn't know how it's supposed to work. So you simultaneously get spammed with false positive bug reports from users who think there could be a problem but aren't allowed to understand whether there really is, and lose true positive reports because weird behavior gets written off as "it's a black box" and the last three things they reported were false positives.
It's still FUD that they could rightfully perceive as hurting them. They're taking enough risks as it is, I can imagine that they don't need more criticism of their safety.
> But suppose they don't. You can't have it both ways. Either someone allows modifications and whatever hypothetical bad reactionary laws that causes will come to pass, or nobody does and the laws are never passed but the result is the same.
I'm not just saying it's about the laws (Tesla has had a hard enough time tangling with these, and has been specifically singled out by regulators on occasion, such as in Germany right now), but also about their brand. They're sensitive to criticism, and, therefore, to the possible sources of criticism - whether justified or not.
> Uber is going to make a self-driving car and then sell them to the public so that members of the public can lease it back to Uber and Lyft?
I'm saying that Uber is developing self driving cars (or rather, the self-driving systems) which they appear intent on using for their own fleet, rather than selling as a kit or whole car, which they could have done. Tesla has been selling cars already, but it's going to be selling a new kind of car which has certain Uber-like properties. There are a range of ownership options and this is not an inherently illegitimate one.
> Well first of all that's false, having them fix the problem saves you the trouble of doing it. But even identifying problems doesn't work without understanding. 99% of the fix is thoroughly understanding the problem. If the system is a black box then the user doesn't know how it's supposed to work. So you simultaneously get spammed with false positive bug reports from users who think there could be a problem but aren't allowed to understand whether there really is, and lose true positive reports because weird behavior gets written off as "it's a black box" and the last three things they reported were false positives.
Sure, understanding the problem often helps more than simply reporting "there is a problem". But they could allow people to inspect the code and diagnostics without allowing any changes, the first does not necessarily imply the second. And if you really allow people to get into the code deeply enough to make the kinds of changes that fix problems in the system itself (rather than some sort of API for strictly limited input) then you've potentially given a large amount of your system to your competitors.
You described exactly the problem people have with this idea :)
> Do you think that Tesla should have to make sure that its self-driving software is compatible with every ridesharing app that any random person comes up with? How will that work with liability if somebody sends their self-driving Tesla out to work under a ridesharing app that feeds bad inputs to it?
Then they should prohibit interfacing the car with 3rd party software quoting relevant regulations (or at least a generic "for safety reasons"), not put a blanket ban on commercial use of the self-driving functionality.
For now it seems that they don't even want me to physically sit there in the driver's seat and do something else while the car is driving, which puts your whole speculation about Tesla's motives into question.
And BTW, what if somebody breaks this rule and hacks his car into an autonomous Uber slave? By your logic, if something bad happens Tesla will still get blamed. All they accomplished is CYA and for that a warning about dangers of interfacing with unauthorized software would be sufficient. Even better in fact, because not all unauthorized software must be commercial.
There are frequently limits put on use by sellers even when things are sold outright. You can purchase prescription drugs, but you can't just give them to anyone, or resell them without limits. You can often get software licenses for educational purposes that are not to be used for business. You may not like such restrictions, and certainly I don't think they should be made mandatory for everybody by law, but I don't think making it illegal for a company to make such rules is a very good idea. The easiest solution is simply to not purchase the offending product.
Edit: as regards the commercal/non-commercial mods, I think it's reasonable to imagine that they are trying to avoid the commercial insurance snafus that have entangled ride-sharing apps. When you accept money for a service you put yourself into a bunch of liability positions. And in this case, the liability is on the creator of the self-driving program.
Okay, Tesla's reasonable licensing agreement has a liability waiver when using the app for ride-sharing outside of certified applications.
That's a pretty reasonable piece of licensing. It's also not unheard of to state that a piece of equipment is not warrantied or you waive liability if used in commercial ventures, or outside of normal operation.
I'd be fine with that. It places responsibility on the owner of the car.
edit:
I also have no problem with Tesla not facilitating ride sharing. If the limitation to their network is just because the software makes it difficult to use a third party app then so be it.
I would add, though, that whether the next generation accepts it or not is not really the problem. It won't likely be viewed as a positive thing, whether they accept it or not. Why should the next generation have to accept something that is a net negative for them, just because the current generation has decided for them that it's how it's going to be?
If you do not propagate cultural values that prioritize true ownership to younger generations now, you may be punished for your attempts to assert true ownership later.
I really don't want to jailbreak my automobile when I'm 70, and then get reported to the cops when my grandchild discovers that I have been changing my own oil, or uploading music ripped from 50-year-old CDs to the entertainment system, or modifying the control system for a manual input override, or blocking my usage data from being uploaded to the government.
The next generation will just get cancer as often as we do. Why bother trying to curb smoking. (okay, this one would be for my grandparents).
Sure we don't like taxation without representation, but the next generation will grow up with and won't mind. Why bother changing it.
Obviously the answers to these questions vary, but few people will answer "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, always, if you could get a deed to the Earth you could feed us all to the dogs".
And the new generations believe in the sacred rights of the capital class less and less.
But my cars take me wherever I want to go, my music makes me feel good, my phone helps me in a multitude of ways and my apartment is great and, hopefully, my house will be too. They get the job done.
Is there a risk that the owning party (who sometimes don't even own the stuff they're selling!) can take everything away? Of course. But it's rare enough for me to not worry about. If I can't make my car payments, I've got bigger problems.
OK, but how are they actually doing it? What kind of papers do they have to make such demands?
I naively believe that if I just "buy a car", it is the vendor's obligation to ensure that "the car" includes a perpetual and irrevocable license to use for any purpose all of the 1st and/or 3rd party software required for the operation of the hardware. I am buying a functional car and I don't care how it's made inside, it simply must work and be legal to use in any way one would use a car.
Or is it customary nowadays that buying a car involves separately (even if from the same vendor) purchasing hardware and licensing software for it, on two different pieces of paper?
This is not entirely unreasonable, they can probably justify it some way, of course it's probably just a away go guarantee their service contracts.
If your modification or repair can be shown to contribute to a problem/ accident, you're held liable, not the manufacturer.
Instead it was used, and abused by manufacturers - "Oh, your transmission blew? Horrible! It's a real shame that you put aftermarket rims on your car, those are non approved parts and void your vehicles warranty!"
Think about it: some guy changes the suspension on his car, making it super tight, puts racing wheels on - and then claims an issue on 'warranty' when something happens due to his modifications?
It's definitely within reason to forfeit a warranty if someone hacks up the product with their customizations.
There's no way an auto-manufacturer can provide warranties for parts, which depend on other parts - that have been altered.
Basically, it's a car manufacturer telling you you can't drive certain people for a certain reason from and to certain places. This is way more invasive than a lot of what I have seen, and I live in an ex socialist country where the military/intelligence powers have more influence than the political.
I would understand this if they had something like a SIM lock where a carrier sells you a phone at a loss and forces you to use their SIM, but Tesla owners are paying the full amount. To be blunt: if we're in a brothel and you're not paying, you have no business telling me with whom to go upstairs.
Liability with respect to the operation of physical products is well understood. There are private standards that insurance companies and courts are familiar with (for example: Underwriter Labs, NIST, NSF, ANSI). If your product passes the relevant standard, and a customer causes harm with the product, then you've got a great argument that your company should not be held liable for that harm.
Software licenses almost always just try to disclaim any and all liability entirely. "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS AND IS NOT FIT FOR ANY PURPOSE"--anyone who has read a software license has probably seen language like that.
Then on top of that, software is increasingly networked with centralized services. Tesla's self-driving technology, as described so far, will be dependent on data made available over the network--like whether the radar return at a given location is a known billboard. So liability will attach to not just the car, not just the software, but also the real-time service run by Tesla.
Companies use liability as a major reason to restrict the rights of consumers. We need industry and legal frameworks to allocate liability for software and services like we have for physical goods.
However, Tesla is aware that they (and others developing automobile autonomy systems) are under scrutiny, and that, in the eyes of the public, the media, and regulators, they simply cannot divest themselves of liability. This is especially true because of the hazardous nature of cars and the novelty of the technology. They've already been publically embarrassed by having one of their cars hacked into. I do not think they have any appetite for opening up a novel flagship product to unapproved mucking-about, and I cannot honestly blame them. They are covering their asses.
It looks like they are attempting to prohibit driving people for money, not connecting the car to unauthorized software. "Revenue purposes" is the exact words they used.
Edit: and they've certainly seen the trouble that Uber and Lyft have gotten into insurance-wise with regards to carrying passengers as a "public accomodation". It's quite possible that they want to handle this centrally for insurance purposes. Which are bound to be a challenge with regards to self-driving cars.
Their lies don't become any more compelling when you repeat them.
Maybe instead of asserting that I'm "repeating lies" you could ask whether I mean what you think I mean.
A hypothetical Uber app that controlled the self-driving car would just be passing the user's destination through - to be verified as if they entered it directly. It wouldn't be controlling the steering...
I don't think there's any difference. In order to make your Tesla able to drive for Uber, you're going to need to do something to it. That's what they're prohibiting. If you yourself want to drive for Uber, they are fine with that. But they don't want you modifying the car to drive for Uber by itself.
I think that's a good thing because it allows Tesla to receive an income that is closer to the value they have created.
The value of a Blu-ray disc bought to watch at home is about $15. The value of a Blu-ray disc bought to play in a movie theatre is much higher. It's great that the movie studio can place restrictions on how you use the Blu-ray because it means the studio receives an income closer to the total value they have created. If there were no such restrictions the movie industry would be smaller and would make fewer movies.
The value of an autonomous Tesla car bought for private use is about $60,000. The value of an autonomous Tesla car bought for ride-sharing is much higher. It's great that Tesla can place restrictions on how you use the car because it means they receive an income closer to the total value they have created. If there were no such restrictions the car industry would be smaller and would make fewer autonomous cars.
If you feel it's wrong to place restrictions on the use of a Blu-ray, what is the benefit that outweighs having a smaller movie industry and fewer movies available to consumers?
If you feel it's OK to place restrictions on the use of a Blu-ray but not on an autonomous Tesla, what's the difference?
Oh, except that value was created by the person using the car not the car itself, which just sits there until someone does something. That person does all the work and assumes all the risk, so why should Ford be rewarded for their effort?
Do you want to go to Home Depot and pay different prices for nails based on the value of the building you're going to build with them? This rabbit hole goes a long way down.
But if Ford was to develop something better than any other car company - say, a car with the greatest acceleration - I would like them to be able to charge different price depending on whether the purchaser is the police force or a car racing team.
Nails are very much a commodity product, so once again competition would prohibit the supplier from charging much more than the cost of production. But let's say that a chemical company developed a superior adhesive such that a carpenter could save an hour on some types of construction jobs. The value of a carpenter's time is much more in the United States than in Indonesia, so I would like the chemical company to be able to charge much more for the same adhesive in the US compared to Indonesia.
This isn't really how free markets work, though; either it's a competitive market in which the profit margin tends to zero, or (especially for SV unicorns) it's a monopoly or market-dominating company that gets to charge monopoly prices.
The market valuation for Uber isn't based on today's profits, it's the expected value of a string of future profits which can only be realised without strong competition. Likewise Tesla. Only one of them can win.
(The argument that DRM on blu-rays enlarge the movie industry really needs substantiating and accounting for the increased cost of blu-rays and players. This is separate from the copyright rules on public performance of recordings.)
Warning: you pay for someone else's effects of work, but it's still too early to call software property.
Tesla wants their cars to be the best and most popular cars on the road. It's directly beneficial to their mission of safer and more convenient driving for everyone. our entire notion of what driving means and how it's done will change when Teslas outnumber manually-driven cars (they'll be closer to the protocols followed by planes, actually).
There's only one problem. Not everyone can afford to buy or finance a $100,000 car. Many people struggle to buy or finance a $30,000 car. But many more people can afford to lease cars at those price-points. So like every luxury car brand ever, it's in Tesla's best interest to promote leasing the car to get it in as many people's garages as possible.
This creates another problem: Teslas aren't sold at dealerships. You configure your car online, check out, sign some papers and wait for your car to be delivered. There's no central place for modified Teslas to be sold or traded-in and reconfigured back to stock. A modified Tesla compromises the safety features that make them so lucrative. This compromises things like their self-driving goals.
What do? Maybe locking down the firmware super tight and putting scary words in the purchasing/leasing agreement that discourage any curiosities regarding changing the car is a good approach. Given the stakes they're trying to pull and given just how friggin' awesome their cars are and given that I generally don't care for repairing cars anyway, I'm totally fine with never touching the internals if it means that I can have a more boss car for less money.
I think this argument applies for nearly everything, which is why SaaS products are so lucrative.
"Why Sell What You Can License? Contracting Around Statutory Protection of Intellectual Property" by Elizabeth I. Winston, George Mason Law Review, Vol. 14. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=925995
> "Historically, the transfer of goods has been through sale, a model regulated by public legislation. Increasingly, however, the transfer of goods is occurring through licensing, a model regulated by private legislation. Privately-legislated licenses - for such chattels as musical and written works and agricultural goods - are being used to circumvent publicly-legislated restrictions on intellectual property."
" but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year."
Tesla Network? Uber/Lyft competitor?
Plus I sure hope this won't hold up in court. I do not want a company telling me how to use my product that I paid for.
I could very easily see if you go to the same mechanic and they input your mileage between visits and a system having a reasonable chance of getting scheduled maintenance correct based upon time or average mileage.
I've never heard of a company pulling data from a car OTA to do this type of work. (some car insurance companies are a different story though)
No idea if that's the case with Toyota, but it's definitely possible with some high-end cars (most definitely including Teslas which routinely report to the mothership) (incidentally it's fun seeing people drool over teslas then freak out at Firefox or MS telemetry)
Based on that, I'd say anyone who is injured because of this in any way has a great claim against the company for lying about the equipment they provided.
I bet if you were willing to waive the warranty they'd stop calling you. But, being as how the warranty on cars is now 5+ years, and that the maintenance variance among owners is high, I don't see this as a bad thing.
Granted, it's not happening to me (yet), so I might complain too.
Yet the media will probably spin this as "people just don't care," as they usually do with privacy issues. It's very much an awareness and education issue.
No, it doesn't, at least not necessarily.
I also bought a Toyota last year. They called on a regular timed schedule that had nothing to do with my actual usage pattern. We got a call to come in for our 5,000 mile service when we'd just completed the 10,000 mile service.
It may be a feature of the higher-end models, but it's definitely not something the 2015/2016 Corollas seem to do.
Wonder if I have the option to opt out of the "Network" and join Uber or a future entity?
I'm not defending Tesla here, I just want to draw an analogy. You can't go a store, buy a DVD for $15 and then charge tickets to project to an audience. You need a different, more expensive license for that. The same applies to music and software, even if it is embedded firmware in a car.
Maybe this model is actually bad because it circumvents the first sale doctrine, and we need to make this kind of restriction one illegal (haha, in my dreams).
Further, such a doctrine would allow you to buy the Tesla and remove the software they didn't want to license to you.
So no, that isn't how it is - that's how they want you to think it works so you don't even bother trying.
Go ask a lawyer for a clear-cut answer on anything.
Of course this is easy to fix, but it would still result in either forbidding commercial use (without license) or metered supercharging.
Nothing more annoying than a company that starts to overstep boundaries.. Stay out of my personal decisions.
Indeed, the more restrictions Tesla adds, the more enforceable it is:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/09/the-end-of-used-m...
It won't sound evil. They will just tell the politicians that in order to invest huge sums of money they need guarantees, that the uncertainty of not binding their customers hinders job creation and investment, etc. Nothing is new in that playbook, since from their point of view it's actually not even wrong. It's not like they have to come up with some outrageous lies. Today it's Tesla, but that process has been going on for a long time. It's just too good: Control over a stable income stream instead of the ups and downs of the free market. It also appeals to people working in those firms, so again not actually clearly "evil".
It also appeals to a lot of people in our allegedly "uncertain and dangerous times" that there is ever more "order" and control. They actually have a point: The more complex out systems become, which includes the state, the more dangerous failure and the harder a recovery. Are our systems becoming more unstable? If so the trend explains itself, because that calls for more certainty and control - since changing the system itself seems to be no option because nobody knows how and what to change it to, or at least there is no trace of a consensus. So, more order and control it is.
(Which your linked article makes clear.)
My bet is that this is more because of legal reasons than business model reasons (though of course Tesla wants a piece of that pie)
Unless they show that Uber is routing the cars over speedbumps at high speed or something, there's no reason to think that there'll be excessive wear beyond the simple distance covered.
They can walk-back their unlimited mileage warranty, if they want. But not selectively for arbitrary usages.
My questions is - why would Tesla want to stop them doing that?
The goal is to transition the world to sustainable transport, ASAP. If companies are buying tens of thousands of their cars, that's great!
I have to wonder if Tesla want to stop this because they want to make the profit from the fleet, or because of legal reasons.
If you take a ride in a taxi, and you like what you see, you seem more likely to buy that car in the future.
Tesla made this software. They spent years planning, designing, and working on it. Uber have a scheduling app.
Frankly I'm all for this. Tesla is a MUCH better company than Uber. Let them take the ridesharing market and our world will be much better off.
- liability
- hacking prevention: anybody in the car will be able to take over the car, so you should make sure there's always somebody you trust in the car
- regulatory: the owner of the car is liable for any infractions a car makes, so only there should always be somebody you trust in the car
But the wording makes clear that this is just a cash grab. You'd think that Tesla would have worded it to imply that they actually have a good reason...
I'm more than willing to agree to this concept, if for example, Tesla sends me a new top of the line model 3/s/x every year for around 5k-ish/yr - At that price point, I feel that they can tell me what I can / can't do with "their" car.
However, now, they expect people to pay the full price of the car (anywhere between 31k to almost 150k) and then they get to dictate how I use the car.
Given time, this sort of concept will be applied to everything "we" own. I mean, it's just getting started...
In a few decades, you'd not really own anything - the house you live in, the devices that you use, everything will be a subscription service.
While I look at it as a bleak / weird future, I love SaaS products in general over IaaS products, because it means, I don't have to put effort into stuff. And if that means, I'd never have to fix my car, or my house for example...is that a future the general population will have an issue with?
Just to clarify, in the true meaning of the word "own", you never owned your house, and that goes to at least post WW2 times.
If you believe you own your house simply because its paid off, then try not to pay property tax imposed on you by the county you live in. But don't be surprised if one year later Sheriff shows up at your "own" house doorstep with eviction team.
You still own your house, but the government, as elected by the people, has decided that one of the ways to encourage/ enforce property tax payment is the right to use said property as collateral. You explicitly agree that you are obligated to do so, and laws, which aren't secret, divulge the possible consequences of failure to do so. This in no way diminishes ownership, any more than you parking the car that you own somewhere that it may be towed and impounded means that you somehow "never really owned it".
If you want to talk about ownership of the -land- that's a different, tangential, kettle of fish.
Call it anything but, please don't call it an ownership.
You are, I suspect deliberately, attempting to obfuscate the issue of ownership. Here are some examples:
- you legally own a gun. you use gun in commission of a crime. gun will be confiscated.
- you legally own a vehicle. you use it in commission of a crime (whether as a getaway vehicle, or striking a pedestrian). car can be confiscated.
Whether you think they SHOULD be or not, not paying taxes is considered a crime.
That doesn't mean your ownership of the house, the car, the gun are any less valid, only that the government has determined that possible confiscation of said property is a viable punishment for violation of certain laws.
If you want to carry that to the extreme - you own nothing, because the government can confiscate it.
Which makes me wonder how your grandpa "owned" that land? How did he acquire it?
You didn't sign or agree to obey the laws of the city, county, state or country you live in either.
I presume that also means you are not beholden to those, either?
As I said, I suspect this is a rabbit hole of twisted reasoning and logic that I don't overly care to get into, but the simple fact remains. Ownership of any object is tangential to the potential of being deprived of possession thereof.
That's fine so lock me up. But don't take over my property and sell it to the highest bidder. If they have a right to do so, I have to be naive to say "I own my house".
If you really wanted to complain about the govt being over powered and taking over stuff you own, you could point out Civil Forfeiture.
(In contrast to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_simple )
Here's why I think so:
Tesla is setting the correct expectations. Once the car is fully autonomous, the process of dispatching rides to a pickup location will be controlled by Tesla.
So, if you own the car, and but are not needing the car to be used for a week, the car becomes available on the Ridesharing Autonomous Network of Teslas (RANT :). At that point, it makes no sense to put the car on something like say Google / Uber autonomous networks of Ridesharing.
Its a bit like how iPhone is not open for non app store downloads and yet an iPhone buyer 'owns' the phone.
FWIW, every autonomous car maker will put their car on their own rideshare network (making a rider app is 1% of creating the ridesharing service effort). Uber and Lyft apps will become too expensive to use if they cannot figure out the autonomous vehicle part of the equation.
But if that's the case, then I will not pay thousands of dollars to own one.
Even if there would be no damages, imagine getting your car back to go somewhere with your family and it smells like a bad kind of party.
No I won't. It's simple economics that I won't.
Assuming a future where I can choose to rent my car's free time to a ride sharing app. You just told me that I'd be able to make just as much money locked into a single customer as I would if different customers had to compete to rent my car's free time.
And yes blah blah blah I could buy a different type of car. But market forces don't break this sort of monsopoly until "what app can I rent my car's time to" is the TOP purchase differentiator to a very sizable portion of auto buyers.
And we'v not covered that the dynamics are different. With Tesla you're not paying for fuel. Or for human time. You literally earn money while you do something else. This means that, over time, Uber and Lyft would be saturated by Teslas because it's a race to the bottom in terms of profit.
No, I'm not. I'm assuming that in the post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12753624 you're comparing between the choice of only being able to drive for Tesla's app vs being able to choose which app to drive for.
If you're not, I don't understand what you meant to say to the post you replied to.
Leases are great for us that buy used since we get to have awesome cars at tens of thousands of dollars cheaper than new
And people are saying "Yeah, sounds reasonable!" in this thread? Okay...
Who knows what they will choose to do.
Right, but isn't the penalty for going against Ferrari merely that they will refuse to sell to you in the future? The deadmau5 thing was about the "purrari" stuff, not the crazy nylon wrap.
Tesla is attempting to do something far worse.
Revenue from car sales will go down as more and more people use fleet services and car companies will make the majority of revenue from autonomous ride sharing networks, why let some competitor use your cars/software without having to do any of the difficult work themselves, creating a low barrier to entry is a losing strategy if your doing all the work
Honestly how many jurisdictions will allow self driving vehicles (without a human on board) to function before the current generation of cars reach end of life?
Seems like it would be better to do it with pricing than irritating rules...
"Dear Customer - your usage patterns shows that you are using your car for ride sharing revenue. Please stop it."
"Dear Customer - Second warning."
"Dear Customer - we have disabled important safety updates for your car, because it looks like you are ride sharing for profit. You might be a real estate agent with irregular driving patterns for legitimate reasons but we cannot confirm that. Sucks to be you."
If you are a real estate agent with irregular driving patterns, there will be other patterns that are consistent. For example you (and your key fob) always being in the car. You would go from your home/office to several different addresses, then back to home/office.
Also, I'm sure that when tesla sent the warning the best action would be to explain the situation. If that fails, tweet Elon.
Even though you paid for them ...
I have a new toaster for sale. Must use my electricity, nobody else's :)
"Can afford a Tesla"
"Wants to drive for Uber"
"Can afford a Tesla"
"Wants to monetize Tesla when not using it"
I think there's room for profiting from driving Uber. (I also agree that it's a good bit less than it appears based on the cash-in and cash-out every week.)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-uber-driver-picks-you-...
https://medium.com/@SteveSasman/how-i-used-abused-my-tesla-w...
Discussing the sustainability, they noted that after the purchase of the car, running costs were effectively free. Due to subsidies provided by the government, there is no refuelling charge, and as an electric car, it's not subject to emissions laws e.g. requirement to turn your car off if stationary for more than 2 mins, not allowed to be stationary for more than 2 minutes with air conditioning turned on.
Two of the drivers I spoke to intended to buy more Teslas for their family for this reason, one already had another one on order.