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Comment by phrygian | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain what this[0] means? It would seem that when you buy the car, you don't own it after all.

[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tesla-self-driving-car-n...

When you buy a lot of computing equipment, there's a clause in the contract saying that you can't use it to control a nuclear power plant. Do you own the computer?

I think that is because of the law.

This clause is more like Microsoft saying you can't use Windows to write software for Apple computers.

It doesn't change the fact that you still own the hardware on which the software is executed.

You own the car and the computer but you don't own the autopilot software or windows that runs on the hardware.

That doesn't mean people can't be upset that there are limitations placed on how you can use the software. Imagine if you were told you couldn't use Microsoft Word to write about certain topics, for example.

At least in the UK, such a term would have to be brought to your attention before the sale, very clearly, for it to be part of the contract. Writing that in the manual would have no effect.

Interestingly, in the UK paperback books have a little contract in the front saying you can't rebind them into hardbacks, while in the US such a contract is forbidden by the right of first sale. The moral is that these things are less obvious than one would think.

The UK certainly has some weird laws, but that sounds...of dubious validity. Like roughly the equivalent of "not for individual resale"; a contractual matter between the supplier and the merchant, not something that could even theoretically be enforced on any buyer.

UK copyright law is old and unusually strict. E.g. crown copyright can be perpetual.

I doubt strongly that this would have any effect either, for the same reason. My legal knowledge is a little old fashioned and sporadic, but the classic authority on this used to be 'Olley v Marlborough Court Hotel'. Worth a read, if only for the way Denning used to write his judgements.

Same issue that many embedded devices have, you own the hardware, not the software to power it.

This is extremely anti-consumer, and I don't understand why you are being down-voted.

A point of clarification: you are able to use the car with a human operator in any ridesharing service. Tesla is saying that you can't share out your car on Uber's platform, with it operating at full autonomy, while you chill on your couch.

Just Uber, or any (speculative) fully autonomous rideshare service?

That makes sense, thank you.

... Unless you do it via the TESLA NETWORK platform, paying an X% cut of your revenues to TSLA.

This is sharecropping, and is extremely anti-consumer.

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