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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

The fundamental problem here is the contracted block on resale.

I don't understand how this can stand, not to deny it does, but the idea anyone aside from government can really sustain "I sold it to you, not to you to sell on" is a bit wierd. Wierd, but alas, not uncommon. It happens with concert tickets, with books, with music, sometimes with real estate. Usually with real estate there is a stated purpose behind it like 'first home owner grant' type initiatives.

With Tesla, it's purely commercial: "we don't want you stagging the buy price or undermining the integrity of our sell price after the surge"

Ticketmaster and Tickettek would be watching anyone changing that rule, as would the book and music publishing industry.

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There is on reason why two willing parties can not enter into such an agreement. It wasn't a secret that buying a Foundation Series cybertruck meant signing an agreement not to sell within a year. That's two willing parties entering into an agreement, and should not be prohibited.

Sure but contracts which are take-it-or-leave-it and aren't negotiations with concessions on both sides can't really be said to be willing parties. This is why shrinkwrap contracts and t&c are unenforceable in lots of places. What made this contract any different from the other hundred bullshit contracts we "agree" to every day?

There's a reason the state regulates certain contracts to be literally boilerplate (home purchase) and you have to specifically negotiate any deviations. Unless there was reason to believe this wasn't the same car purchase contract you would get with any other car then clauses like this should get thrown out on the same grounds you can't put, "and also you agree to turn over your life savings" in a contract. Nobody reads them, no one is expected to read them.

As far as I'm concerned any ToS that doesn't have an edit feature that lets the user put their own terms in and send it back to the company to review (in a timely fashion) shouldn't be legally enforceable.

Otherwise there's no meeting of minds going on here.

> Sure but contracts which are take-it-or-leave-it and aren't negotiations with concessions on both sides can't really be said to be willing parties.

Why not? If I list my house for 80% or 90% of the realistic market value with a set of conditions that are “absolutely no negotiations; take it or leave it”, I’m a willing seller and the purchaser is a willing buyer, right?

Thats a contract with no tail consequence.

"Buy my house but only if you operate a crack den, and sell drugs to my friends" would not only be un-enforcable, it would be unconscionable.

To be less ridiculous, "buy my house but you can't sub-divide it despite local planning laws" would be unfortunate.

You appear to be arguing "they consented" -which is nearly always true in a contract between equals, but rarely true when there is an asymmetry of need.

I’m arguing nothing more than the topic I quoted and responded to. No negotiation/no concession does not inherently mean the parties are not willing participants.

Simple, because there are thousands of similar homes that buyers can look at as alternatives.

Whereas for things sold by major corporations, there often are not.

There's nothing else even remotely similar to a Cybertruck anywhere else.

When consumers can shop offerings from hundreds of different competing companies then there isn't really a power imbalance. If you don't like the terms with one, you can probably find terms you do like with another.

When there are only 5 manufacturers in the market, or 3, or just 1, that's where the power imbalance happens. Companies get to dictate terms because consumers have no real alternative.

An F150 is more than an little similar to a Cybertruck.

In a weird way, when it comes to home purchases you actually have to negotiate no negotiations. So in real life you can't actually accomplish what you want.

And if you want to go further and opt out of the standard home purchase contract entirely you get lawyers involved on both sides so you're again negotiating.

The implicit assumption you're making is that offering the house at 80/90% of market value is a concession but that's not how that works. You can't do the negotiation for the other side, say take it or leave it, and say that counts. You can't negotiate against an imagined person in advance

If you offer it take it or leave it you're at the whim of the judge saying, "that's absurd no reasonable person would assume that was in a home purchase contract."

> Sure but contracts which are take-it-or-leave-it and aren't negotiations with concessions on both sides can't really be said to be willing parties.

>With Tesla, it's purely commercial: "we don't want you stagging the buy price or undermining the integrity of our sell price after the surge"

It's always purely commercial. Bands don't want scalpers to resell their tickets. Airlines want an exclusive monopoly on last minute ticket sales. Game publishers not wanting people to be able to arbitrage their deeply discounted sales.

It's really eroding the concept of ownership at this point. I think we need some type of consumer protection law that would make everything under a certain dollar value (let's say $100k) transferable without the permission of the company, such as physical goods, service accounts, and various digital products. After all, without the freedom to transact, there can't be a free market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

>The first-sale doctrine (also sometimes referred to as the "right of first sale" or the "first sale rule") is an American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.

(emphasis mine)

It'd only protect you if tesla tried to sue you for copyright infringement, but not for anything else.

The part you emphasize does not say what you're saying.

It simply says that you're protected if Tesla sues you when you try to resell a Tesla, it does not limit that protection to IP-related issues.

i.e. "that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property" and "a seller of a good is limited in controlling resale even in non-IP-related contexts" can both be true at the same time.

That being said, I don't know whether or not the wiki text is representative of the actual law.

I wonder if Tesla is aware that such a provision likely would not stand up in court, and decided to put it in anyway, just to dissuade folks from attempting a sale. The threatened ban on access to purchase future vehicles was probably also a problem.

You buy the metal and the battery but you're renting the featureset and the upgrades of software. Its a licence to use world. They can ban you from chargers, they can ban you from unlocking features, they presumably can lock features remotely without your consent. (I would hope only when the car is motionless).

I am unsure they can remote-engine-lock the car, but who knows? Certainly I have seen stories if you are out of SIM range and low 12v battery it's possible to wind up unable to enter the car, but lock/unlock processes don't have to be symmetric across car-user-cloud experience.

My current car is 15 years old. I dread a new car which is dependent on a windows live or iCloud account equivalent to unlock and operate.

Can you still air gap new cars?

For high end cars, only if you can find the sim. A friend was rung while driving by BMW (or Mercedes, I forget which) and told to go see his mechanic for a timing issue they'd detected by remote engine monitoring and reporting. He didn't even know they had a 2G data stream from the car.

I think he assumed it was done at the regular services from a diagnostic port upload.

Trucks have had live engine monitoring since they became half-a-million dollar assets. I would be amazed if a serious trucking enterprise didn't ask about the feed buying these beasts. Do we still demand a driver tachometer paper exercise?

Finding it isn't hard (and only one person has to do it), but we're assuming it continues to operate without the SIM.

Certain Italian super-car creators really don't like aftermarket stuff. One of the two larger entities - if not both - will similarly blacklist.

That seems fine. There's generally no lasting commitment between buyer/seller.

The seller can be mad, paid, and free of claim/more annoyance. The buyer can enjoy what they bought and carry on elsewhere. It can make servicing/replacement parts needlessly difficult, but fine.

Now, the blocking of the resale, I have trouble with that. It sounds like a lease with fewer steps. If I'm paying purchase money, I want purchase benefits. Autonomy. Heh.

Not to dismiss leases: they allow for people to enjoy something nice for smaller/regular payments. Freeing up the larger chunk is valuable.

The point is kind of fuzzy: one shouldn't be able to 'sell'/transfer their rights. This is like selling part of yourself.

Where this meets practicality? Selling things carries the rights with it. I feel like choosing my belongings/who gets them/under what terms are all part of those. If I don't own it, be honest.

It's a financial imposition after the sale is done, 'simple' as that. It can be argued. It shouldn't have to be IMO.

Edit: Grandstanding now on my soap box - scalpers are the boogeyman to create a cartel

Who's to say I didn't just give it to someone else for really, really bad terms? There may be implications RE: buyer selection/taxes. I'd consider it worthwhile to spite the former owners, Tesla.

Can't edit but some more thoughts. Maybe this appeal will help drive my point. Say you and a friend both want to trade. You have a Cybertruck, he wants it. Time, customization, or sentiment is a factor. Whatever.

On offer? Something that would solve all of your newfound problems. Whatever it/they may be. He doesn't need it though; in fact, it's wasting space. Plus, he'll toss in a car good enough to not make a new issue for you, and a little money for the effort.

Why does Tesla or anyone not in this otherwise legal transaction get to deny this? So that yet another unrelated party can buy a price-fixed commodity? We're several degrees detached from reason.

Is it not greater to let this amplification factor/trade happen? The free market succeeded, woohoo.

This resale limitation stuff is a weird wedge in the concept of autonomy/ownership in my opinion. Akin to regulatory capture. The manufacturer becomes the scalper.

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