SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the fine-print-giveth-and-small-print-taketh-away dept.
People Are Jailbreaking Used Teslas to Get the Features They Expect:
People have certain expectations when they buy a car. For example, they expect it to work for years afterwards needing only basic maintenance. They also expect that the purchase price includes ownership of not only the physical car itself but all the software that runs it.
Tesla doesn't agree.
Last week, Jalopnik ran an article about a person who bought a used Tesla from a dealer—who in turn bought it at auction directly from Tesla under California's lemon law buyback program—advertised as having Autopilot, the company's Advanced Driver Assistance System. The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because "Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for." Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he'd have to fork over the $8,000.
Tesla clawing back software upgrades from used cars is not a new practice for the company. "Tesla as a policy has been doing this for years on salvage cars," said Phil Sadow, an independent Tesla repair professional. One former employee, who used to work in an official Tesla service center and asked to remain anonymous because he still works with Tesla in another capacity, said he was told to put the software features back if people complained to avoid bad publicity. He left about a year ago.
But that doesn't mean Tesla owners are helpless. Sadow and others have ways to push back against Tesla by jailbreaking the cars and getting the features owners feel are rightfully theirs.
"As far as I am concerned removing a paid-for feature, regardless of the state of the car, is theft," Sadow said. "It's as if a bunch of guys show up in a van and take your upgraded 20" wheels. Just because it's software, it's no different."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday February 13 2020, @06:08AM (18 children)
Turning the feature on is a one-off effort. It's actually more effort to turn it back off than it is to leave it alone.
To compare with Netflix, they have to continue to run their servers, provision bandwidth, and license media in order to keep things running.. In other words, without an ongoing significant effort (and expense) on Netflix's part, the service goes down.
As a general rule, be suspicious of anyone who suggests that you pay them to NOT do something (such as disable the autopilot feature).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @06:26AM (17 children)
Ok, my apologies for the ambiguity. I sorta agree that "Autopilot should be a car feature, not a service", with all the common-sense arguments that are based on this interpretation.**
My question should have been: "Why legally the common-sense argumentation should prevail against Tesla's position"?
---
** There is a risk in relying on common-sense though, risk that I feel compelled to aknoledge. It arises from the fact that the "common-sense term" has the implicitly attached string of "the common-sense of the day".
As an example of "what can go wrong with the common-sense of today" in Tesla's case - I'm almost sure that the "full-fledged autopilot" of the (near future [theverge.com]?) will need street-map data to function properly and, very likely, "current status updates for the roads/traffic": otherwise the "autopilot" cannot reach the level of autonomy required by a "self-driving-the-human-can-safely-have-a-nap-or-blowjob".
The reliance on information to be constantly updated will transform the nature of autopilot from "feature" to "service" in a very short span of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 13 2020, @05:44PM (15 children)
Keeping in mind that I am not a lawyer, when it comes to transactions, the law generally prefers that the common sense understanding prevail (The reasonable man). It LOOKS like a sale, optional features on cars have always been sales (which supports the reasonable man expecting it to be a sale). Since there is no mention of a specific period of time, it doesn't look like a rental.
Your scenario of future autonomy requiring continuing updates to data is irrelevant. We're talking about autopilot, not autonomy. Even Tesla vehemently denies that the autopilot feature is autonomy. So I would expect that in such a scenario, the autopilot should continue to function as it does now but to get full autonomy you might have to subscribe to a service.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @06:28PM (14 children)
Optional features used to be hardware.
Now we're talking about firmware only, one that enable an optional capability without any modification of the hardware, different kettle of fish than what the traditional "optional features" used to be. Legislation in regards with the firmware regime exists and it's siding with Tesla (see DMCA).
Deal with it, gnashing your teeth is only your loss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 13 2020, @07:21PM (13 children)
Not necessarily. Sport performance packages are often firmware mods.
It's funny, when John Lennon sang "Imagine no possessions", they thought he was singing about Communism (so did he, to be fair). These days it's Capitalism trying to offer us that 'dream'.
DMCA says you can't copy the firmware for your own product. It doesn't grant anyone the right to make it a rental item while structuring the transaction to look like a sale. For example, if I buy a book, it is mine. I cannot run off copies and sell them for $0.50 each, but the publisher can't sneak it off of my book shelf while I sleep. I am free to loan it to a friend or sell it to someone else.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @07:43PM (12 children)
Or break its protection, if it is protected.
It's software, closed source software, and such kind of software was offered under "license to use, no ownership in the transaction" ever since, I don't know, say... Roman Empire? (grin)
True, it was only recently (in relative terms, about 10 years tho') since the big software firms switched from "here's the license for your ver.X of this software" to a rental model.
Adobe with its Creative Suite or something was among the first, if I'm not mistaken. Since then, cloud, SaaS and IoT happened too. Ah, yes, and the used-games-market collapsed.
Sorry, but under those circumstances, expecting ownership over a piece of software or perpetual use + transfer rights is over-expecting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 13 2020, @07:53PM (11 children)
enjoy your serfdom.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @08:24PM (10 children)
I would try, but I'm not depending on Tesla's autopilot and the single set of proprietary software I'm using has been paid by my employer. Apologies for my inability to experience serfdom, much less enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 13 2020, @08:33PM (9 children)
You'll get there, don't worry. Allow Tesla's claw back now, and it won't be long until you don't actually own anything that you 'buy' You won't have to Imagine no possessions, you'll be living it.
The only difference is there won't even be a pretense of allocating to you according to your need.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @09:18PM (7 children)
Makers. The Chinese components are cheap.
YouTube is full of build your own tools. Umm, not quite full, cats and puppies and alt-right are there too, but there are enough of the makers too. Highly recommended, better spent time than arguing with Tesla or with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 14 2020, @02:47AM (6 children)
Making is good, and I sincerely hope we continue to make progress in what can be accomplished in the garage, but it's a bit silly to suggest that it's mere existence invalidates any concerns for large corporations claiming "ours is ours. Yours is also ours now.".
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 14 2020, @02:57AM (5 children)
I don't see any chance for a "popular revolution against corporations".
As such, the best I can do is to refuse anything they offer that hurts my interest. If I really need it, I'll make one for myself. Or get around if I can't.
For sure, I'm not gonna waste time from my life fighting something I can't control (other than by refusing to buy from them and, fat chance, expecting that others will do the same).
Be it for the simple reason that I have less life in front of me than I have behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 14 2020, @06:19AM (4 children)
Lets hope you have a lifetime supply of CPUs in the basement, since while I have seen (on video) very simple ICs made in a garage, it's going to be a while for CPUs.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 14 2020, @07:25AM (3 children)
FGPA and μC to the rescue. Guess what? The Chinese started to make their own FGPAs - some RISC-V dev boards no less (thanks, Trump, you pushed the Chinese onto self-reliance part faster than they wanted) [aliexpress.com]
Some RasPies and BeagleBoards too. Did you know that Zilog is pretty much alive? Remember them? (Umm... actually do you know about them at all?)
Can't wait to get to retirement and see what one could do with absofuckinglutely dirt-cheap μC [youtube.com] on the road towards the "Connection machine" [wikipedia.org]. I guess there's lotsa fun time to be had; Tesla, Faecebook and walled-orchards Apple can keep their dont-know-any-better consumer crowd busy to make duck faces and/or fight with stupid memes, I really can not care less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 14 2020, @07:03PM (2 children)
Z80 was my second assembly language after 6502, so yes I know who Zilog are.
uC and FPGA certainly are interesting. I've done a fair bit of work with AVR and Cortex M4 based devices. But you DO realize that those are produced by corporations, right? You won't likely be fabbing one of those in your garage any time soon. Those corporations are a lot more friendly to individuals and small business It's nice that smaller companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun have found a space to work in alongside RaspberryPI, Arduino, Beagle, and co.
I have also been following various efforts to use desktop CNC and Chinese engraving lasers to make PCBs as well as garage reflow techniques.
There's a lot there and I imagine there will be a lot of end running the madness from grabby corporations, but without efforts to curb that grabbiness, don't be surprised when new paid for efforts to "protect the children" come along that 'just happen' to make all of that much harder to manage.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 14 2020, @11:43PM (1 child)
Corporations that sell hardware.
You know, those kind of corporations for which sharing access to one device between many users spell disaster for the revenue. Those kind who would be absolutely delighted if each human would use as many unit from them as possible - a thing that may create a problem with planed obsolescence, but not a problem in the access to hardware.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday February 15 2020, @04:47AM
It's worth noting that Atmel and other µC producers seem to be the good guys here. There are many others. But keep in mind, Intel and AMD are also hardware manufacturers. AMD are somewhat helpful but Intel would rather be waterboarded than give out useful technical documentation for many of their products. Some of the public documentation is actively deceitful. And that was before they came up with the ME madness.
But eventually, you'll probably need a car. Good luck if you want one that doesn't contain firmware you didn't write. The current trends suggest more firmware in future cars, not less. If you do go the extra mile and rip out the ECU and make a replacement (a lot of work, but possible), will you be able to pass emissions? I don't mean will the emissions be within legal limits, I mean will you actually be able to get a homebrew ECU equipped car an emissions certificate?
If you want to interoperate with any video source that used HDCP, good luck to you. Any success you have there will depend on the grey market and you will not be able to sell your solution to others except under the table in a modern equivalent of a speakeasy. There's nothing the good manufacturers can do about that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @09:47PM
Here, maybe you'll like it, it starts pretty basic: woodwork for humans [youtube.com].
Or maybe you like better building a scanning electron microscope from scratch [youtube.com]?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13 2020, @06:51PM
> "self-driving-the-human-can-safely-have-a-nap-or-blowjob".
I've never tried a nap (at least on purpose) in a normal car and certainly would not try one on purpose with beta software driving the car...but the latter was fun in a normal car--I was wide awake(!), no need for any software to mediate.