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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: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @04:44PM (3 children)
Then the seller is in breach of its contract and sold you something that wasn't him to sell. No much different from selling you stolen goods and you possessing them.
Under any law that I know, even if you as a buyer acted in good faith, you can't say the software is yours to do as you like.
I'm not in the mindset to tell a bank how to run its IT department and offer advise on the lease vs buy matters.
We needed a machine like that exactly because we were maintaining a legacy system build and ran in production on such machines and those weren't produced any more for like ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday February 13 2020, @07:34PM (2 children)
Software is like other property. You can't just take and screw over someone's machine/computer device without the current owners permission unless you get a court order. Same as the woman who got paid $10,090 from Microsoft when she took them to court for updating her computer to Windows 10 and left her machine unbootable. You need the current owners permission or a court order because the current owners are not a party to any agreement.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 13 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)
Grateful for a link.
Oh, but you got this sooo wrooong. It was the current owner that made an unauthorized access to Tesla's system.
Don't you believe for a moment that Tesla is paying minions to hunt for resold cars and "invade" them, it would be totally illogical.
It was the firmware on that car that "called home" and Tesla determined it does not have a licensing contract with the current owner thus the access was not authorized by Tesla. And they arranged that such a contact not gonna happen until the situation is rectified.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday February 14 2020, @01:00AM
Many cases that make the evening news where it's one person fighting for rights start with "a woman in ..." Then again, women are no longer just willing to accept some shit because some rich white guy says so.
Those that aren't women are mostly PoC or LGBT+.
You are not allowed to repossess anything, especially from a 3rd party, without a judgment. Show me Tesla had a judgment allowing repossession of the software.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.