Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
I don’t understand the consumer outrage about that though. It is like paying to unlock satellite TV reception (even though we are receiving the signals the whole time).
Because, it’s already built into my car, i already paid for the car, the whole transaction is concluded. Paying in hindsight for a part of it, that is already there, is not really justified at all. If they built the car without one, and would have to add it later, then it would make sense. So if it would be more expensive to have my car explicitly built without this feature, why does it suddenly cost money when i decide i want it later?
The signal-broadcast all around everywhere and just YOU paying is simply for the fact they they can’t route them specifically to just YOUR house. It might sound equally unfair but it’s a clear distinction based on technical impossibility.
The right to first sale should mean that the owner owns and controls all services installed in the product. And any DRM in the way of that, or that obstructs the right of repair, should be illegal, and the manufacturer held liable for including it in a product.
Absolutely. But, as usual, we all let it happen, it will happen more, and in the end it’s the total default for everything. Capitalism always wins over ignorance or apathy.
And your vehicle’s features weren’t lock behind a paywall in the pass because of enshitification. You know consumer rights and so on. If Rich people like you like paying then drive your rolls royce and Bentley, there are more poor people like us. Soon I’ll have to pay to masterbate my fucking cock somehow for the cooperate overlords.
Why the attack? I’m against this. I might benefit from capitalism but i must not like it. And I do not. It’s a shitty pyramid-scheme resulting in exactly shit like this. Many brands (that i know of…) do not put physically already existing hardware behind a paywall. Yet. But in the end, they all will do, because people don’t care, or worse: don’t see the implications it does and just accept.
As said, i now drive a pre-enshittification-car with no such shit. Might they still exist somehow in the future.
The best (worst) example I’ve seen in recent memory has been seat warmers. BMW and other manufacturers tried forcing a subscription on people just to use the seat warmers that are (1) already present in the car, (2) already wired up with buttons in place, and (3) cause no additional outlay of effort on the part of the manufacturer once they’re installed. There’s no valid reason to charge a subscription for something like that beyond straight greed.
It is like having a grandstand at a football stadium which costs extra to use. Do you resent that?
Do you resent the satellite TV example I gave earlier?
Satellite TV is a service that requires constant upkeep by the companies which costs money.
And your football stadium is a bad analogy.
You don’t own the stadium, and you don’t own the satellite. So they’re really not the same as a car, which you do (nominally) own.
I resent that the cost to the car company to install seat warmers is the actual installation of the seat warmers. Running them costs ME money in electricity generated by gasoline I bought. It costs them nothing to run them but i have to pay a subscription to use them on top of paying to power them?
The football grandstand continues to cost the owners in maintenance and space that they own. You pay for the privilege of using something that is not yours. I bought my car, I shouldn’t have to continue to pay for the privilege of using something I already own since the equipment is already there and doesn’t require any interaction with a remote service that would make sense to charge for (navigation, satellite radio, etc…)
OK I accept the analogies are not good equivalents.
It is not necessarily true that everyone has already paid for the seat warmer hardware. The car may cost the same as if it didn’t have the hardware installed. Certainly the owners were happy enough with the car price to buy it without seat warming option.
The manufacturer may find it cheaper to just install it for everyone and wear the cost in the hope that enough people will pay for the warmer to be enabled.
Of course it is possible that everyone pays for the hardware anyhow but it is not necessarily the case.
This is such a weird hill to die on for someone who claims to be pro-consumer
You make it sound like football team loyalty.
I am pro-fairness, not pro-consumer. I don’t think the consumers are justified in their entitlement in this case.
Ah my bad, despite having been coerced into a transportation economy that forces us to purchase multi-thousand dollar machines, I forgot to consider if we’re asking too much of automotive manufacturers when we request to not pay a premium for comfort that literally costs them nothing since they already sold it to us.
You wouldn’t have a warm seat anyhow if they only installed the seat for prepaid customers but it is possible that those customers would pay more because it would cost more to make two sets of cars. Or four sets if optional fancy suspension is done that way, or eight sets if you include digital radio, or sixteen if…
Much of the cost is R&D, not just the physical item.
Do you think all music should be free because it is already online and you downloading an album doesn’t cost the artist even one cent?
I don’t see how you could possibly think it’s okay to sell something to someone while telling them oh but technically you didn’t buy everything inside it, that’s an extra fee.
Come on you can’t be so broken you can’t see a clear scam right in front of you.
It should be illegal and if any of our institutions had teeth it would be.
It’s absolutely nothing like that, my dude. There’s no extra service being provided. The product has been manufactured and purchased. It’d be like buying a drill only to find out that you have to pay a fee to use the drill bits you already own, or buying a block of wood and being told that you have to pay the seller money to use the tools you already own to make it into whatever you’re building.
That is not a good comparison because people don’t buy the car expecting the seats to have the warming feature. It probably is even offered as an option that the customer rejected upon purchase.
When I download software and pay for the basic tier it has the pro features built in anyhow. I can pay to unlock those pro features but I don’t expect to use those features already just because I already have them.
If I go to the football and the crowd is small enough to fit in the grandstand but only those who explicitly paid for it are allowed into the grandstand I don’t complain about my entitlement.
Whether they’re expecting it or not, the hardware is there and there is no additional technical intervention necessary from the manufacturer necessary for it to function. A monthly fee for a button to turn on my seat warmers is idiotic. Your bizarre infatuation with comparing cars to stadiums is also as frustrating as it is nonsensical.
I would prefer you discussed the point rather than trying to bully me into agreeing.
It is quite possible that the current seat warming arrangements are such that it ends up cheaper for those who want it (since it isn’t custom installed physically) and is of no consequence to those who don’t want it.
If it was enabled for everyone the price of the car could conceivably go up for everyone. Admittedly that may not necessarily be how it works out but it is a possibility.
It costs more to implement the hardware necessary to lock them behind a paywall in the first place, though. And I’m not bullying you by telling you that the comparison you’re making between cars and stadiums is, in fact, utterly nonsensical. I’m not borrowing space in a stationary building for a set amount of time. I’m purchasing a product that already had the feature in the first place. If it’s already there, it’s already adding to the cost of the vehicle, and there is no additional cost to the manufacturer whether they use it or not. I’ve given you multiple examples of how this logic would look in other industries where there are actual parallels, but for some reason you keep coming back to the unbelievably fallacious idea that buying a car is somehow akin to renting a seat at a sports game. They are not the same, in case I wasn’t being clear enough.
The cost to install the hardware has already been paid. Fine. What extra monthly effort is required on the part of the manufacturer to ensure the continued functionality of the seat heater? The answer is NONE. Therefore, what right does the manufacturer have to demand a monthly payment for people to use the hardware which is, again, already fucking installed in the car they just spent $60,000+ on? It doesn’t require server time. You’re not hiring a dude to come out and warm up your seat with his butt every time you activate it. I repeat there is no continued cost to the manufacturer, therefore they have no justification for charging a monthly fee, and the only reason the price goes up is the extra hardware cost from installing the system that charges the monthly fee.
I’m done with this conversation. Please seek help.
Yep, bully, as I said. An entitled one.
And you conveniently avoided the software example (basic vs pro).
It’s reasonable to charge for this because the value is in copyrighted content and a service that costs the provider money to operate. The same would apply for satellite radio in a car or an internet-based streaming service. It is not reasonable to charge for access to the adaptive suspension or seat warmers that are already in a car a customer bought. That breaks the traditional model of ownership.
An interesting middle ground might be to allow the owner to install arbitrary software on the car, and charge for the OEM adaptive suspension app. I think I would like a world where things work like that; OEMs would whine about security to no end.
I think it should be legal to attempt to decrypt satellite signals without paying; if the satellite service is designed well, it won’t be possible. All the anticircumvention laws should be repealed.