> But not being able to USE your car for some things? That just screams easy headlines and it's a reason I might not get a Tesla in the future.
Its your car. It's Tesla software. You don't own it, just like you don't own any of the other commercial software you use.
I can't really find fault in it; they deserve the lion's share of the revenue (not Uber, Lyft, or you) if you put the vehicle into their shared ridesharing fleet for profit.
You don't have to put it into their fleet though. But if you do, them the terms.
You know that all car curently always has some form of software in its driving/braking system right?
What's next?
A blender has some kind of timer software in it so you can't use it in commercial unless you are on blender network?
A TV has software for programmable channel in it, so you can't use it in your bar unless the TV vendor allow it?
Software is their implementation detail, I buy the resulting whole product.
Then you will have to wait until somebody makes a product that suits your needs. Nobody forces you to buy a car where the autopilot cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Sounds like a good reason to look at changing contract law. I'm wondering what kind of precedent there has been in purchasing products but being forced to agree to a license to actually use the product. My uneducated perspective is that this hasn't been an area of concern until general-purpose computers appeared on the scene.
Edit: It's worth clarifying my opinion. I'm totally alright with software "manufacturers" leasing software to end-users (or, in the case of Tesla, leasing the software inside their rolling computers to drivers). What I take issue with is the notion that there is a "sale" when a license is involved. It's a lease, and I'd like to see the force of law involved in reflecting that fact in the marketplace. Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I think consumers need to be clearly told that they do not own virtually anything that they've purchased that contains a general-purpose computer, and that they should not expect the benefits of ownership (ability to modify, to continue using even when the "manufacturer" has decided to no longer "support" the product, ability to resell, etc) in such a transaction.
I don't really buy into the software licensing bs--it was forced on us without any choices. It is the worst kind of legal bs there is. "You paid for this but you have no rights to it." Uh, yeah, keep thinking that.
I'm pretty sure if first sale doctrine applied to software, almost nothing would change. We're not talking about getting rid of copyright, just the idea that this thing that acts almost exactly like a purchase is not 'really' a purchase.
> And if you're in the tech industry, that "legal bs" is what allows you to have an income.
So what you’re saying is that just because his salary depends upon his not understanding the arguments for this to be “legal bs”, he therefore should voluntarily choose to abstain from understanding them? Upton Sinclair would turn in his grave.
Presumably you're aware that comparing one thing to another does not imply that the GP thinks they are anywhere near equivalent. The common meaning of the word "comparable" is not "can be compared", but "roughly equivalent". You are acting as though GP considers them comparable-in-the-second-sense; GP's post actually claims them to be comparable-in-the-first-sense.
A Tesla is not forced upon you, however. If you're wary of the terms, do not buy a Tesla car.
Software has, by the way, always* been this way. I've been "buying software" for twenty years and I've never actually not gotten a license with it rather than the software itself, with all ownership rights conferred to me.
You can use the car all you want. Go drive for Lyft or Uber. You just can't use the self-driving functionality that way. If you want your car to be making you money by driving people around automatically without you in it, you need to do so using the Tesla Network.
Honestly, this doesn't seem all that unreasonable. Self-driving functionality is presumably a piece of functionality that's heavily dependent upon lots of data that Tesla owns, dependent upon regularly getting software update, etc. Why should Tesla give its data and continued work on software upgrades to you for the purposes of using that for the benefit of one of Tesla's competitors?
Just face it. If you're buying a Tesla, you're not just buying a car, you're buying a software platform and access to lots of data and engineering work that Tesla provides on an ongoing basis. If you want just a car, then don't buy Tesla.
That said, if you are looking to buy a self-driving car and using that self-driving functionality for Uber or Lyft, good luck figuring out how. It would not surprise me if other self-driving cars had similar restrictions (though I guess if Uber sells self-driving cars to the general public then presumably you could use those with Uber, but probably not with Lyft).
It's not unprecedented to have severe restrictions on software in EU. E.g. you can't use le Windows you legally obtained in France on two PCs simultaneously. Some vendors charge per-CPU/core licenses, some network software (e.g. certain PABX) charge even by the number of connected endpoints.
That is probably because in order to install Windows on even one PC (let alone two), you have to make a copy of it. Even if an installation is (somehow) not counted as copying, two identical installations is clearly implying a copy has been made somehow. And copyright means you don’t have permission to copy the software. Therefore, you have to have permission to copy it. Another word for permission is “license”, and the license explicitly says under which conditions you are allowed to copy it.
A car, on the other hand, is not copied after purchase, so a copyright license is not relevant. A “license” (as stated above) is not a general list of conditions you have to agree on; it is simply a list of permissions for you to do what copyright law (and trademark law, etc.) would otherwise not allow you to do. No such law restricts what a buyer is allowed to do with a car after a purchase is made, unless a contract is signed. A contract can state arbitrary restrictions, but for something to be a contract, it has to fulfill a number of conditions: it must be knowingly and willingly entered into by both parties, it must not be unilateral or even, in some jurisdictions, too beneficial to only one party. Clearly your standard so-called “license agreement” does not qualify. Ideally, and usually, a contract is something on paper which both parties sign. Do you sign such a thing when “buying” a Tesla? If so, does this contract allow resale? Does the contract require the reseller to require the second-hand buyer to also sign it?
There is however a business trick to go around this "limitation" of copyright, and that is by using a "server" which the car will call home to (like once a week/month/year), or simply accessing data from on a regular basis. By restricting "access to the server", Tesla can impose any limit they want including restriction on the after market. Owners would also not be allowed to fix their own car to skip the check or talk to a third-party server as that would go against the DMCA anti-circumvention (which is part of US copyright law).
Its your car. It's Tesla software. You don't own it, just like you don't own any of the other commercial software you use.
I can't really find fault in it; they deserve the lion's share of the revenue (not Uber, Lyft, or you) if you put the vehicle into their shared ridesharing fleet for profit.
You don't have to put it into their fleet though. But if you do, them the terms.