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Posted in DRM, Free/Libre Software at 12:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
> Image: Car in Cuba
Sometimes it feels like “dumb” cars are the smarter choice because they take instructions from their true owners
Summary: The debate or the conversation about what it means to be car “owners” relates to issues discussed since the 1980s in the context of software (or code-sharing/code-altering practices)
SO IN Part I and in Part II we focused on loss of ownership and cost/price hikes associated with car ‘ownership’. These issues are closely connected; they’re intertwined because when few vendors control the car you supposedly bought (paid for) they can keep bilking and milking. They’re constantly in control or something they supposedly gave away in exchange for a fee (price of purchase). It wasn’t always this bad as only when repairs were needed the vendors became potentially needed (just potentially because with simpler and standardised components one could work around them, whereas proprietary components make “support” or “maintenance” a monopoly or merely a small set of shared, price-fixing monopolies).
> “They’re constantly in control or something they supposedly gave away in exchange for a fee (price of purchase).”
As cars are becoming more computerised (their technical composition or breakdown may be the subject of future parts), especially in the software sense (not mechanics), these reasonably old issues are fast becoming issues pertaining to software freedom.
Last week we shared a video of what Toyota had begun doing. Here it is again:
Video download link
http://techrights.org/videos/toyota-thinks-they-own-your-car.webm
This got the ball rolling.
“I realized what they were doing,” Ryan wrote last week. “They tried selling it as a “feature”. Like, it could see the size of the Keurig logo and figure out whether you were brewing a cup or a carafe of coffee. But there was no need to trademark that. What they were doing was making it so nobody could copy the icon that it was looking for, so it would refuse to work at all if you used a physically compatible coffee pod. And many of the alternative pods use far less non-biodegradable mass. Gordon’s Food Service sells theirs in bulk and it’s just a lid along with a filter full of coffee. There’s no hard plastic at all in the pod. And those never worked with the K 2.0. The 2.0 machines were a total disaster and it wasn’t long before they all got clearanced out. They blew up right in Keurig’s face. And the whole thing came about when Keurig’s patent on the coffee pod expired, because trademarks on the logo that tells it to brew don’t expire like patents do.
> “Notice the similarity between DRM in appliances (physical things like pods and cartridges), information/multimedia, and cars.”
“So they were trying to extend their monopoly using whatever part of the law they could in order to keep out competitors who drive prices down. The market refusal of the K 2.0 machines was an unexpected success against DRM. But people put up with behavior like this in an iPhone. Why? It’s so expensive to develop software for any of Apple’s products that unless you already have a Mac laying around that’s new enough and don’t mind wasting $100 per year to keep your developer account current, there’s no way you think about developing freeware.
“F-Droid’s model obviously doesn’t work this way at all. The iPhone is pretty much a meme. And we’re in the higher points of the bubble at this point because they’re getting so ungodly expensive that they’re losing marketshare. They say they’re fine with that, and maybe they are. Selling $2,000 phones that cost them $200 to produce to 70% of the people who would buy them at a lower price is effectively being paid to produce less. But at some point, they drive so much of the market over to Android that developers no longer see the economic incentives of having a huge base of customers on the iPhone.”
Notice the similarity between DRM in appliances (physical things like pods and cartridges), information/multimedia, and cars. The agenda sort of converges across domains and the methods are similar. Ultimately, the buyer suffers.
“I don’t like any of the new features, including “self-drive”,” Ryan said. “The driver is still liable in civil and criminal matters regarding what the software does, including if it causes an at-fault accident. But now, you also have to spend $80 a year subscribing to a remote starter that’s already on the car, if you buy a Toyota, or else it will stop working. This is like Windows “Anytime Upgrade”, where all of the features are there, but Microsoft disables them unless you buy a new activation code. If you have the Toyota for 15 years, it costs $1200 to have the remote starter work and previously it cost $200 or so to have a good one put on the car that works forever. But now, you also have to spend $80 a year subscribing to a remote starter that’s already on the car, if you buy a Toyota, or else it will stop working. They like to slip “little things” in past you that don’t register while you’re buying the car. Who is thinking about a remote starter that costs them $1200-1600 over the life of the car? What if you buy the car and then they raise the price later?”
> “The ironic thing is, with plate readers seemingly everywhere (but covert; they’re barely visible) you nowadays get better privacy as a passenger in a taxi than as driver of ‘your’ ‘own’ car, especially if that car was made in recent years.”
Never mind the increasing costs of increasingly-complex repairs they prevent you from doing on your own. If you cannot repair your own thing, is it your own at all? And if you cannot drive privately, are you being babysat? Today’s cars are being made hostile (towards the buyer) by default; “new ones have always-on GPS + “blackbox” recorders,” one associate noted. “Even though you don’t own a car, you have a stake in the outcome of the consultation[s]. Thus I would encourage you to send them a few words at least.”
The British consultation ended last month, but it is still possible to contact politicians. We need to tackle these issues before they become more widespread (like DRM on printers and coffee machines) and thus irreversible. We need to contact people who can put an end to it, legally, as “that’s how it works on both sides of the Atlantic,” the associate noted. “That’s one of the reason Louis [from the video above] has collected money to buy his own lobbyists for the Fight to Repair work…”
The ironic thing is, with plate readers seemingly everywhere (but covert; they’re barely visible) you nowadays get better privacy as a passenger in a taxi than as driver of ‘your’ ‘own’ car, especially if that car was made in recent years. In the next part we’ll look at what nowadays makes up a “modern” car. █
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