I'm fucking over it. If I "own" the device - legally I should own a key to EVERY fucking lock inside it. Digital or physical.
This attitude that it's acceptable to put a little green man inside of something you sell, and then retain control over that sold item using your little green man is insidious and immoral. I want it fucking banned yesterday, and it's rapidly becoming one of my strongest political opinions.
Any remote access after sale has occurred shall be considered a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and shall hold Chief * Officers, upper tier executive positions, and boards of directors fully liable, up to and including reimbursements of 3x per device to the citizens affected, and prison times no less than 1 week to a maximum of 10 years.
Enforcement of this law shall be done by the Federal Trade Commission."
I would LOVE to see something like this.
It's a nice idea though!
End user control over safety critical software is not only dangerous, but a potential source of significant legal liability.
I don't want an EV that's capable of accelerating at the maximum rate supported by the motors.
Sure is - and that's absolutely no reason to lock a person out of a car that they own. They OWN it - they are responsible for modifications (and the liability that comes with them). Exactly the same as every car built without a computer - which was roughly ALL of them until the late 70s/early 80s.
My comment is reasoning for why Tesla has a stake in protecting their reputation; if you don't like it, please don't support their practices by buying their cars.
* Illegal to replace your own brake rotors or pads, as faulty ones can cause safety issues.
* Illegal to replace your own headlights, as bad ones could be too dim or too bright and cause safety issues.
* Illegal to change your own oil, as bad ones could seize up your engine in the middle of the road and cause safety issues.
* Illegal to install a turbocharger, as that makes your car accelerate faster than the manufacturer likes and could cause safety issues.
The end result of this line of thinking leads to a million dollar tractor that a farmer can't fix when they need it most. I much prefer the idea that people are individually responsible for any modifications they choose to make to their cars.
At some point, I assume modifying drive-by-wire systems will become legally restricted.
https://www.autocare.org/government-relations/current-issues...
You can install your own brake pads sure, but as a layman if you installed brake pads of your own design and construction, it might be a bit of an issue.
You can modify your car to your heart's desire and put it in a garage or drive it on a race track. You just cannot go into a public road with them. Totally sensible.
It's like preventing customers from changing their own tires because "they might do it wrong and cause an accident". Yeah, they might. But it's not the car manufacturer's responsibility to prevent that, and it certainly isn't justification for locking down the car to only be drivable with manufacturer-installed tires, or remotely disabling cars that use tires from unapproved brands.
Imagine someone installs a cheap third-party ADAS in a Tesla that causes a multi-car pile-up. Should we expect highway patrol officers be able to determine if some third-party software interfered with the normal operation of the car? And, even if Tesla Inc is legally in the clear because the customer did it, they are the #1 target for bad news headlines because they're 'the Apple of Cars' (at least in terms of how much hype they attract), so by the time they set the record straight they've already lost some good-will.
Li-ion batteries have a huge environmental cost. To hide ⅓ of that material behind software is immoral (imho).
It sounds like they were swapping in a better part because they may have not had the original. In the past that was a “win” for the customer. It seems like Tesla has turned this into a loss for the customer (more weight on the vehicle) and a loss for humanity (70 tons of earth mined for unused lithium).
However, the software that artificially controls how much range the battery pack will produce (outside of the charging & self-protection algos) - that's borderline unethical to DRM.
The car is a 90 (effectively) because Tesla set it up that way.
Now I kind of want to see what Shelby would do.
But they're selling these vehicles. As in, transfer of title to the person they're selling to. Taxes are paid. Transfer is registered with the state(s). Insurance is purchased on vehicles in your possession. And full coverage is required for vehicle loans (another set of showing proper legal transfer).
And, just because some click-wrap software has "We are allowed to murder your family and eat your children" does not make illegal clauses legal. And given in this instance, it was tesla->first owner->second owner->third owner , any click-wrap garbage would have been done by the first owner.
Basically, this is the end-run around physical ownership for all the IoT companies and companies that pay for/demand 100% connectivity. All of these companies that have these always-on remote tie ins are the Darth Vader here - "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
All the EV companies are doing this. I so want to buy an EV. I'm not willing to subvert my ownership rights for that.
E.g. they don't want to sell you a general-purpose GPU, but a GPU that's good for one purpose only, and you have to pay extra to use it for anything else [1]. Tesla is leading the way [2], but I'm sure other automakers are also trying to come up with ways to restrict "personal" vehicles from being used for "commercial" activities.
[1] Nvidia’s updates EULA to ban the use of gamer-oriented GPUs in data centers - https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-bans-consumer...
[2] Don’t plan on using your autonomous Tesla to earn money with Uber or Lyft - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/dont-plan-on-using-an-a...
Not to mention they benefit from building up a proprietary ecosystem (CUDA, etc.) from collecting data from users (geforce now, etc.).
It's something of a conspiracy theory.