[rebolek]

I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me.

[nordsieck]

> I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me.

That's because you don't understand.

The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software.

Presumably, a consumer could go to the dealership and pay for heated seats as an aftermarket add-on. Or they could pay to enable heated seats (software unlock) on a month-to-month basis.

[michaelt]

> The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats.

Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car.

There may not be a written contract or specification explicitly saying that the valves in the tyres are included in the deal, but they're your property nonetheless (in the absence of obvious errors like the dealer letting you drive the wrong car off the lot)

The customer paid for a car with heated seats present but inoperable. If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business.

[waithuh]

This all boils down to the contract, really. If the contract states that you do not own the heated seats, you have to pay for them. You can't skip reading the contract and say that you own the entire car now.

Not saying that BMW is in the right. Hell yeah they are extracting every penny they can, but you can simply protest by not buying from them. People support their decisions by buying their products and complain afterwards. There are many alternatives.

[nordsieck]

> Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car.

Sure.

> If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business.

If you were talking about a vacuum cleaner or something, I'd agree. But modern cars are "fly by wire". It is not, in fact, only the customer's business if they modify their car's software.

[Zak]

I think the problem here is that courts have allowed software vendors to use a legal trick to get around how owning things normally works. Software gets copied into memory to run, and courts have accepted the theory that making such a copy requires a license even though it's not a copy in the traditional sense (it can't be given to a third party so that they can also use it).

A book is copyrighted too, but when I buy one, I can legally write in it, paste in pages of my own, cut out pages, etc.... I can even sell it after I've done that.

I'm 95% certain the law should be changed to restore the first sale concept to software, and even more certain when it comes to embedded software that's necessary to use hardware owned by end-users.

[kelnos]

> The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software.

Sure they did. Maybe they didn't pay the full price for those heated seats, but they definitely paid more for the car with them (but disabled) than for a car without them entirely.

The carmaker is hoping that people will pay for the unlock in order to recoup their costs. But they're certainly not going to ship those heated seats in every car without inflating the cost of the base vehicle by some amount.

Put another way, it might look like this:

1. Car without heated seats at all: $10,000

2. Car with heated seats, but locked: $10,100

3. Car with heated seats, unlocked: $10,500

If the carmaker offered options 1 & 3, then customers would pay for what they want and get, and nothing more. If carmakers only offer option 2, then even customers who don't ever want heated seats will still pay some premium.

The carmaker might estimate that only 50% of their customers will pay an unlock fee for a car sold to them. They want to still cover their costs and make a tidy profit, so they might charge more than the $400 difference to unlock the feature. And that's if they're doing it in the non-shady way, and are charging a one-time fee. If they decide to charge a subscription, they might do something like charge $100/year for it, and then eventually they're just making pure profit for no added value.

Also consider that the carmaker's own costs could be, on average, greater per car if they have to offer two different options 1 & 3. Offering only option 2 (regardless of whether or not people are able to defeat the software lock) might be cheaper for them. I don't see why we need to subsidize their business decisions.

But all of this is still kinda irrelevant: bottom line is that if you sell piece of hardware to a customer, that hardware now belongs to the customer, and you don't get to tell the customer what they can and can't do with it.

[kevincox]

Money is fungible so it is really hard to say but it is entirely possible that the base model doesn't pay anything for the seats. They could sell the car with $10,000 and expect that 1/2 of the customers pay $500 for the upgrade. Those customers are essentially paying to install the seat hardware in all cars (because it is cheaper than them paying for a new production line that makes 1/2 the number of cars). So in 2 the purchaser of that car still pays $10k and their "other half" who statistically bought the heated seats paid for the $100 cost in their car.

You can also picture this as a marketing cost. Maybe Tesla things that a $100/car marketing cost is worth paying because they expect that 1/2 of the cars will pay $500 so they have $150 expected return.

[ImPostingOnHN]

it reminds me of those hardware hacks to unlock processors [0]

the upside is that by not having much difference between SKUs, and "locking" one SKU from becoming the other, the costs are lower, and manufacturers might turn those savings into lower prices

in both cases, as in cell phones, I believe like you still own the hardware, including everything in it, including software [1], so if you want to "unlock it", that's your right, as is smashing it, reflashing it, and having sex with it. If that makes for an unsustainable business model, nobody is entitled to their preferred business model being sustainable. Analogous examples here might be unofficial Keurig pods, or printer ink cartridges, which bypass manufacturer DRM intending to lock customers into an otherwise arguably unsustainable business model.

sometimes, though, you have to fight for your rights, e.g. build/buy/download and use unofficial tools

[0]: http://computer-communication.blogspot.com/2007/06/unlocking...

[1]: this inclusion stems from my belief that, where possible, you have an absolute right to view every bit of data that happens across hardware you own, whether gadgetry or eyeballs, in any format you desire, as well as the right to remember what you've viewed, as well as the right to modify or prevent modification of any arbitrary bit on said hardware