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by michaelt 1053 days ago
> 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.
2 comments
waithuh 1052 days ago
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.

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nordsieck 1053 days ago
> 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.

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Zak 1053 days ago
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.

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