It's interesting to see this coming from NJ, which is also automotively noteworthy for being the only state where self-service at the gas station is prohibited.
wow good point. always weird having to fuel when driving through nj.
New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
121–130 of 175 posts
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#122People sure seem to love government overreach when they think it works in their favor. The economics behind one-time vs subscription pricing is very far removed from the responsibility of a New Jersey bureaucrat. Let Ford and BMW and Tesla figure it out for themselves. If people really do hate it as much as the article and the lawmakers seem to suggest, they will simply not buy it.
> If people really do hate it as much as the article and the lawmakers seem to suggest, they will simply not buy it.
Just like the people that hated that Apple was removing the headphone jack, they'll just not buy it.
Oh wait, they still did.
And now Androids are losing the headphone jack, too.
The viewpoint of just letting the market decide is naive and assumes consumers are rational, behave in their own best interests, and will always vote with their wallet, when the reality is they don't. They'll bitch and moan while still forking over their cash, signaling that they'll accept it. Other car companies see this model is successful and join in.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#123Can we add XM radio to the list? I bought a new car and they keep calling and send mail to my house far too frequently. I've told them NO around a dozen times.. They are bordering on harassment. Just because you put some receiver in my car doesn't mean you can constantly contact me. I never asked for it and they should take no for an answer.
In 2016 I had bought a new car and it came with an XM Radio trial. I wanted to know what satellite radio was all about, even though I figured it was a dying technology getting replaced by music streaming. After deciding it wasn't going to be worth the money, I cancelled my trial.
Yeah, it was a mistake.
I was getting calls, but never answered them. I changed my number in my account and the calls stopped.
But I was getting 1-2 pieces of mail PER WEEK from them trying to bring me back.
At first, I was like "you dumbasses want to waste money sending me this much mail, have at it", but eventually it got tiring and I followed the directions in the mail to opt out of the marketing.
But seriously, I do have to wonder how much money they are burning spamming the shit out of peoples' physical mailboxes trying to get subscribers.
I think the only people that spammed me worse than XM Radio was SoFi while I still had student loans.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#124It's interesting to see this coming from NJ, which is also automotively noteworthy for being the only state where self-service at the gas station is prohibited.
wow good point. always weird having to fuel when driving through nj.
Speaking from experience, while it may take a bit longer at the gas station to get filled up, you get quite used to it.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#125It's interesting to see this coming from NJ, which is also automotively noteworthy for being the only state where self-service at the gas station is prohibited.
Also parts of Oregon, iirc.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#126This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want. It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact s…
I think the next step is to spin off a separate company for FSD. Take media for example. Your Toyota may be compatible with SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify, etc, but none of these are "built in". The solution to FSD is to "commoditize" the FSD service in the same way. Your new Tesla is "compatible" with the "third" party FSD service that just so happens to only be "compatible" with your Tesla. Nobody would reasonably expe…
You’ve described openpilot from comma.ai
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#127This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want. It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact s…
I think the next step is to spin off a separate company for FSD. Take media for example. Your Toyota may be compatible with SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify, etc, but none of these are "built in". The solution to FSD is to "commoditize" the FSD service in the same way. Your new Tesla is "compatible" with the "third" party FSD service that just so happens to only be "compatible" with your Tesla. Nobody would reasonably expe…
I think you'd run into lawsuits about being anticompetitive if your car was only compatible with one FSD provider also owned by you.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#128This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want. It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact s…
Do first sale protections apply to physical things? I thought first sale was an intellectual property / copyright thing.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#129This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want. It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact s…
It feels odd to me that you call you that buyers often prefer subscriptions because of their ability to spread out costs over the life of a product, after starting out claiming that this is a “great step”.
If a company wants to sell me a car where the power windows are a $10/mo subscription, that’s a crappy idea and I’m not going to buy a car, but I don’t think trying to sell it should be illegal.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#130This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want. It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact s…
> If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want.
Why? If I have a car, and I enter into an agreement with you about the sale of the car, then the terms of the agreement are completely arbitrary, for the two of us to decide, and something both parties must consent to. If you don't want a car with optional subscriptions, don't buy a car with optional subscriptions.