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Revenue from self-driving Teslas only allowed through the Tesla Network

arstechnica.com

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Re: Revenue from self-driving Teslas only allowed through the Tesla Network

#211
post #169
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And now apparently even paying $100,000 will not be enough to give full ownership rights to a car. I think that's a good thing because it allows Tesla to receive an income that is closer to the value they have created. The value of a Blu-ray disc bought to watch at home is about $15. The value of a Blu-ray disc bought to play in a movie theatre is much higher. It's great that the movie studio can place restrictions…

By your logic car companies should have been charging more for cars used as taxis or other commercial purposes all along. The value of a Ford Crown Vic used by the police to stop a bank robbery is clearly higher than value of a Ford Crown Vic used to drive an 80-year-old between the retirement home and the golf course, right? Oh, except that value was created by the person using the car not the car itself, which just…

Well I'm still in favour of competition, so if Ford tries to charge the police more for using their cars the police are free to switch to Toyotas. Same for taxi and courier companies. And so the general rule commodity products would be that the price would not rise much above the cost of production.

But if Ford was to develop something better than any other car company - say, a car with the greatest acceleration - I would like them to be able to charge different price depending on whether the purchaser is the police force or a car racing team.

Nails are very much a commodity product, so once again competition would prohibit the supplier from charging much more than the cost of production. But let's say that a chemical company developed a superior adhesive such that a carpenter could save an hour on some types of construction jobs. The value of a carpenter's time is much more in the United States than in Indonesia, so I would like the chemical company to be able to charge much more for the same adhesive in the US compared to Indonesia.

Re: Revenue from self-driving Teslas only allowed through the Tesla Network

#213

The erosion of the concept of "ownership" continues. Traditionally, goods are subject to the first sale doctrine--once I buy a shirt, it's my property, and if I want to sell or rent it, I can. It's mine. But software is licensed. When I buy a piece of software, I'm actually paying for a limited and revokable right to use someone else's property. And now companies are putting software into more and more goods. As soft…

Relevant article from a legal scholar:

"Why Sell What You Can License? Contracting Around Statutory Protection of Intellectual Property" by Elizabeth I. Winston, George Mason Law Review, Vol. 14. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=925995

> "Historically, the transfer of goods has been through sale, a model regulated by public legislation. Increasingly, however, the transfer of goods is occurring through licensing, a model regulated by private legislation. Privately-legislated licenses - for such chattels as musical and written works and agricultural goods - are being used to circumvent publicly-legislated restrictions on intellectual property."

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