Software feature unlocks for a piece of hardware is complete bullshit. You pay for the car, you get everything it comes with. Period.

Give it 5 years and people will be trying to figure out how to run an ad on your front windshield before your seatbelts unlock.

inb4 musky boi calls this the crime of the century

“You wouldn’t download a car”.

First of all, all hail the pirate kings who release exploits to the public. Private property is the root of all natural rights. You have the right to do as you like with your property. Because of this, so do powerful jerks like Elon Musk.

In The Overcriminalization of Social and Economic Conduct, which is well worth the hour read, Paul Rosenzweig describes how industrialization changed the definition of crime in the United States. Roughly, proof of criminal intent is no longer required to convict those who supervise negative outcomes of industrial processes. This trend has two main sources of support: the general public, whose fear of new ideas is sauved by splashy performances of strong legislation and decisive justice, and the established industrial titans whose business in this country has been defined by legislative entanglement since the beginning.

When The Zucc went to Congress and asked Fed Daddy to pwease wegulate him harder, progressives and reactionaries congratulated each other on their bipartisan agreement that we should give him what he wants. Mark even mentioned that he was only asking because Meta has enough lawyers that it doesn’t make a difference to them. Meanwhile, the inherent complexity of a bloated regulatory environment is startup pesticide. So, the left gets to say they regulated a corporation, the right gets to say they cleaned up the internet, Congress™ gets to write a bunch of precedent for more Congress™ later, and Meta gets to do the only thing it ever cared about: grow.

Back to Piracy vs. Tech Dad. Everywhere I look, I see calls to warp the law in order to get socialish revenge on this cartoon character. Isn’t is possible that we’re stuck in a cycle of injustice? I don’t like tehniques like secure boot, soft locks, or DRM, and it’s scary as hell to see them being introduced to automobiles packed with always-online cameras, but let’s be honest with ourselves. Every time something goes wrong, we call for criminal code. Batteries not working as advertised? That’s a tax penalty, somehow. You coded integration between your car company and your social media app? You’re a trust now: bend over and prepare for nationalization. Elon is not relatable, yet it’s too easy to sit back and say you would open yourself up to the public in his place. Meanwhile, both sides go on banning everything they dislike.

We owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to be rational about the business environment we create in a democracy. By all means, jailbreak your shit, but also strongly consider whether your comments contributed to the lock in the first place.

“The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain”

– Montgomery Scott