Later today we'll write about new attacks on car ownership, adding to issues we've already covered here before.
"Toyota, as it turns out, spent 4.5 million dollars on lobbying against people's interests in this one particular domain."Rossmann notes that Toyota doing this is a wake-up call because people don't typically expect this kind of company to resort to this. He says, "imagine you buy a house" to be offered a free trial for control over how cold the refrigerator gets and you are eventually left on your own after 3 years, unable to do what you did before even though the functionality is already there. That's very like DRM on printers and coffee machines. Artificial limitations are turned into an extra profit opportunity. That's the only purpose of such schemes.
Toyota, as it turns out, spent 4.5 million dollars on lobbying against people's interests in this one particular domain. The concern is -- as Rossmann repeatedly stresses -- unless people fight back, all car manufacturers will do this, leaving people with no other choice.
And "that's how it works on both sides of the Atlantic," an associate of ours has noted. "That's one of the reason Louis has collected money to buy his own lobbyists for the Fight to Repair work." ⬆