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:: IP threats in mirror may be close than they appear ::
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Volvo has unveiled a car designed entirely by women, rife with nifty improvements.
But buried amongst them is this:
The car's bonnet is another fun feature.
The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
"Honestly, the only time I open the bonnet on my car is when I want to fill up washer fluid," said Tatiana Butovitsch Temm. I wouldn't call that feature "fun" so much as "insidious". Maybe paying attention to all the IP developments whirling around the internet has warped me into an indelible cynic, but what this says to me is:
We, Volvo, own this car. And not just the design and manufacturing process - we actually have a limited claim on the very car you drive. Yes, you, the owner, own some of what you purchased in a "physical property" sense, but the concepts of the car - its workings, its maintenance, its "intellectual property" - are ours. We retain the rights thereof in perpetuity, and if you try to fix it yourself you're infringing. Now come over here and sign this expensive ten-year service agreement, jerkface.
The fact that it's included in what's otherwise a brilliant design from a brilliant project irks me all the more.
A counter-argument to this is that automotive technology has grown so complex and specific that only mechanics specializing in one particular line of cars can hope to achieve the required level of proficiency. And if that's the case, why not bring technicians who deal solely with Volvos into the company proper? Surely then they would be more able to keep up with the latest advances and newest models hitting the streets.
I don't buy that, for the simple reason that one can still be a good Volvo mechanic and Saab mechanic at the same time. Countless other professions have experienced similar fragmentation due to specialization without the same results. Imagine if you could only have your hip replaced by a manufacturer-employed surgeon, or your plumbing repaired by same people who produced the pipes. Even Apple, much as they try to discourage it economically, doesn't technologically prohibit independent shops from services their wares.
Perhaps this isn't their intent at all. Maybe "Volvo mechanic" simply means anyone acquiring a basic license from Volvo (in addition to tens of thousands of dollars worth of necessary equipment) and every service station already fixing these Scandinavian pillars of safety will continue to do so without batting an eye. I still think that preventing a customer from self-maintenance is wicked. Modern cars of all sorts have dazzling amounts of complex machinery and circuitry, leaving little hope for the automotive amateur. Chances are, if you purchased your car after 1990, you won't be going under the hood for anything other than checking the oil and refilling windshield-washer fluid (tasks which the designers of the aforementioned Volvo model made sure to accommodate through the inclusion of additional external ports - a very good idea from which other designers should learn), but it is still a dangerous psychological shift to prevent anything beyond the basic. The removal of options transforms your car into sealed black box.
One could draw an analogy to medicine, saying that while the average person is capable of dealing with stuffy noses, abrasions, and acid reflux, it would be foolhardy to have your brother-in-law come over and give you a hand with your laparoscopic appendectomy (I know this from experience). The major work is best left to the trained specialists. Same with car repair.
Critical difference: the functioning of your internal organs is not the intellectual property of Ford. To protect what it sees as a valuable technological advantage, Volvo has disallowed all procedures, even diagnostic ones, that are more than skin-deep.
Volvo deserves to be rewarded for its innovations. That's why we have patents. But restricting exploration and information limits innovation. Some great discoveries have come from specialists in one field recognizing parallels in other fields where they were mere dilettantes. A cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas, even one so astructural as letting any curious party look under your hood, has real societal benefit. And if all that happens is that some talented engineer somewhere sees a design possibility in Volvo's carburetor and improves upon it, Volvo gets kickbacks from their patent rights. Wherefore this incentive to stifle innovation?
I see this mentality running rampant today, from DRM software to overzealous patent lawyers, all in the name of property rights and protecting competition. But ideas are not real estate, bits are not atoms, and a direct legal analogy can't be drawn. Now I'm no utopian IP communist. I believe in the public domain, but I believe in intellectual property controls. I also believe the two are not mutually exclusive. We used to have a reasonably fair balance. Now it's tipping in favor of one side.
I'm reacting disproportionately to one little sentence from one little article, but I'm not over-reacting to this issue on the whole. This Volvo nonsense is just another indication that we're headed down a dangerous road.
UPDATE: a fiesty disussion on slashdot has sprung up on this exact topic.
Posted by morland @ 01:14 PM
:: Comments ::
"Volvo will never actually take this car into production, of course.
But many of the ideas hatched by the female think-tank may still appear in more conventional Volvos, as well as in other cars within the group."
Posted by: on March 3, 2004 02:54 PM
Alice Paul would be rolling over in her grave right now...more room for shopping bags, yay!! You don't have to fix anything yourself, because God forbid a woman know how to fix a car!! Don't deal with that messy stuff under the hood, let a nice mechanic do it. And worst of all, don't let a car ruin your ponytail, make room for women's hair! I hope my use of exclamation points adequately conveyed my sense of disapproval.
Posted by: karen on March 3, 2004 06:58 PM
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