In the wake of two drone crashes in recent weeks, manufacturer SZ DJI Technology announced its intention to send a firmware update that, if downloaded, would prevent DJI drones from taking off within the no-flight zone that covers much of Washington, D.C. or from flying across national borders. This response may assuage security fears, but it raises the specter of another troubling issue that is becoming increasingly common in our networked marketplace: How much do you control products you nominally own? By embracing its current response to the drone crashes, DJI has suggested a solution to the problem of security that may exacerbate concerns of ownership and privacy.
Anyone who owns a DJI drone has just had the functionality of that drone altered without their agreement, and potentially even without their knowledge. While this particular change may rightly prioritize security over functionality, it still alters the value of the drone that consumers purchased — changing how owners can use it after they have already taken possession. In a world where an increasing number of products require networking to a computer and updating semi-regularly, the concept of a manufacturer being able to update or change a product without consumer knowledge or permission can be disconcerting.
The current update only occurs if owners of DJI drones download the firmware update. But, in the future this is something that could, in theory, be done remotely and without the operator’s permission. Examples of this proliferate. In 2010, Sony issued a firmware update for Playstation 3s that disabled the machine’s ability to install and run other operating systems on the console, effectively removing a feature of the console from Playstation 3s already in consumers’ homes. Perhaps even more troublingly, Tesla recently used an over-the-air software update to improve the acceleration in all of its cars. That may be an upgrade consumers want. But, Tesla did not ask prior to providing the update, nor did Tesla need customer approval before changing the way the cars that consumers were driving functioned. Similar technological capabilities are allowing lenders to install GPS trackers and “starter interrupt” devices to remotely locate and disable cars when someone falls behind on payments.
These examples indicate how far companies can go, should they choose, to alter products they have already sold to consumers, but the threat may come from farther afield, including people who may be able to hack into systems that run everything from cars to drones. The current system is one in which users do not have control over the technology they own, and may not know exactly how much that technology can change after they have purchased it. That DJI drones can no longer fly over D.C. or that Tesla cars now accelerate slightly faster may seem like small issues. They may also seem like instances of the right decision being made. Yet they raise the larger issue of who is making those decisions and who is affected by them. The concept of ownership may be changing as manufacturers gain growing control over their products even long after consumers purchase them. What it means to own something, and what consumers know about the control they exercise over the products they buy, are concepts that may be evolving to remove consumers from the equation when decisions are made about how products can and should be used. These decisions are currently allowed to be made by manufacturers, and regulatory changes will be required to allow consumers to wrest back control of the products they own.
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