
Paying £4 a month for use of your own doorbell? - galaxyLogic
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/3083795/somewhere-in-the-early-21st-century-we-started-renting-everything-as-a-service
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KukicAdnan
If it provides value, why not?

I have a Nest Hello and pay Nest the monthly fee to have recordings and alerts
of people who come to my door. It's worth the $3/mo. If I didn't want to pay
them, I could still use the doorbell as a regular dumb doorbell, but the
utility it provides for the cost is worth it to me.

~~~
throwGuardian
I think the author implies that the hypothetical $4 service adds no value,
other than changing the pricing and ownership terms. Imagine if all doorbell
manufacturers decided to only sell a subscription service and not a device to
own - then from a one time $50 purchase, they've milked you into $4/month for
life. The camera and security will be a $4 extra, per month. Premium AI with
real time face recognition (from Facebook of course) will be another $4 extra.

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whinythepooh
> I'm not saying the whole n-as-a-service culture is a bad thing.

Is is not a bad thing, it is a horse @#$*! It smells with rentier capitalism
and serfdom. Especially IP and copyright which is just a global cenzorship in
disguise.

Lack of control and dependency on third-party is what I don't like the most.
All I want is to buy a thing and forget about the seller.

\- Cannot upgrade, downgrade, copy on-demand

\- Tied to lifetime, profitability of the service

\- Cannot fix the price

\- Cannot prevent from adding "features" like ads or microtransactions

\- Connectivity requirements

\- One more account

\- No privacy

\- Cenzorship (ban, restriction by territory)

The list goes on.

> In 2012, Bruce Willis took Apple to court after discovering that he couldn't
> leave his iTunes library to his children - on his death, the rights are
> nullified

We need something like this for wealth.

