Re: OT: Question for Anim

On 2024-03-12 19:54:37 +0000, anim8rfsk said:

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

In article <usoqio$4l1e$1@dont-email.me>,
Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
 

On 3/11/2024 9:06 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:

 

Compare this thinking to beta versus VHS. There's absolutely no doubt Beta was better in every measurable capacity, but VHS was better at promotion and underhanded pricing deals. So it won.

 I thought it was because Betamax wouldn't allow their format to be used
for porn.

 How could they have stopped it?
 That's like saying Ford wouldn't allow its cars to be used to film porn.
Except once you buy a car, it's yours, and you can use it for anything
you like and Ford has no say about it.

 Tesla did. They had right in the “sales” contract that you couldn’t use a
Tesla as a rideshare vehicle, apparently because they were considering
starting their own rideshare service. It’s only in the last couple of years
that Tesla became available to Uber and Lyft.

Quite a few companies do have specific rules and rights, more usually the expensive brands such as Ferrari (often not allowed to resell the vehicle without following the strict rules), but also many of the more normal brands ... the problem is that nobody actually reads all the legalese small print in the contract they sign and most of the time it's not worth the companies enforcing it, unless there is a very good reason to do so.
For example, the terms of the agreement when installing Apple's MacOS is that it is only used on Apple-made computers. There are literally thousands of "Hackintosh" PCs running MacOS out there and it's not worth Apple's time and money doing anything about it ... but as soon as some idiot starts trying to *sell* such computer systems with MacOS installed (as happend a couple of years ago), Apple's legal department quickly closes them down.

Betamax had no authority to dictate what the people who bought their
tapes could record on them.