Wired is reporting on an interesting case of a robotic parking garage that refused to work. The Garden Street Garage in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA, can park cars automatically. There are only a few of these automated garages in existence. Their main benefit is that they can eleminate ramps and elevators by parking the cars automatically without the drivers.

The garage in question is owned and operated by the city. The software is only licensed, meaning it remains the actual property of Robotic Parking of Clearwater, Florida, USA. You can probably see where this is going. The city had the Robotic Garage employees escorted off the premises before the license expired. Unfortunately, once it expired, the software refused to work. Court cases were the result, and until a settlement was reached customers could not access their cars.

This might be only an amusing story, if it didn’t raise some interesting questions. Thanks to the work of Bill Gates and other commercial software people, we do not buy software, we license it. This means, basically, that we’re allowed to use the software, but we do not have any other rights normally associated with ownership. The clauses differ, but normally it’s forbidden to change the software, to make copies (even for personal use) or to resell it to a third party. And of course the source code of a commercial project is only rarely available.

This can cause big headaches already if you’re using a software and the publisher goes out of business. Especially in sectors where software is not commodized, or when solutions are so specialized than none of the file formats follow any kind of standard. The problems are increasing; for example, DRM becomes more prevalent and it is not inconceivable that it will lock you out of your own software or data. For example, what will you do with your iTunes-purchased music if Apple ever discontinues the service? You won’t be able to authorize new computers to play the music.

Back to robots. Robots are machines, hardware. Nobody would think of licensing their car, for example. You buy a car. You buy a house. And you expect to buy your robot. However, a robot is controlled by complex software, and the smarter robots get the more complex the software becomes. Once robots finally become an every day product, it might be very tempting for a company to license the robot control software. It gives the manufacturer a level of control over their product that would not otherwise be possible. And it will open a steady stream of income - as part of the above-mentioned settlement, the city of Hoboken will be paying Robotic Parking US$3500 a month for three years for the software license.

Eventually, people will depend more and more on robots. Licensing accidents might happen. Your faithful robot companion might stop dead in its track carrying your groceries home because your license expires. And licenses can and do state all kinds of things. Whoever reads through the huge licenses that software manufacturers cook up? What about a clause saying that a robot might constantly report its location to the manufacturer, or some other such “feature”.

Somehow, I find it worrying that such a robot would not be under the complete legal control of the “owner”. The only exception would be a true artificial intelligence, which should not be under anybody’s control any more than a human being is. (”This AI is not licensed to solve math problems. Please buy our advanced model, contact your sales representative now to unlock this feature!”). But we’re not that far. Yet.