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Congress May Force Revealing of Car Computer Secrets
marksven writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that there is a bill with 86 co-sponsors in the House to force automakers to open up their proprietary interfaces to car computers. Small car repair shops are more and more becoming locked out of the repair business because most late model cars can only be fixed by accessing their computers with codes that are secret."
Agreed. A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly. You can't discriminate just because it's a smaller market, or one that's likely to have less publicity. Unfair business monopolies are rife these days - and a step in the right direction would undoubtedly be welcome.
That's not a bad idea. The product has 1000's of disasters waiting for hackers to discover. What happens if a real malicious guy finds one, and instead of reporting it to bugtraq, he formats every windows drive on the internet? Up til now we've been extremely lucky and the will of hackers has been a good one. They either report stuff, or steal information. Few destroy the computer.
Think that potential risk of monetary loss, not to mention the stuff that is beyond value, worth allowing MS to continue on the way they are now?
WTF was the shop down the street looking at the onboard computer for, if it was a brake problem?
Either they suck, or you're lying.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Much like a bunch of geeks whining about closed source.. you have these gear heads whining about not being able to have access..
umm.. well.. if you don't know any better, that might be an issue, but there's this thing called OBD (On board diagnostics) that's a mandated part of every vehicle sold in north america.. that uses a standard interface and standard signalling to communicate with it..
Right now they're working on OBD-3.. obd1 & 2 have been around for years..
www.obd2.com
there ya go.. hell you can plug your palm into your car and get real=time diagnostics and also do datalogging..
If they can't do diagnostics.. well.. spend the $ for the tools..
If they're talking about reprogramming the PCM for new fuel/timing maps and new shift points.. well that's closed source and they have every right to protect it.
That doesn't change the fact that this law is unreasonable. In the first case, it's understandable. You are waranteed against damage, but then you come to find out that the repair can only be done at the dealership (though to tell the truth, this doesn't seem any different from computer warantees. I'll have to look into it more). The fact is though, that the governemtn shouldn't be forcing businesses to do this. Just because you want to get your repair done somewhere doesn't give you the right. I would guess the case you are refering to had to do with the fact that having to have the repairs done at the dealership was not part of the original warantee contract.
If it was, all I can really say is read the waranty. A business has every right to make restrictions like that. And if you don't like it, then you don't buy it.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Paten it anyway, at the current rate, it seems the Paten Office will give you a paten on whatever you want. The fine line between data and code is about as wide as a 12 lane freeway these days.
Your website is horrible, and you can't spell patent. What's wrong with you?
Yah, I hate clean air. I'd much rather breath your frigg'n exhaust constantly.
I don't think the government should stick their nose in where it doesn't belong. If the small businesses don't like being locked out, then they need to build their own damned cars. Oh, they can't then they need to go out of business. This is capitalism at it's finest, Remember it's a dog eat dog world out there where only the fittest should survive, and what the government is doing is holding back progress. We need to get the libertarian party in there to get back to progress.