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Right-to-Repair Law To Get DRM Out of Your Car
eldavojohn writes "Ralph Nader's back to hounding the automotive industry ... but it's not about safety this time, it's about the pesky DRM in your car. Most cars have a UART in them that allows you to read off diagnostic codes and information about what may be wrong with the vehicle so you can repair it. Late model cars have been getting increasingly complex and dependent on computers which has caused them, as with most things digital, to move towards a proprietary DRM for these tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information. This has kept independent auto-shops out of the market for fixing your car and relegating you to depend on pricier dealers to get your automotive ailments cured. The bill still has a provision to protect trade secrets but is a step forward to open up the codes and tools necessary to keep your car running."
I'd like them to take it a step further and have it so the owner can see the error codes and refer to the manual. I got a check engine light on a 2 month old car while driving across country with no dealer for 800 miles. I chose to risk it rather than have to pay a local mechanic to look at it. As it turned out it was only a dirty fuel filter caused by crappy gas. Forcing me to worry and go to a dealer 700 miles before my destination is really a crappy way to squeeze money out of someone who just gave you 30 grand.
Don't blame Nader, blame your lousy voting system that discourages a third party from forming. Your voting party system is only one party better than the Communism your country hates.
Captcha was: protest
Way to miss the point, pornologist. In a free market, ANY mechanic would work on ANY car he/she felt like figuring out. We have a government-enforced monopoly on any car with a computer in it, thanks to the DMCA and similar laws. That's not freedom; that's not capitalism, that's corporatism.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Its one thing to introduce DRM to protect the copyright on a song, book or video. That isn't fair but it's also unlikely to get anyone killed. (Laws that introduce overly harsh penalties like jail time, ruin a career, or bankrupt someone are a whole other kettle of fish). How can any company justify pricing people out of having their car repaired? Lives are at stake. I wonder how long it'll take before people start suing because repair work was so unreasonably expensive via authorized channels that it leads to injury and death? It should be illegal to lock up certain kinds of information. It should be illegal to use laws like these to prevent competition where lives are at stake.
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The argument for DRM in the car MIGHT fly in cars that are leased (which in my lay-person's brain sounds somewhat similar to a license for using software), but there can be absolutely no reason for preventing me from accessing information on something that I own outright.
Its not like I bought a license to drive the car (that was provided freely (sans a few yearly fees) by the government of my state), I own the metal. What possible argument can there be for preventing me from reading the information in my car's engine?
Me too. The Corvair was a cool little car, especially if you dropped a 350 in it. Unsafe at any speed my ass.
If it is equally unsafe regardless of speed, it makes perfect sense to drive as fast as possible so you can get to your destination sooner.
Seems like you're using sound logic to me.
And that's why you pay top dollar at the dealership, and when they screw you without lube you just shut up and take it.
Most of us are trying to avoid that. Some of us even (gasp!) do the work ourselves, learning as we go along. YIKES!
OBD-II (the UART mentioned in the article) does not really tell you what is wrong with your car. It gives you another clue. Experience, know-how, tools, other clues, and a process of elimination tells you what is wrong with your car. OBD-II tells you that something was detected like a knock, misfire, oxygen rich, emissions leak, etc. Now a mechanic has to hunt down the cause and fix that. I just wanted to make that clear. It is like looking at iostat not dtrace.
It will be nice to get the codes, but most of them are pretty much known by now. Some ranges are pretty defacto standard too. It's annoying though that the codes can be different on the same model car sold in CA vs IL though. That can trip you up when you have a code list that does not include the correct region.
Don't blame Nader, blame your lousy voting system that discourages a third party from forming. Your voting party system is only one party better than the Communism your country hates.
Captcha was: protest
I think the ideal would be for candidates to run as individuals with no such thing as a political party. Then, y'know, people might actually have to think about what the individual candidate stands for (or claims to stand for anyway) rather than reducing voting to the 50/50 chance of "is he a member of my party?" Then the next step would be to get rid of the concept of politicians and return to the concept of the statesman.
If anyone is aware of any writings the Founding Fathers have left behind about political parties in general I'd appreciate any reference you can provide. Ok, mod me off-topic now if that makes you feel better.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
And the idea of any political party having that type of power should be giving you nightmares.
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Because he thought he'd make it big. He'd not be complaining if they went from $70 to $200. He took a gamble, and he lost. He was, or should have been, aware of the risks.
Honestly, neither am I. The stock market is not a zero risk endeavor.
The Whigs and Tory parties have been around for about as long as the Parliamentary system. Even before that there were factional grouping that were analogous to parties.
I think the default state of a parliamentary system or any reasonably free group of humans is for factions to form around individuals. Later on those factions become bound by ideology and become parties. Actually even inside a political party there are always competing factions based around individuals. The winning individual gets to define the ideology to some extent so long as they are party leader. Actually that defining process is really a test whether they still are leader - most British Prime Ministers go because the rest of their party opposes on some ideological issue and unseats them. Arguably even the ones that lose elections have already lost the suppport of their own party.
So I'm not sure what you mean by "the British originally had no political parties". Even during the days of absolute monarchy there were competing factions at court. In fact there were regular uprisings where one faction would try to take over. Post Glorious Revolution the power of the monarchy was limited and the factions moved to Parliament. Formal parties formed soon after. Actual the Conservative party was very informal until quite recently - it was much more like a club or faction, 17th Century style. E.g. leaders 'emerged' rather than being elected until 1965.
A free society is really a set of rules that everyone agrees to on how to decide which faction is in charge peacefully. Those factions would still exist in an unfree society, it's just that they would have to compete for power in a non peaceful way. Given the pressure of open competition factions will turn into parties with more formalised rules eventually. Though the Conservatives managed to do OK as an informal 'faction' for a hundred and thirty years.
Actually the LDP is Japan is an interesting example. It has been in power for most of the time since Japan was a democracy. Still it is highly factional and the policies of one LDP faction can be completely different from another. Back before it lost elections it was widely touted as an alternative model to a multi party system - essentially a single party which contained mutiple competing factions. Even now it's longevity is probably due to the fact that it is not really one party in the normal sense.
Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Premier said to Gorbachev that "in the short term we will democratize the [Chinese Communist]Party but in the long run a multi party system is inevitable". Of course he was deposed and imprisoned by more traditional types and Leninist party discipline was reimposed ruthlessly. Still it's easy to imagine that his model would work a bit like the LDP in Japan for a while until some factions turned themselves into alternative parties.
Actually the KMT in Taiwan used to be the only party but looks like it has managed to transition to being a Conservative style natural party of government in a democracy. Quite possibly if the CCP had followed Zhao's advice it would have been able to pull off the same trick.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Do you really want politicians to sit there and debate about everything and not actually get anything done?
Yes.
Third parties don't have to win to make a difference. The Democratic party now knows exactly the stakes of ignoring the people likely to vote for them. Game theory suggests that they should start adopting some of the Green platform, etc, to draw these voters and win elections.
With elections seeming to get even closer, third parties have increasingly more importance.