EFF Fighting Automakers Over Whether You Own Your Car

An anonymous reader writes: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act contains anti-circumvention prohibitions that affect everything from music files to cell phones. The EFF noticed that it could apply to cars as well, so they asked for an exemption to be put in place so car owners would be free to inspect and modify the code running on their vehicles. It turns out U.S. automakers don't agree — they filed opposition comments through trade associations. "They say you shouldn't be allowed to repair your own car because you might not do it right. They say you shouldn't be allowed to modify the code in your car because you might defraud a used car purchaser by changing the mileage. They say no one should be allowed to even look at the code without the manufacturer's permission because letting the public learn how cars work could help malicious hackers, "third-party software developers" (the horror!), and competitors. John Deere even argued that letting people modify car computer systems will result in them pirating music through the on-board entertainment system, which would be one of the more convoluted ways to copy media (and the exemption process doesn't authorize copyright infringement, anyway)."

Comments

Already too late

[Locke2005]

Already had this problem with my 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. The hybrid battery went dead. I went to the dealer and asked them to sell me a new battery so I could put it in. They refused, insisting THEY had to install it, and they would not sell me the battery! That's right, kids -- they refused to let me fix my own car, despite the fact that I am a trained electronics technician and hold a Bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering!

Re:If i can't work on my car

[Balthisar]

I happen to work for a very large car company as a manufacturing engineer. No, we don't do this deliberately, and as said below, we don't not do it deliberately, either.

Our number one goal is customer satisfaction, and if you Pareto it right, the vast majority of customers don't service their cars themselves, and have no interest in doing so. They're more satisfied with fit-and-finish, safety, economy, and features that will delight them. If it were the case that 80% of our customers valued home-serviceability more than these things, then designs would shift towards these things. It's simply not possible to make every, single part easily serviceable given the demands of the modern designs.

There's not a single powertrain engineer that says, "Hey, let's put this air intake over the number 5 cylinder so that the customer will be discouraged from changing the spark plugs himself at 160,000 km." Instead it's, "Bummer that this air intake is in the way of the number 5 cylinder, but I have to route it here because the cabin air filter, goes here, the oversized washer tank goes there, and I have to figure out how to package the rest of the components, too."

And modern cars require less service. I used to have to change the points in my VW when I was a kid, every 3000 miles if I recall correctly. These days as long as you change your oil and filter every 10,000 miles, you don't really have to do anything else. Home serviceability is still possible, if inconvenient, but it's more than offset by the larger service intervals.

For other routine, at-home-typical tasks, there's not a huge barrier versus the past. Brakes, filters, oil plug, are all nearly as simple today as they were in the past. Maybe the alternator or water pump is hard to get to, but then again, you're not replacing these every 50,000 miles like in the past, either.

Re:I don't agree that cars cost more.

[tompaulco]

As far as I can tell the cost of a Toyota Corolla is basically the same number of dollars as it was 10 years ago. Which means that after factoring in inflation the car is significantly cheaper than it used to be.

Simple research on cars.com shows that the MSRP of a new 2015 Corolla is between 16,950 and 22,955. The original MSRP on a 2005 Corolla was 13,780 to 17,555. The price has increased between 23% and 31%. In that timeframe, inflation has supposedly gone up 20.2%, so the price of the Corolla has output paced inflation by a factor of 1.15 to 1.5.
In 2005, the Median household income was $55,238. A Corolla cost 25-32% of that.
In 2013, the last year for which numbers have been released, the median household income was $51,939. A Corolla costs 33-44% of that.
In 1968, the Corolla was first introduced in the United States. It cost under $1,700. Median household income was $7,700. The Corolla cost 22% of that.
Clearly cars are costing more as a fraction of income then ever before.
This does not even take into consideration that many households in 1968 were single earner households. Now, most households are dual income, but with nearly twice the earners in the household, the cost of a new car is still a higher percentage of income than ever before.