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Automakers To Gearheads: Stop Repairing Cars
Mr_Blank writes Automakers are supporting provisions in copyright law that could prohibit home mechanics and car enthusiasts from repairing and modifying their own vehicles. In comments filed with a federal agency that will determine whether tinkering with a car constitutes a copyright violation, OEMs and their main lobbying organization say cars have become too complex and dangerous for consumers and third parties to handle. The dispute arises from a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that no one thought could apply to vehicles when it was signed into law in 1998. But now, in an era where cars are rolling computing platforms, the U.S. Copyright Office is examining whether provisions of the law that protect intellectual property should prohibit people from modifying and tuning their cars.
you simply get to use it, and the automaker gets a final say in how you use your car. good grief.
To purchase a nice car from the 60's or 70's with no computer. Easy to fix, and except for crash-readyness usually pretty solid.
Whilst the DMCA may or may not be a good thing, it is certainly not a means for the car manufacturers to impose a SAFETY based restriction. That organisations pull that sort of abuse is why the legal system is held in contempt.
" The dispute arises from a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that no one thought could apply to vehicles when it was signed into law in 1998"
Do the editors even read this site ? Virtually everyone realized this could apply to just about anything that ran code. There was even the infamous use garage door opener case
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/...
And the HP and Lexmark toner cartridge cases which were just about embedded serialization
This has nothing to do with the free market. This is using government regulation to prevent the fair use of your own property.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if someone made that lame brained argument on the automaker's side. They're no more in favor of a free market than a communist is. It just so happens that when they have bought out the government, government regulation works for them, and not as a means of checking them.
I'm not Joe Mechanic or anything like that, but I know enough to change my air, fuel & oil filters, add fluids, etc. I've even done tune-ups on my older cars, but what about the real grease monkeys who can fix anything on a vehicle? Wouldn't this type of law put the Auto-Zones, Napas & the like out of business? I don't know where they get the majority of their sales, but I know a sizeable amount has to come from home car repair/tuning enthusiasts.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
When you start your new car for the first time, an FBI warning replaces the metering display and an annoying voice from the sound system asks; "You wouldn't pirate a movie, would you?"
In 100 years it will be determined that home based human baby producing process is too dangerous. All the enthusiasts and hobbyists are at great risk of infringing of the global law, 1 baby per family, and are at risk of procreating unauthorized offspring.
(at least the ones who think this is a good idea)
Fuck off and die, preferably in a fire.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Fuck you.
Show me a car that I'm not allowed to fix, and I'll show you a car that I won't allow myself to buy.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
How are we supposed to make a car analogy now?
From the article;
Industry concerns are mounting that modifying these ECUs and the software coding that runs them could lead to vulnerabilities in vehicle safety and cyber security. Imagine an amateur makes a coding mistake that causes brakes to fail and a car crash ensues. Furthermore, automakers say these modifications could render cars non-compliant with environmental laws that regulate emissions.
This is not about replacing brakes, oil changes, replacing spark plugs, etc. It is about making software changes that most people do not have the experience or knowledge to do.
If they do this, they're going against the magnuson moss act.
In a just world they would lose copyright when they stop warranting the product. You want copyright of that ecu? You give a permanent warranty on it and replace them every time they fail, for free. Don't want to have to replace it? then you give up copyright to the code on it because user needs to fix it. I'm not holding my breath though.
Is there nothing more American than taking a mass market car and finding another 10 horsepower?
Or making the stereo loud enough to knock down old barns as you drive by?
What if immersing your motherboard in liquid nitrogen for another 3 frames per second were illegal?
Or writing your own operating system could land you in jail?
What have we come to? We need to protect people from doing stupid stuff, but nobody wants to live in a world with only one flavor...
A.
The more normal uses that the DMCA distrupts and therefore the more disgrunted owners of common technologies then the more hope that there will be a movement to overthrown that aberration of law.
-no sig today-
Indeed. I never understood that circular logic. Perhaps somebody of that persuasion can explain how it (allegedly) works for us.
Businesses want control, and if you don't properly regulate them, they'll use every method they have to gain their desired control. I see the government functioning like referees. Without referees a game would become a dirty slugfest instead of a skillfest. Basketball and wrestling would be the same sport. Sure, refs are sometimes stupid, but anybody in any institution can likewise be stupid.
Table-ized A.I.
Religious leaders are supporting provisions in copyright law that could prohibit home writers and book enthusiasts from repairing and modifying their own bibles. In comments filed with a federal agency that will determine whether tinkering with a bible constitutes a copyright violation, churches and their main lobbying organisation say bibles have become too complex and dangerous for believers and third parties to even scribble in. The dispute arises from a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that no one thought could apply to bibles when it was signed into law in 1998. But now, in an era where books are text files, the U.S. Copyright Office is examining whether provisions of the law that protect intellectual property should prohibit people from modifying or even put boogers in their hardcopy bibles.
It sounds like it would be in the interests of public safety, to use their own quotations to support an injunction from them being able to sell these unsafe cars.
Just as unmaintainable computers should not be allowed on the Internet, unmaintainable cars should not be allowed on public roads.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
For years these pricks have been ripping off their customers with deceptive pricing and dealer networks that are nothing more than a middle man. They want you to believe that you have to bring your car to the dealer for service but if you read the fine print you will see that any competent neighborhood mechanic can service you car and not void the warranty.
Then along comes Tesla and Uber and others that threaten their monopolies. So instead of changing their business to suit the way consumers want it they double down and try to lock you in. Right out of the playbook of the movie studios and cable companies and utilities. They will litigate and use political pressure to force you to play the game the way they want it played. Same old same old.
We want you to buy a new car every 3 years and with auto drive cars they will shutdown after software updates end after 2-3 years.
Ok, automakers want to force me to obey their license terms? WHERE ARE THEY?
I've never had a dealer make me sign a EULA or license terms to use the car they just sold me... Go ahead guys, TRY IT!.
Once you do this, I'm going to review all the software I can find in my car and start looking for Open Source libraries in all that fancy user interface stuff you are providing now and make you comply to the license terms for it all. I have a feeling that we will find that you have some legal problems..
Next they are going to try this on hand tools....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
forever.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I have found that in recent (say 10 or so) years dealerships have become a lot more cost competitive; at least for some types of repairs and maintenance procedures. One example I have noticed is with oil changes. My car uses synthetic oil, and a lot of it. I priced out what it would cost me to change the oil myself if I bought the appropriate oil at the local parts store, and the filter. I then called the dealership and their cost to me for the same was only $5 more. If I had done it myself I would have spent $5 running the used oil somewhere for disposal, and likely had to spend time afterwards cleaning up part of my garage. it was well worth the $5 to let them do it.
I have found other similar situations with brake jobs (I would normally do these myself but in situations involving stuck calipers or parking brake pads that won't release, I call and price it out at the dealership and local brake shops).
Now, I haven't encountered the need for a really large repair yet. I don't know if this scales or not. But it does suggest that the dealerships are aware of consumers pricing out these things and have brought their charges down in response.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Draconian/dystopian controls are completely unnecessary. Population explosion projections fall prey to the xkcd rule on extrapolation - they don't properly account for the impact that modern technology/medicine/family planning options have.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say our problem isn't going to be having too many babies, it's going to be having enough of them.
Several advanced nations have already fallen well below replacement level (i.e., roughly 2 births per female). The USA is even one of those nations at 1.88 births per woman as of 2012. Some places are even worse, like South Korea at 1.3, a rate at which if it continues, the South Korean population would be gone by 2700 or so (though of course, see previous statement on extrapolation). It's true for pretty much every sufficiently advanced nation. The USA and many of these countries have started replacing their population via immigration (which is why the US population is still growing despite the slowing birth rate), but that's only going to work for so long...
Because it's spreading. In 1970, Mexico's birth rate was 6.72 per female. In 2012, it had fallen to 2.22. What about India? 5.49 in 1970, 2.50 in 2012. Yes, it's still pretty high in some of the most undeveloped nations, but that will change, not because governments enforce it, but because on the whole people want it.
Printer manufacturers tried this several years ago with chips in ink cartridges. The supreme court ruled it was ok to reverse engineer the code on these chips if it was required to allow other companies to make make compatible cartidges. I would think the same would apply to cars and after market parts and upgrades.
Stallman was right. Although in his story, it was about books, not babies or cars.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...