How the Car Industry Has Hidden Its Software Behind the DMCA

Lucas123 writes: The DCMA has allowed carmakers to keep third parties from looking at the code in their electronic control modules. The effect has been that independent researchers are wary of probing vehicle code, which may have lead companies like Volkswagen to get away with cheating emissions tests far longer than necessary. In a July letter to the U.S. Copyright Office, the Environmental Protection Agency expressed its own concern of the protection provided by the DMCA to carmakers, saying it's "difficult for anyone other than the vehicle manufacturer to obtain access to the software." Kit Walsh, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the legal uncertainly created by the DMCA "makes it easier for manufacturers to conceal intentional wrongdoing. The EFF has petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for an exemption to the DMCA for embedded vehicle code so that independent research can be performed on electronic control modules (ECMs), which run a myriad of systems, including emissions. Eben Moglen was right.

Comments

The Volkswagen scandal is a good thing

[Applehu Akbar]

It may push even Congress to allow us access to our own cars' ECM and diagnostic systems.

Who Exactly Gets To View a Company's Code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should "researchers" get to view the code? Here in Silicon Valley I cannot think of any instances where any outsiders routinely get access to a company's code.