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You Can Legally Hack Your Own Car, Pacemaker, or Smartphone Now (wired.com)
Earlier this year, we ran a story about how even possessions as personal as one's car or tractor, or insulin pump could not be legally hacked by the owner, but those constraints are things of the past now. From a report on Wired: Last Friday, a new exemption to the decades-old law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act quietly kicked in, carving out protections for Americans to hack their own devices without fear that the DMCA's ban on circumventing protections on copyrighted systems would allow manufacturers to sue themt (Editor's note: the website may block users who use adblocking tools. Here's an alternate source). One exemption, crucially, will allow new forms of security research on those consumer devices. Another allows for the digital repair of vehicles. Together, the security community and DIYers are hoping those protections, which were enacted by the Library of Congress's Copyright Office in October of 2015 but delayed a full year, will spark a new era of benevolent hacking for both research and repair. "This is a tremendously important improvement for consumer protection," says Andrea Matwyshyn, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University. "The Copyright Office has demonstrated that it understands our changed technological reality, that in every aspect of consumers' lives, we rely on code," says Matwyshyn, who argued for the exemptions last year. For now, the exemptions are limited to a two-year trial period. And the security research exemption in particular only applies to what the Copyright Office calls "good-faith" testing, "in a controlled environment designed to avoid any harm to individuals or to the public." As Matwyshyn puts it, "We're not talking about testing your neighbor's pacemaker while it's implanted. We're talking about a controlled lab and a device owned by the researcher."
I believe it was technically 'passed' in 1998 but was actually 'enacted' (went into effect) a few months into 2000, because of fears that the DMCA (hence the term 'millennium' in the name) would impact the Y2K issues that needed addressed.
People in the know were afraid that DMCA would block Y2K fixes that were needed. (they were right to worry about this, but not right enough to realize 'wait why are we passing a law that we already know has major issues... ohh wait... thank you for the donation MPAA, RIAA, etc)
Mostly, I just use my phone these days; Google Maps is always up to date, and I can download maps so I don't need to worry about cell coverage in the middle of nowhere.