Slashdot Mirror
Three States Propose DMCA-Countering 'Right To Repair' Laws (ifixit.org)
Automakers are using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to shut down tools used by car mechanics -- but three states are trying to stop them.
An anonymous reader quotes IFixIt.Org:
in 2014, Ford sued Autel for making a tool that diagnoses car trouble and tells you what part fixes it. Autel decrypted a list of Ford car parts, which wound up in their diagnostic tool. Ford claimed that the parts list was protected under copyright (even though data isn't creative work) -- and cracking the encryption violated the DMCA. The case is still making its way through the courts. But this much is clear: Ford didn't like Autel's competing tool, and they don't mind wielding the DMCA to shut the company down...
Thankfully, voters are stepping up to protect American jobs. Just last week, at the behest of constituents, three states -- Nebraska, Minnesota, and New York -- introduced Right to Repair legislation (more states will follow). These 'Fair Repair' laws would require manufacturers to provide service information and sell repair parts to owners and independent repair shops.
Activist groups like the EFF and Repair.org want to "ensure that repair people aren't marked as criminals under the DMCA," according to the site, arguing that we're heading towards a future with many more gadgets to fix. "But we'll have to fix copyright law first."
Thankfully, voters are stepping up to protect American jobs. Just last week, at the behest of constituents, three states -- Nebraska, Minnesota, and New York -- introduced Right to Repair legislation (more states will follow). These 'Fair Repair' laws would require manufacturers to provide service information and sell repair parts to owners and independent repair shops.
Activist groups like the EFF and Repair.org want to "ensure that repair people aren't marked as criminals under the DMCA," according to the site, arguing that we're heading towards a future with many more gadgets to fix. "But we'll have to fix copyright law first."
They sound like good laws. I just hope they pass.
Under the DMCA they can lock out jiffy lube by saying the change oil light reset code is under the DMCA and only dealers are to have it.
But this needs to extended to firmware images, sd card images, etc for embedded hardware.
Info on old pc based embedded hardware and older video games (arcade) that used custom cards so they can be run in VM's on newer pc hardware.
Letting people run that hardware in a VM with having to rebuy the software / pay the rights holder again. Yes some like that did have happen in the past and there a free VM system to replace the old pc and custom pci card. That still needed some of the old hardware and they got sued.
Anymore. You just rent it until it breaks so you can re-up on a newer rented item. Greed has no bounds.
sell repair parts at the same price that the dealer pays?
Thankfully, voters are stepping up to protect American jobs
Can't help but feel like my anus is being forcibly greased up whenever "protect american jobs" is being waved around.
"Right to X" in the title of a new law is also a red flag.
I mean, I'm aware the DMCA is awful. They should just do something about that. Maybe say, we're going to repeal and replace it? Introduce the All-new Copyright Act, or ACA for short?
Appears to be states using their rights to do something that makes sense, nothing at the federal level.
So I can only assume the GOP is going to smack them down on it somehow.
That is a good comment, you know it's getting bad when when Americans have to depend on Chinese hackers to be able to repair their own cars because American auto makers have gotten so greedy that they are locking down via artificial electronic means out of the repair business.
If I can't diagnose and fix the car myself or an independent shop but only through expensive Stealership shops, it means the extra money I paid to the Stealership for labour and parts vs self repair/indie shop, the money will not be spent at other local businesses which hire local workers.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Well, don't forget, the DMCA was created by Republicans when they took control of congress in the 90s. So I doubt that a Republican president and congress today are going to be very sympathetic.
The last time I took my Ford to a dealer they charged $150.00 per hour for labor with a 4 hour minimum. And outrageous parts pricing. A friendly parts man sold me items at 40% off list and there were 50 and 60% off columns in the list. There aren't many repairs that I can do but some independent shops will negotiate costs.
Copyright has been "overhauled" several times. And each time it gets worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
This isn't about China, dumbass. It's about everybody else who wants to fix their fucking car.
i have a 1999 Ford Expedition, great truck for the 2-3k I drive it a year. Had a cracked windshield replaced which leaked (they fixed it) but it got my Gem Module(General Electronics Module) and fuse box wet. Darn truck, kept draining the battery, most of the electric stuff did not work, no lights, flashers, turn signals, dash indicators, windows ;) lol, !. Got it to the dealer. They said my GEM Module was bad, and they would order one.
;)
It would be 700.00 dollars up front and they had no idea when it would arrive. In fact they had one customer that has been waiting 7 months.
OK so I talk about getting one from the junk yard. But!!!! it needs to be programmed with the exact options my truck has and only Ford can do that and that is 500.00
I went home and just charged the battery everytime I wanted to drive the truck. And over time things dried out. All is good now.
I have been gathering every scrap of info so I can build a jig and write a program to dump the firmware from my electronic modules on my truck, since I am keeping it forever
Most people don't ship their vehicles to China for service. You moron.
When was the last time you shipped your car to another country to have it serviced? You fucking idiot.
I used to work at Dialogic, which was then bought by Intel. In all my time there, new prospects/customers would invariably say: "This is really hard to configure (we had line resource cards, DSP resource cards, and various ways to map these resources together.) don't you guys have a card configuration utility?" Well, for Windows, yes. For Linux, no. "Too hard and no demand" says Engineering. So, taking the bull by the horns, I found the PCI ID codes for the various cards, wrote a utility to configure them, got approval from my manager to release it as open-source and all was well. Until...The head of Engineering at our division found out about it and lodged a formal internal complaint that I had "released Intel proprietary information" and was summoned to Parsippany to face legal. Fortunately, my manager's support and basic common sense prevailed, the Eng manager was sent packing with his tail between his legs and I flew home drunk as a skunk. The legal guy basically said: "when you expose a PCI ID to the OS, it's no longer proprietary - dumbass!". Point is that when information is documented and exposed in any way, it is not "proprietary" in the sense that it cannot be used, just not stolen and used inappropriately.
I mean, I'm aware the DMCA is awful. They should just do something about that. Maybe say, we're going to repeal and replace it? Introduce the All-new Copyright Act, or ACA for short?
Sorry. The DMCA is Republican creation. Republicans are only opposed to laws created by Democrats.
The DMCA was a bipartisan effort. Created by Republicans, but signed into law by a Democratic president. The husband of the same person who almost became our current president.
Get away from the "us versus them" mentality. All the bad shit we have right now is the result of bi-partisan cooperation among politicians.
Your side is crap as well as the other side.
Insulting "the other side" does nothing to solve the underlying problem.
Federal laws automatically override all state laws. So these laws will have no effect.
That's the beauty of a FEDERAL state. Don't like Cali, got to Idaho, don't like Idaho, go to New York...
Bill Clinton, a DEMOCRAT, signed it into law.
That is a bit of anger! Relax Mr. Anonymous Coward!
This has nothing to do with Anonymous Coward. This has everything to do with Common F. Sense.
And if it's not about foreign v. American jobs, why does the summary say "Thankfully, voters are stepping up to protect American jobs"?
Because TFS is inaccurate. Sure as hell wouldn't be the first time. This has to do with protecting the rights of any car owner or 3rd party repair shop to service or repair a car if they have the knowledge and skill to do it. And to give TFS some credit for accuracy, yes, that would include American jobs, but more accurately any American who happens to own a device they hold the skill to service or repair, regardless if they hold a job doing it.
I've been maintaining my own vehicles for almost three decades, and as a result my cars have lasted me at least 200,000 miles each time. I've also not had to waste thousands of dollars on misdiagnosed issues of questionable legitimacy; otherwise known as why we call them stealerships. It's no secret the department driving considerable profit into a stealership is the service department, and I'm not about to be forced to have my car "serviced" by pure unadulterated greed just because they didn't get enough profit from me when I bought the damn car.
If automakers and stealerships had their way, every Discount Auto Parts and Autozone would be shut down, Haynes and Chilton repair manuals would be illegal, you would need a federal license to even look at the Craftsman tool department in Sears, and opening the hood on your car would require an encryption key. Abusing the shit out of the DCMA seeks to destroy an entire industry that has been established for decades, along with the thousands of jobs within. Are automakers likely trying to protect some American jobs? Sure, but the end result would still be a rather massive net loss.
In this case, Common F. Sense needs to prevail over Corruption N. Greed. Plain and simple.
Will he side with the repairmen or will he side with the megacorp.
You fulfill the stereotype that people with low user IDs are autistic middle age weirdos, likely unemployed, who can't work out conversations.
The parent has a valid point here, and the GP is an idiot for bringing up Chinese hackers. The actions of both those for and against the DCMA in this case is fighting over American jobs, but siding with the automakers and stealerships would result in a massive net loss for American jobs, since they would not seek to hire everyone they wish to put out of business by turning auto repair into some sort of DMCA-protected black magic.
This pretty much has fuck-all to do with China, apart from giving them credit for cracking a "code" that should have never been allowed to exist in the first place, under a weak-ass DMCA argument. Ironically enough, the hacking in this case creates American jobs.
There is a use-case for locked down hardware in an automobile: self-driving vehicles.
As much as you should have the rights to tinker on the things you own (and you should) things get a lot trickier when we start talking about the software or sensors that actually control your vehicle as it drives down the road.
It's going to be a complex issue with a LOT of debate, so I won't pretend like I can solve it in a single post. Suffice to say, lets not dismiss the entire concept of non-user-serviceable vehicles, in the long term. (though one thing I will say, that fact would have to be fully disclosed at time of purchase)
This signature is false.
Yes, but it is American independent mechanics who will use it to fix American cars in America. Also, perhaps if the gray area was cleared up, an American company might dare to make such tools as well.
Yah but Obama championed internet privacy and freedoms, no??
The one that expanded NSA Spying ?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Let's remember, Autel is a company based in Shenzhen, China. Ford is based in Dearborn, MI, USA. So these bills are all about robbing American jobs, to support Chinese hackers.
To give you an idea of just how wrong you are, in this case, "hackers" cracking a code has created and secured American jobs by enabling American workers to thrive in a 3rd party industry that has been established for decades, fighting against automakers who wish to turn auto repair into some kind of fucking black magic voodoo, driven by greed.
The larger issue is the fact that we're reliant upon hackers from any country to crack codes that should have never been allowed to exist in the first place, codes created and protected by abusing the shit out of the DMCA.
And yes, this issue does get rather sticky because it's actually about fighting over American jobs. Those jobs created by automakers and "authorized" repair centers (read: stealerships) vs. the much larger industry of 3rd party repair shops and DIY mechanics wanting to maintain their own vehicles.
Perhaps if they didn't get so fucking greedy to earn the moniker of stealership, this wouldn't have grown to be such an issue. Either way, the DMCA abuse needs to stop.
Is anyone actually in favor of DMCA laws and why?
It looks like big corp buying laws at the expense of the people.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
It is still horse shit, and, the argument would have been better off without the political reference.
Then why 'buy' them at all? Preventing people from repairing cars is going to be a massive incentive for people to switch over to ridesharing services, starting with urban drivers who have been used to keeping a second car. Let Ford and Uber fight over the DMCA.
Can WE get a right to repair the software? Having source code doesn't mean we own the copyrights to it any more than owning the binary copy means we own it. But it sure as shit means we can't repair it. Especially when the software is EOL'd, a problem that mechanics don't have to face.
So when do we get the right to repair software, hmm?
You don't vote for policies, do you?
Uh, yes?
Of course, no party agrees with everything I want. So I pick the most important case where they differ, and vote accordingly. So can you.
I specifically left Ford for motorsport vehicles (Cobra, GT500) and went over to Mitsubishi (Evolution IX, Evolution X) for this reason. Tired of having to pay for $1000+ tuning software just to be able to write the tunes myself, when a crash or new build happens the ECU ID changes and the software locks you out again.
Where as on the Evo I literally had to buy a $120 cable and I can tune an unlimited number of cars with full control over ever parameter and essentially a fully professional environment to write custom tunes and even sell them if needed. We're not talking about end-user "hit apply" type tunes, I'm talking about changing individual load cells on hundreds of maps over months to dial in an exact tune.
Besides that the car was built so much better I felt like an idiot for parading the domestic brands for so long. I literally traded a 32 valve V8 Cobra for an Evolution IX that had a four wheel drive turbo 2.0 liter 4 cylinder which pulled *harder* and was easier to get serious horsepower out of. My jaw literally dropped on the test drive of a modded 450whp Evo9. I had driven supercharged 500-700hp V8's but this little car never broke traction and made it's power lower in the RPM range which made it feel many times faster. Plus you could floor it around corners and it was just unbelievable how well it gained traction as boost kicked in around a corner.
I never went back and almost nothing is locked down on these cars. Stop wasting your time with other brands... *Edit* Captcha was "inducer".
Doubt it. Trump and his cronies are most certainly on the auto industry's payroll.
I find the partisanship of the USA electorate incredible. The government has in general a bipartisan agreement to not give a shit about the people yet everyone will blame something on one side or the other.
But this is about preventing the tool from being made in the first place. An American toolmaker wouldn't be able to make a Ford diagnostic tool either.
Lies. They'd be able to make that tool with Ford$ ble$$ing.
Which was, at that time, an extreme act.
Jesus christ, now I know why the Trump supporters call you guys cucks.
Vetoing legislation is about as extreme as a can of fucking Ensure.
Could be an interesting precedent, when my 'right to repair' my computer comes into question.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
MN: Rs control both house and senate and the bill was put forward by 2 Rs and 1 D.
NE:, Rs control the legislature and the bill was put forward by 7 Rs.
NY: Rs control the senate, Ds control the House and the bill was sponsored by 1 R with 1 R and 3 Ds signing on as co-sponsors.
The unions have the biggest interest in keeping small independent shops locked out. Oh wait but that means the Democrats might be the bad guys!!!
You don't vote for policies, do you?
If you ever made an effort to get involved with the legislature at the state level, you would be very surprised how easy it is to influence policy. Some state lawmakers saying getting just 1-3 letters about a bit of legislation can sway their vote on it. You should try it some time.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I wish that wasn't true. But than I would either be blind or stupid. I may be a little of both but at least I got my ear balls open.
I can't imagine any rational person wanting to get involved in politics above the local municipal level.
That statement, by itself, speaks volumes about the American public and the American political system.
See the comment above. All three states are controlled by R and R politicians are the ones that put forward these bills. Perhaps it will NOT be the GOP that is going to try to put the smack down, down. sigh
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
Can you name one instance when it didn't get worse?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just wait 'til 3D printing catches on.
In case you're not familiar with this, spare parts for cars is a HUGE business. And everyone involved is fleecing you, no matter where you get that part, whether it's a "genuine" original, a knockoff, even if you get it from a junk yard from a wreck, in the end you'll be charged many, many times over what the part actually costs you to build it in a 3D printer.
Can you imagine just what kind of industry you're standing against if that takes off? If you think the MAFIAA's battle against that dreaded "copying" was big, just wait 'til car companies and the fully dependent downstream companies (which are far from mom'n'pop shops as well!) feel the pain of you creating your own plastic parts for a buck that they wanted to sell you for twenty after mass producing it for a cent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I still buy CDs and it's been 13 years since I saw one which was alleged to contain a technological measure intended to limit access. Out of my approx 2000 CDs, literally exactly one of them has such a thing (which I didn't realize at the time I bought it). (And then I also didn't realize until after I ripped it and later found out that some people's drives (and car players) were having trouble with it.)
If you make a CD player which can play 99.95% (1/2000) and fails on one, it will not only be perfectly legal, but people will be ok that it doesn't play the one broken CD. (They can just go pirate it, instead of buying it, if they want to hear the album.)
DRM simply isn't a factor in the music sales. It effectively doesn't exist, except maybe in some of those streaming services. Video is where you go to find DRM, which is why I eventually gave up and started just pirating all my movies and TV, whereas I still buy music. Music publishers still want your money; it's the video people who are constantly creating piracy incentives.
The proposed Nebraska statute says "Sec. 7: Nothing in the Fair Repair Act shall apply to motor vehicle manufacturers." As for other manufacturers, they get to take into account whether compliance would be too expensive, and the maximum penalty is $500. So regardless of whether or not you think these laws are a good idea, it's nothing close to being a Tech Writer Full Employment Act, an Everybody Can Repair Their Own Car Act, or a Put All The Small Manufacturers Out Of Business Act.
The states just have to ban sales of products that do not allow people to fix them. This does not overrule federal copyright law, it just restricts sales. You can be damn sure that if the car companies are only allowed to sell repairable cars in the state of California, car companies will make repairable cars.
Ahem
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
1710 when the Statute of Anne (long name, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.) was passed. To quote wiki,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Great, I wasn't suggesting democrats are now and have always been saints. I was making a joke about the state of the republican party today and now. I know people think the clintons are an omnipotent evil force, but you're not suggesting Bill will somehow override the state legislatures here, are you?
I'm constantly astonished at the lengths people will go to to pretend that both sides are always equally bad in every example.
Seems to me like that's only true for a very small number of issues and to a very limited degree. If I dislike climate change, I can't just move to california and it's all okay.
And it seems like states rights only work for silly republican ideas. Like "Hey, no sales taxes" or "We don't like the gays." California, Illinois, DC, or New York decide to limit guns and screams of "Tyrrany!" and legal challenges abound.
Fixing your car yourself means you are *stealing* money from the hard-working American workers who work at your local dealership!! You should be *happy* to pay $100/hour for dealership mechanics to fix things on your car (even if they're not broken), because this supports American workers and your local economy too! /s
"Divide and conquer" is one of the oldest strategies in warfare.
And passed the senate with 99 yes votes, 54 Republicans and 45 democrats. One republican did not vote. The House put it to a voice vote, and it passed overwhelmingly. This was obviously something that our entire government thought was a STELLAR idea. Interesting that anyone would think that blaming any one party for this law is a correct or honest approximation of what really happened.
This is just another example of how our "parties" act as a single organism when presented with the chance to circumvent or eliminate rights guaranteed to the US people. This is what they do. They love to talk about the wedge issues, and recirculate those endlessly to incite division in the voting populace. But when it comes to fucking us, the American people, they show their true colors and vote as a unit.
If any of you partisan fools are brave enough to study the voting record you might learn something interesting. Your party, whichever one you choose, routinely does things you might find objectionable. If you weren't so absorbed in spewing vitriol at the people you have been programmed to blame and hate, and if you were not so desperately looking for that super-addictive high you get when you just know for sure you are right and someone else is wrong, and if you could stop emoting long enough to engage in rational thought and observe facts for what they are, you might be able to see exactly what you are fomenting with your idiotic partisan ranting and raving. Namely, you are giving your own party the impetus it needs to make political policy in direct contravention to your best interests.
Quit being a sucker. Neither party has your interests at heart. The sooner you realize this, the sooner we can get the kind of government we need.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Come on man, are you totally blind to who the support base for the Hollywood studios who wrote and pushed for the DMCA are?
Their products, their rules. Don't like them? Walk.
It's called the right of first sale.
Looks like a sale, smells like a sale, then it's a sale, and it's not their product anymore.
Indeed, good.
In fact, exemption to DMCA about repairs should have been in the Fair Use exception from the beginning.
(I'll have to check to be 100% sure, but in the equivalent under our local jurisdiction - that might already be the case...
indeed we have one among the most liberal clones of the DCMA)
And while in the US only 3 States start to think that defending the right to repair wouldn't be a bad idea, at the same time several European country (both EU and non-EU) are making big campaigns about "repair instead of throwing away".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
this law might be used to repair defective CD's, it'll be gone.
As far as I remember (Disclaimer: I don't live under US jurisdiction. Our equivalent of DMCA is much more liberal that yours), "Making backups of media you own" is one of the rare few exception which is already covered under "Fair Use" exceptions.
(And your various mafiAA are already trying to fight it).
These "Repair exceptions" won't have much impact to the mafiAA.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Get away from the "us versus them" mentality. All the bad shit we have right now is the result of bi-partisan cooperation among politicians.
Your side is crap as well as the other side.
Insulting "the other side" does nothing to solve the underlying problem.
All the bad shit is mostly a result of your asinine political system.
- Try to have a *direct democracy* to reduce the power of lobbyists, etc
- Try to have multi-rounds presidential elections,
the president not having (in apparence) so much importance,
and you parliament of mixed composition,
to avoid it degenerate into a 2-party system.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Bill Clinton, a DEMOCRAT, signed it into law.
Yes. The past couple of Democrat presidents, and the Federal executive branch under them, have not been particularly keen on supporting civil liberties in a number of areas. That was frequently noted by civil-rights groups and other observers at least as far back as Clinton's first term; I remember a quote from the ACLU in Harper's in run up to the '96 election, noting that a continued Clinton administration might be just as bad as a Dole one, from their point of view.
The Democratic Party has in recent decades been strongly supported by, and correspondingly gracious to, the entertainment industry. That's no secret either.
You needn't be a supporter of the Republican Party, or a right-winger, or anything of the sort to acknowledge that. My political opinions tend leftward and I nearly always end up voting Democrat, but I'm under no illusion that Clinton or Obama were great friends of freedom of expression (or a number of other leftist or progressive causes). And pretending otherwise does Democrats no favors.
Your observation seems true on the surface, but election results tell a different story if viewed in the aggregate. Right now the Republicans hold stunning majorities in all but a few, regional areas. The Democrats - who are really good at making noise - are doing their very best to make everyone believe otherwise.
Murphy was an optimist
but election results
Elections have zero to do with a red vs blue public not realising that the equation is actually purple vs people.
I respectfully disagree. In 2008 the "public" believed a "Sea Change" was underway, there were going to be HUGE changes, everything was going to be better.
Eight years later and the blue party screwed the pooch so badly they are now in the worst shape since the Red party forced them to free their slaves, give women the vote, and repeal all the Jim Crow laws they wrote.
So the country has, for the most part, turned from blue to red. The blues are a local, municipal party for the moment.
We should all be hoping the red party does good, for the good of us all. I never met a politician I trusted, or liked... EVER. But I would like to see things improve...
Murphy was an optimist