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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.
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
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.
Bill Clinton, a DEMOCRAT, signed it into law.
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.
You just rent it until it breaks
Renting would be ok if it was stated upfront and you paid rental prices.
When I'm not wearing out keyboards I'm an avid "shade tree mechanic", and it just so happened I experienced a tangent of this type of stupidity yesterday working on a car I recently purchased for my daughter. As it turns out the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) in many GM vehicles of it's era were flashed with a configuration that would not allow the system to be reset + relearn the wheel sensors without an expensive scan tool (even these aftermarket ones are prohibitively expensive). I'm going to go to a dealer and beg them to fix the firmware so the product will function as the owner's manual states it should (there happens to be a service bulletin on this particular issue). In my case I simply do not allow anyone to work on my vehicles, so when I rotate the tires at every oil change I have no recourse to make the TPMS system functional and accurate once again except to take it to a tire shop or the dealer.
Thankfully there seems to be a possible workaround - removing the TPMS fuse and letting it "forget" all it's sensors so it doesn't work at all. But imagine if this wasn't the case, and car owners were unable to get their vehicle to pass an emissions inspection because the TPMS sets a malfunction code.
I'm generally not one to throw fuel on hyperbolic statements like "No One Owns Anything", but in this case I have to side with this sentiment. How far are we from the day when your car disallows you from driving over some ridiculously slow speed until you take it to the dealership for service? Those of us in states requiring emissions inspections are already beholden to the machines because in most counties of my state a vehicle with a MIL / Check Engine light on automatically fails regardless of whether the code is associated to an electronic ride control component, a burned out heated seat controller, or the catalytic converter efficiency monitoring.
To further complicate things, many of today's vehicles are equipped with autonomous braking systems and other "convenience" features such as park assist, etc. Who's going to be able to fix these systems when they malfunction, and more importantly who will be responsible for the deaths that will be inevitably caused by such?
For me, the solution is driving old junk and spending the extra time and money to maintain it until it is simply impossible to keep in a safe condition. I simply will not succumb to the perpetual car payment, rent-a-car culture that American society has all to readily embraced at it's own peril.