Hand raised! And you know what is coming next?mark poulson wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 8:45 amRaise your hand if you ever thought software and baitcasters would ever be mentioned in the same sentence!
DCMA
Step 1: Let automotive industry establish the legal standard... then it will flow over to step 2 for fishing industry... The writing is very clearly written on the wall... "Right to repair" laws are under attack by corporations unifying against consumers:
https://jalopnik.com/carmakers-want-to- ... 1699132210
Carmakers Want To Use Copyright Law To Make Working On Your Car Illegal
"You know what a pain those plastic engine covers are? How they get in the way and hide your own car’s engine from you? Well, consider that black piece of molded plastic a metaphor for something much worse: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Automakers are trying to use the DMCA to say you can’t work on or modify your own car."
"Automakers are considering cars “mobile computing devices” and as such would fall under the DMCA’s pretty draconian protections. Really —here’s how they describe their reasoning in the Auto Alliance’s (a group of carmakers including BMW Group, FCA US LLC, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Company, Jaguar Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes- Benz USA, Mitsubishi Motors, Porsche, Toyota, Volkswagen Group of America and Volvo Cars North America) statement against a proposed exemption to allow people to work on their own cars:
Automobiles are inherently mobile, and increasingly they contain equipment that would commonly be considered computing devices... Many of the ECUs embodied in today’s motor vehicles are carefully calibrated to satisfy federal or state regulatory requirements with respect to emissions control, fuel economy, or vehicle safety. Allowing vehicle owners to add and remove programs at whim is highly likely to take vehicles out of compliance with these requirements, rendering the operation or re-sale of the vehicle legally problematic. The decision to employ access controls to hinder unauthorized “tinkering” with these vital computer programs is necessary in order to protect the safety and security of drivers and passengers and to reduce the level of non-compliance with regulatory standards. We urge the Copyright Office to give full consideration to the impacts on critical national energy and environmental goals, as well as motor vehicle safety, in its decision on this proposed exemption. Since the record on this proposal contains no evidence regarding its applicability to or impact on motor vehicles, cars and trucks should be specifically excluded from any exemption that is recommended in this area."
Auto makers lost round 1, but they are not finished. They, along with their billions of dollars and high priced lawyers will eventually succeed, and when they do... we are screwed.
There are legal cases pending in courts right now over this issue. For example, one person hacked into his own car's onboard computer. It is apparently illegal to do so even if he owns the vehicle:
"Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) just had to ask permission from the Copyright Office for tinkerers to modify and repair their own cars.
“Two of EFF's requests this year are on behalf of people who need to access the software in cars so they can do basic things like repair, modify, and test the security of their vehicles,” says Kit Walsh of the EFF. “Because Section 1201 of the DMCA prohibits unlocking ‘access controls’—also known as digital rights management (DRM)—on the software, car companies can threaten anyone who needs to get around those restrictions, no matter how legitimate the reason.”
One day in the near future, if this trend continues... it will flow over into all fields so corporations can control repairs of their products and make us outlaws if we attempt it ourselves.
Just saying... its coming... you heard it here first.
