rockville

From what little I've read of this, it seems the car companies do have a legitimate concern. That doesn't mean I think the MDCA is the right tool for the job but that their concerns are grounded in some real potential issues.

First, it seems that there is much that is out of context here. I don't think the car companies have claimed people can't do oil changes and the like. What they are concerned about is people making changes to the software in the car and causing harm which they the automaker then gets blamed for or is on the hook to correct. For instance, imagine if changing to an aftermarket steering wheel ended up disabling all airbags in the car. Is Toyota on the hook if a passenger airbag doesn't deploy? What if changes to the ECU code result in the car having a failed cat within the emissions warranty. Can Ford deny replacing the part and the associated costs? It's simply not clear that the liability in many cases doesn't land back at the feet of the car company even thought they didn't make the change that resulted in the problem. Some of these things sound hypothetical but consider this. In a mid decade Audi the failure of the power window switches could result in a failure of the cruise control system. So the customer comes in with a bad cruise control complaint. The mechanic says, "We fixed your car" and the parts list says nothing about the CC parts but instead says new window switches. Well the customer would be right to question that deal but the mechanic did the correct fix. There are a number of Audi parts that can't be swapped without the service computer telling a number of subsystems that the new part is OK with the system.

It seems the car companies are using a blunt club to deal with a problem but let's at least acknowledge the problem is there. How to address the problem is a different mater. I don't think we should allow the car companies to for us into their shops but they should have some level of control if they are also going to be held accountable.

Sterling Sackey

There's no way this will get put into law, at least not in this form. "Working on your car" (even though in reality this has more to do with sitting in front of a laptop) is as American as baseball and apple pie... any conservative politician will have a field day with this one.

mosesbotbol

Cars bought with no clause about working on them would have to remain that way. If you bought a car with those legal stipulations, then you entered into that agreement from the onset.

TommyDeVito

It won't pass. It would lead to a bigger used market (more expensive used cars) and decrease new sales.

mosesbotbol

It won't pass. It would lead to a bigger used market (more expensive used cars) and decrease new sales.
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New cars are under warranty and many bread-n-butter cars come with a long warranty. Not as many people work on their own cars and indy shops can be authorized to work on many brands of cars. I can see this passing quite easily. It may be legal challenges on the used car re-sale since you are not buying the car from manufacturer's agent.

Chariotz

Well said! I agree. Once we buy a car, it is OUR property. We technically buy all rights to the vehicle once they hand over the title. I will not let anyone tell me I can't work on my car. Heck no. Can't rid me of my passion.

s2000ellier

Funny how this is the same argument computer nerds have about Apple iOS

Chiung

It's about OIL.

Manufacturers don't want people to be able to optimize/convert their cars for alternative fuels. Check out the film "Pump" (streaming on Netflix), they discuss this at some length.

rockville

Actually that isn't true any more than it is true that once you buy a service manual for a car you can copy it and then sell the copies. You also can not copy patented parts of your S2000 and then sell the copies. It isn't clear to me that the companies are facing a real issue or this is a case where the lawyers are telling the companies to get in front of this issue before it becomes a real problem (both are possible). It's also clear that the companies in question do have, at least on some level, a legitimate concern. That said, I'm not sure I agree with them in the end. It's a bit like the movie companies protesting the VCR back in the day. They did have just cause to fear piracy and the like but it turns out their fears, at least in the US market, were perhaps bigger than need be.

rockville

That sounds like a tin foil hat fear. The car companies certainly aren't mad about people running fuel that doesn't come from oil. They are worried about people running fuel that can harm the car. My sister is a pilot. She asked me about putting the small amount of Jet A (I think that was the type) she drains from her bird during preflight into her diesel Jetta. IIRC the fuels are very similar. However, I told her no because a small amount is worthless and over time a large amount could damage her emissions system. I'm sure VW would tell her not to mix Jet A with diesel even in a 10:1 ratio. It's not because they car that you are buying Jet A instead of diesel. It's because they know that can F up the car. They would also be right to not want someone to retune the car to accept Jet A (assuming the injection system could accept it) because it could still screw up the emissions system and the EPA puts VW on the hook for that system.

Again, I don't think the DMCA is the correct way to handle this problem. Personally I think the MDCA is a POS*. However, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the concerns of the car (and tractor) companies as baseless.

*Prior to the MDCA my understanding was that the burden was on the one who wanted protection to come up with good encryption. The MDCA was flawed in part because it seems to say that "any" effort to protect is illegal to circumvent, even a really crappy one. As an example, remember CDs? Those round things that looked like DVDs (if you know what those are) and showed that you were hip in the 80s? So some record company wanted to stop people from ripping CDs with their computer. They knew that traditional CD players just started reading the audio information at the center of the disc. However, CD-ROM systems would start by trying to read data tracks that were on the outer part of the disc before reading the audio information. This allowed CDs to have special computer features (software) yet still work on Redbook CD (industry standard) players. Well someone got the idea that filling that outer part with bad computer data would confuse computers and thus prevent the computer from reading the disc. It would see it as a defective disc while a standard CD player would read it. That was true... but. Some newer CD players and most DVD players were confused by the data track and also wouldn't read the disc! Happily it was easy to defeat this "encryption". All you had to do was use a black marker to cover a bit of that data track. I used some scotch tape. The issue came up, did that make the use of the marker a violation of the MDCA?
http://www.geek.com/news/sony-copy-p...er-pen-549915/
Related:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech...otection.reut/