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Our cars are meant to be 'licensed' to us...not owned.

2368 Views 12 Replies 9 Participants Last post by hellcat1, May 1, 2015

Fiveinch

Discussion Starter · Apr 21, 2015

I just read a couple of articles outlining a desire by the Automakers Alliance to have our vehicles fall under the restrictions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That is, the automakers wish to make it illegal for us to work on/repair/modify our own cars...with emphasis on the ECU code. While this thought is not a law, it has been presented to the 2015 US Copyright Rulemaking proceeding.

Effectively, if allowed to pass as law, the vehicle we purchase will come a with a EULA for the software (directly, or inferred), and any actions that may effect the software as an input to it (think: changing tire size) will be restricted by DMCA.

I refrain from posting urls/links due to not finding specific language granting me permission to link to any of the URLs I found the info at. However, this is an effective search string with most browsers: DMCA automobile 2015

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MrBigKid

· #12 · May 1, 2015

Nitewing said:
From a cyber security standpoint, this would make sense from the automakers perspective as to protect software from being manipulated or hacked, and cause damage to the auto or people. It would also protect them from being sued as well if no one was supposed to be able to access and modify their code. Personally, I don't agree with this, but I do see where they are coming from on this

This is where they will hit. Cyber security. The more and more we link software to the car, the more risk there will be of hackers. And IMHO, that will be the excuse they need to "protect" us.
Unfortunately it does have a kernal of truth to it. ..

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