
It Should Not Be Illegal to Hack Your Own Car’s Computer - sinak
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/let-us-hack-our-cars/
======
belorn
It used to be that people who bought property became owners. This _ownership_
of private property provided exclusive power over a object, rights to
offspring or products produced by it, and governing the use of the object.

DRM eliminates this concept from anything with a computer in it, which in 2015
is most properties of significant worth. The right to govern is retained by he
who has the key, which the seller keeps in order to create additional
opportunity for revenue. To justify this, the seller argues that this helps
reducing the initial cost of the product.

If the property then happens to produces anything of value, say data logs
which can be sold, the producer also retains the right to that data by a
shrink-wrap license. This is of course insane, as any such schemed used with
physical property would be fast put down as fraud. You can't sell a cow, put a
40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate, and claim thus the milk or
offspring are yours. The legal system would not stand for it, especially if it
was done large scale with millions of customers.

~~~
MrDom
_It used to be that people who bought property became owners._

Depending on who you ask, that stopped being the case the minute states
started charging property tax. It's not yours, you just rent from the
government. With the addition of zoning laws, it's hard to argue with that
interpretation.

 _You can 't sell a cow, put a 40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate,
and claim thus the milk or offspring are yours._

If Monsanto could prove the cow was GMO and their intellectual property, they
could do almost exactly that. At the very least, they could put an injunction
on the sale of cows and milk until they could verify if a patent had been
broken. During which time, the farm would most likely go under.

~~~
belorn
There is a difference between the state overriding property law and private
entities doing it. The state has monopoly on breaking laws, and in a
democracy, is supposed to only do so when it serves the public they represent.
It is this difference that allow the police to lock people up, or fine
individuals. As you say, they use taxes, copyright, and patent law, all which
override private property laws.

DRM however allows private entities to override property laws completely,
while tricking the consumer. While Monsanto can with the help of the
government prevent the sale of produce, they do not come in the night and
steal it and sell it as their own property. They don't turn food into stone
with the flick of a switch. I dislike Monsanto and I think they do trick
people into a deal which is not obvious, but they are not even in the same
league as DRM with 40 pages long licenses that updates dynamically which not a
single person can understand.

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kw71
This article is one-sided and shortsighted. There are many reasons why engine
controls must include anti-tampering measures. There is a business case to
extend these principles to other control modules in a car. Disclosure: I've
been an automotive DMCA violator for nearly a decade.

An obvious reason is that the manufacturers do not want to deal with warranty
issues. Of course you can probably understand that the possibility is there
that bad software can result in engine damage. This applies to other systems,
too, for instance the guy who demonstrated that he could alternately flash his
headlamps like a police car by sending traffic to the lamp controller probably
does not realize that he should not be reigniting the HID lamp every couple of
seconds, because this will shorten its life.

The automakers are liable to laws in every developed country. The United
States has these average fuel economy laws that the carmakers must meet, and
in some states, harsh emissions regulations must be adhered to and guaranteed.
The emissions testing regime in some of these states has done away with
exhaust gas analysis and relies on the engine control's self-diagnosis to show
that the vehicle is performing to spec.

However in other countries, increasing pollution emitted by a car constitutes
tax fraud.

Road safety is also important. One German carmaker uses the same diesel engine
for a range of vehicles which have differing performance levels. I thought it
was clever when I found that you could change the low market six cylinder from
a cheap model to give the power output of the top model of the range simply by
carefully changing eeprom data. But the low market model has a lame exhaust
and small brakes. Triple the engine output power and this is potentially a
disaster.

For as long as the universe of tinkerers will include those without experience
or scruples, the carmakers will have to keep developing anti-tampering
measures to show that they are attempting to guarantee that their products
will perform within the bounds of the law, and indemnify them against bogus
liability and warranty claims. Some tinkerers are smart enough to see the big
picture and think about the results of what they are doing. Others either
don't realize that these systems were designed by teams of engineers with more
degrees and experience than them, or figure that they can sell genitalia
enhancements to any twentysomething that walks in the door. These are the guys
that scare me.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Road safety is an admirable goal, but that's an issue that you tackle with
liability law, car registration and inspection regulations, road users code
&c. The DMCA is such a badly written piece of law that lends itself to
overreach, and it doesn't need to be extended to yet another area.

Besides, people have been tuning their cars for 100 years now, you'd think
that by now the police had some experience keeping the worst specimens of the
public roadways.

~~~
kw71
We have computer-controlled braking and throttles now, and while I figure it's
unlikely that someone will tinker with the brakes software (as long as it's
not integrated into something he wants to tinker with) there has been a famous
case where a factory throttle control has been alleged to be bad.

The emissions (and taxes in the countries where taxes are a function of
emissions) aspects are more likely to be the justification of any
repercussions against these activities.

~~~
MrDom
_We have computer-controlled braking and throttles now_

Couldn't the same case be made for doing your own mechanic work, though? We
have braking, which is hydraulic and throttles which operate by wire. There's
nothing preventing you from replacing the tried and true hydraulic brakes with
something that runs on bluetooth. That would be just as dangerous as messing
with the software of modern car brakes. More so, since one would hope modern
car software has some failsafes built in[0].

[0]: they probably don't, but I know Sevcon does. Sevcon is a company that
makes electric vehicle controllers for EV vehicles. They're popular with the
DIY e-motorcycle crowd. Messing with the settings directly affects the power
delivered to the motor.

~~~
stolio
Pulling out your old throttle system _is hard_. It's self-protecting, the
difficulty keeps the uninitiated from doing anything too stupid.

Copy/pasting code from the internet is easy, so it has to be made artificially
difficult. We live in a world where people put their iPhones in microwaves
because they heard it would charge the battery. We have to keep these people
very far away from the internal workings of their cars.

~~~
MrDom
Have you ever tried to program a controller? It's hard too. You need special
hardware, special software and know how to connect them all up. It's not just
copying and pasting code from the internet. It's sufficiently discouraging for
those who think microwaves are wireless battery chargers. :)

If you're curious, you should poke around [http://endless-
sphere.com/forums/](http://endless-sphere.com/forums/).

~~~
stolio
I appreciate the link, but at this point I'm not going to buy a car if I don't
trust and like the engineers who built it. My "improvements" generally aren't
:)

Even with needing special hardware and software I'm not happy about it the
tinkering. Cars are too much: 3,500 lbs of metal going 40 mph with 10 gallons
of gas in it is a lot to go wrong.

I hate DRM, I really do. And I think we should have kids programming Arduino's
and Raspberry Pi's by junior high, but part of me thinks they should bury the
computers so deep in the engine bay you have to pull the engine to get to 'em.
It's just my opinion, but if you don't have a (relevant) PE license, minimum,
you shouldn't be allowed to mess with ECU's in cars that go on public roads.

------
tessierashpool
This is a property rights issue. If you sell somebody something, they own it.

Extending the old-school boxed software "licensing" model to everything on
earth which contains a computer undermines the basic concept of property
rights. The result is a bizarre neo-feudalism where corporations own
everything and people just lease it.

It's your car, you own it, the end.

~~~
dalke
Owning doesn't mean having absolute control.

For example, if you own land on the California coast, you may be prohibited
from shutting down public access to the coastline. If you own a house, you may
be prohibited from kicking out renters.

"Neo-feudalism" has an interesting observation. In Sweden, Norway, and Finland
there is still a "freedom to roam." A land owner can't simply prohibit people
from entering to go hiking, pick berries or mushrooms, camp overnight, etc.
These countries also didn't have feudalism. One conjecture is that there's a
meaningful connection between the two. The idea of "you own it, the end" may
itself be neo-feudalism.

------
thatcherclay
It should not be illegal to alter the car's computer, but to drive that car on
a road where you are endangering other people, we have certifications and laws
for that. IMHO, that is reasonable. I don't want your buggy software to
deactivate your power steering and have you slam into me.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Chrysler provides me no way in which to disable the 3G cellular modem in my
UConnect system and I'm breaking the law if I try repogramming the buttons on
my steering wheel to work with my phone's voice activated controls.

I can't even begin to sort out how upset this makes me feel.

------
arsalanb
I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and one of my recent projects had a lot
to do with onboard computers on modern vehicles. This article is viewing only
one side of the scene, and doing this with great bias.

While some of the examples like the Dinan S1 M5 is legit, these companies are
less of a concern that the average script kiddy who wants to "hack" his car
because it's the new thing to do in town. Advanced features like traction
control and even cruise control on vehicles are critical to implement
perfectly, and a small mistake in the code that guides these can be fatal.
Companies like BMW spend millions on testing the code and making it perfect
for use, and what this article is arguing for is replacing that with something
that anybody can write. This is not safe.

On the other hand, some things like the Nismo and it's software imposed speed
limit are just state restrictions. The Nissan GTR has a set speed limit which
is turned off when the GPS detects that you're on a racing circuit.

Companies are ethically obliged to make sure that no amateur or third-party
can make their cars unsafe. They are right in doing so, because at the end of
the day they are liable. If there is a fatal accident of a BMW M5 due to a
software failure error, nobody (read, the media) is going to blame Dinan. BMW
takes the brunt for it. They are blames for writing "shitty software".

Unless companies or individuals are legally obliged to be accountable for the
changes they make to a car, companies are right in making the cars impossible
to tweak. It's not about the fact that you "own" the car and hence should be
allowed to do whatever you like. That works only for iPhones and Play Stations
where your actions probably wont result in somebody dying.

tl;dr — Much like spare parts, faulty software can kill onboard passengers in
vehicles. While hacking sounds "cool", slight irresponsibility can end badly.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ha! Traction control in my Subaru Forester is a joke. On snow and ice it turns
my car into one of those football players in that vibrating football game. The
only way to drive in Iowa is to turn the feature off, every time I get in the
car.

------
mariocesar
I wish that the media stops saying Hack, That is counterproductive.

You should be free to customize, fix, improve your own car's computer for your
personal purposes.

~~~
ToastyMallows
But then why will people click on the article? Gotta use those sensationalist
buzzwords!

~~~
mariocesar
Well the worse effect is the current comments in this thread, they are
discussing liabilities, possible endangering others!

Not about the simple idea that I have to be free to buy a car and make it an
airplane.

------
dogecoinbase
Presumably the agreements people enter into regarding functional modifications
to cars when they purchase insurance already prohibit this, and I imagine
insurance companies would be all too happy to deny payment based on car-
computer-modification.

------
pradn
I'll support you hacking into your car's computer as long as it doesn't
endanger me when you drive it on the road.

~~~
sp332
Endangering people on the road is already a crime.

~~~
agmcleod
Right, but then people doing so would only be able to be arrested after
someone gets hurt. It's not really preventable crime. I just see this as being
open to negligence and misuse.

~~~
vonmoltke
I would rather live in a society that severely punishes bad behavior after it
happens as a deterrent to others who would be tempted to do the same than live
in a society that imposes ever more restrictions in an effort to prevent
misbehaviors from happening in the first place.

Obviously neither is good if taken to its most extreme, but I feel we should
skew heavily towards the former.

------
HarryHirsch
In normal countries freedom of research is written into the constitution. What
do use rights and reproduction rights have to do with examining works of
engineering, even if they come with copy protection?

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _In normal countries freedom of research is written into the constitution._

Can you name some examples?

~~~
HarryHirsch
Germany, article 5: _Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei._

~~~
profsnuggles
Could you elaborate? Especially since I don't speak German I feel that I'm not
getting the whole picture from google translate.

    
    
      (1) Everyone has the right freely to express his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and disseminate freely to obtain information from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by radio and motion pictures are guaranteed. Censorship does not take place.
    
      (2) These rights are limited by the provisions of the general laws, the provisions for the protection of youth and the right to personal honor.
    
      (3) Art and science, research and teaching are free. Freedom of teaching does not absolve from loyalty to the constitution. 
    

I assume provision 3 is the one relevant to your comment, but I can't make
heads or tails of that translation.

~~~
HarryHirsch
This is from the German _Grundgesetz_. You could translate it as "The Arts and
the Sciences are free, in practice and in teaching." It's from the section
where the constitution defines what the fundamental rights are, it's on the
same level as freedom of conscience or freedom of expression. These rights are
only constrained by other constitutional rights. Research on human subjects
might affect human dignity, you can't do that, but copyright isn't on that
level.

The High Court defined science as a sustained, methodical effort in pursuit of
truth. It's not confined to universities, companies and hobbyists count.
That's how German courts read their constitution.

------
chrismcb
This isn't about copyright, it is about the DMCA. And just because someone
else owns a copyright, doesn't mean you can't own a copy.

------
Animats
For racing, yes, but not for street-legal cars.

~~~
vonmoltke
In the lower-end circuits nearly all of the cars are modified street cars.
They are no longer street-legal, unless competing in a race that requires them
to be, but they all started that way.

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murbard2
Even if it's made legal, they can always sell you a 100 year lease on the car
with terms and conditions.

If it's that bad, let market pressure will push the model out of existence.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _If it 's that bad, let market pressure will push the model out of
> existence._

Not enough people in the market care about this for it to truly impact car
manufacturers.

> _Even if it 's made legal, they can always sell you a 100 year lease on the
> car with terms and conditions._

This, however, seems like something that the market would react poorly to,
unless it was made significantly cheaper than owning.

~~~
a3n
In Hawaii (at least in the past, I think currently too), when you buy a house,
you often don't buy the land, you lease it from someone on a typically 100
year basis. I believe this form of ownership, leasehold, exists elsewhere too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate)

