
DMCA exemption for repairs, modifications, research on your vehicle takes effect - rosser
http://ifixit.org/blog/8510/car-repair-illegal-dmca/
======
xg15
I haven't kept track, but last time I read about it, DMCA lobbyists managed to
get a pretty absurd restriction into the exemption: Cars may only be repaired
by their _owners_ , so handing your car over to a repairman or to researchers
would still be illegal.

This means in practice the excemption would only change things for people who
are both highly skilled in the relevant technology and are interested in
fixing their _own_ cars - a very small subset of the initial group of people
affected by the DMCA restrictions.

Does anyone know if that restriction is still present?

~~~
elcct
Could you temporarily transfer the ownership to the garage? Absurd indeed

~~~
mindslight
If the common law fundamentalists are to be believed regarding "title" versus
"manufacturer's certificate of origin", you aren't even actually the owner of
"your" car.

~~~
eru
What's the deal with that? Do the car companies try to say that you are only
licensing the car (just like software companies only sell you a license, not
actually software you can own)?

~~~
mindslight
The issue isn't with the manufacturers, but the state. I can't do it justice
and the whole subject is a bit crackpotty, so you're going to have to read up
on your own. For example - Rights vs Privileges by Michael Badnarik.

I say "common law fundamentalists" because there is a whole community of
people who have ran with these ideas and believe that the key to restoring
their rights is just asserting them harder. While it would be great if true, I
don't subscribe to this view and think it's much healthier to view such legal
reasoning as explanations of exactly how things decayed to the point we're at.

~~~
eru
Oh, are you referring to the freemen of the land and similar?

------
dev_throw
This is great news. It is alarming to realize that a majority of devices built
after 2020 will be connected to the internet without the choice for us to vet
their security. Securing these devices must be a proactive endeavor.

~~~
jacquesm
Only if you buy them.

~~~
eternalban
They will be built into infrastructure (including up to your property line),
building structure, & appliances. I suppose one can go to a wood cabin in the
woods, off grid (unless that sort of lifestyle flags you as "radical").

------
douche
There is going to be a huge market in refurbished, older non-computerized
machinery and automobiles.

With farm and heavy equipment, this tends to be true already, since it is
effectively indestructible, as the depreciation is significant, while the
costs to replace with a brand-new model is astronomical, and so stuff gets
rebuilt, welded up, patched up, and reused until it is completely kaput, often
decades after it was built.

Automobiles are trickier, especially if you are in an area that gets snow and
uses a lot of salt in the winters, since the bodywork rots out quickly, much
faster than the expensive mechanical components, like the engine and tranny,
wear out.

~~~
jacquesm
Non computerized automobiles are those before fuel injection became common,
which dates back to the early 80's. One option would be anything with
mechanical diesel injection pumps, but those will at some point be harder to
get past emissions inspection.

Keeping a car that old on the road is going to be tricky, the engines do wear
out at some point and bodies will go faster depending on the climate. Anything
from that era will soon be a classic with associated spare parts prices.

Tractors from the 1940's still run pretty good though, there's plenty of them
and they were built to last.

~~~
taneq
There are different levels of 'computerised', though. An early 90s car with
EFI and ABS does have some processors in it, but they're standard modules (so
can just plug a new one in if one fails) running from EPROM and have very
limited communication. Unless you're worried about it being EMP-proof, that's
not really a problem.

Modern cars where everything is controlled by a central internet-connected
computer are a whole different proposition.

~~~
kalleboo
> Modern cars where everything is controlled by a central internet-connected
> computer are a whole different proposition.

Are cars really built this way? I thought they were still basically a network
of devices, for safety reasons.

~~~
taneq
I believe it's moving more in that direction - reading the teardown of the
Toyota code in the unintended acceleration case, that one system seemed to be
running a whole bunch of unrelated stuff as well as reading the accelerator
pedal. Also witness the numerous reports recently of people being able to
affect various critical subsystems (ABS, central locking) wirelessly on modern
cars.

(I'd be amazed/horrified if ABS _wasn 't_ an independent module which talks to
the rest of the car, but if you can give it instructions over the wire then
it's still vulnerable.)

------
sdfjkl
ObQuote: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is
obligated to do so." \-- Thomas Jefferson

~~~
ex3ndr
Well, this is common rule for russia - disobeying stupid laws, but, believe
me, you don't want this. In such conditions everything is simple - you are
always guilty.

~~~
sdfjkl
I certainly didn't want this, but it seems we've had it for some time now. And
I see no reason to celebrate winning back a small, limited exception from an
unjust law that should never have existed.

------
imode
woo!

right to repair is something I never want to go away. I'm thankful for these
kinds of organizations fighting a battle that I can't.

the least I can offer is a good shout of approval!

~~~
shaan7
and a donation to EFF ;)

------
qwertyuiop924
How did the DMCA ever get passed? It's an absolutely insane, ludicrous set of
laws.

I'm going to start selling shirts that say "Today I Broke The DMCA". No matter
who wears it, it's probably true.

~~~
cmurf
It's the aftermath from inventing intellectual property. Patents were once
called monopolies. What I find amusing is, you get this staunchly anti-
government/libertarians who are also incredibly pro-IP. And yet IP is all
based on governments granting monopoly power over ideas, with violations
enabling the owner to engage in all kinds of punative behavior with the
government as the strong arm. Ironic.

I think there's something valid about a government protected temporary
monopoly. But in the case of copyright, for example, it's life plus 70 or more
years. It is ridiculous, as in, worthy of ridicule. Medical patents are 20
years, which itself is too long, but it's made worse by rather permissive ways
in which they can be effectively renewed by barely changing the medicine.

You know what it is? It's a way to get white collar work to continue to pay
out more than, and longer than, the actual amount and duration of work on a
thing takes. It's an incentive to do that kind of work. But I agree that it's
grossly lopsided when you can't do repair or research on that same material -
that's one of the original points of patent and copyright law. Put your ideas
on paper so that you not only get protection for a while, but others can
create derivatives that are better, and thereby we learn more about it all.

~~~
alasdair_
To be fair, most forms of property come from government-granted rights. The
very idea that you can own _land_ is kind of weird when you think about it.

~~~
jasonkostempski
It's not really weird when you think about ownership just being a bunch of
people agreeing to mess up anyone that tries to take something you've claimed.
It takes a lot of work to maintain such an agreement, so people have to be
compensated for it. If they aren't compensated to their liking, they'll take
that thing and maybe other things you've claimed and maybe ruff you up for
good measure.

~~~
e12e
"A bunch of people agreeing" is what a government is?

~~~
Fargren
Almost. A governments is a bunch of people agreeing plus the power of those
people to punish those who do not agree, without being punished back.

~~~
e12e
I'd argue the "power to punish without being punished back" stems from "being
a bunch of people that agree" \- ie: a bigger bunch of people than any one
sub-group they might want to punish for being in disagreement.

Then there's the shift in power that comes from control over weapons and
infrastructure ... but AFAIK the _coordinated_ masses still have power on
their side - partly from the assumption that given enough "external"
disagreement, some people on the inside are likely to cross over.

Indeed, one could argue that the most terrifying part about the Snowden
disclosures on mass surveillance, is that the current government is poised to
deploy counter-measures long before any opposition consolidates and organizes.
This might take the form of buying out individuals - or "dissappearing" or
taking out individuals that are perceived to be in the process of becoming
important.

------
foxfired
One thing that I thought was funny about the hackers remotely hacking the
Jeep, is that after the article was published and posted here, an HN user went
on and reported them to them to High Way patrol.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9921987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9921987)

~~~
hueving
And the HN user that reported them did the right thing IMO. Ethical research
is a thing.

The user reported them to hi-po not because they were 'hacking', but because
they intentionally created a dangerous situation on a highway by stalling a
car, which could have gotten multiple people killed.

It's similar to the guy that decided to connect to the turbofan with his
laptop on a populated passenger airplane _in flight_.

~~~
mrkgnao
> It's similar to the guy that decided to connect to the turbofan with his
> laptop on a populated passenger airplane in flight.

Link?

~~~
ddeck
Wired published a relatively lengthy article on the incident(s):

[https://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-
com...](https://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-commandeered-
plane/)

------
philfrasty
Is this like a non-profit wing / initiative of the ifixit.com company?

~~~
kwiens
iFixit is a social mission driven company. Just about everything we've done
over the last ten years has been to expand the right to repair and make it
possible for everyone to fix every thing they own.

But there are a whole lot of other organizations also interested in making
repair more legal and affordable, and they wanted to start contributing time
and funds. So we started Repair.org with them. There's a bunch of awesome
organizations involved — ISRI (the recycling association), IAMERS (the medical
device repair association), EFF, and a bunch more.

[http://repair.org](http://repair.org)

~~~
philfrasty
Thanks so much for taking the time to clarify!

------
trhway
before DMCA - "whatever is not prohibited is permitted", in the DMCA world -
"whatever is not permitted is prohibited". New generations wouldn't even know
it the other way.

------
phkahler
Why just cars? I'd like to be able to "repair" my printer when it runs out of
ink.

------
ommunist
And what is going to happen after three years of freedom? Back to jail again?

------
pitaj
I was under the impression that only the distribution of any changes you make
including the original code would be unlawful in this regard. Can someone
clarify?

~~~
rocqua
You are 'circumventing copyright protections' by changing the code. Something
somewhere in these systems is supposed to stop 'tampering' avoiding that
breaks the DMCA just like breaking the DVD encoding broke it.

------
novaleaf
"No user serviceable parts inside"

------
wslh
I don't get how it was illegal before since reverse engineering was always
legal [1]. What is the difference with DMCA?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legality)

~~~
ubernostrum
The DMCA only allows reverse engineering for a very narrow "interoperability"
purpose. "I wanted to fix my car" isn't "I wanted to achieve interoperability
with something else", so it was illegal.

------
rocqua
Won't this just lead to manufactures using better crypto to lock us out from
changing things?

I mean, secureboot-like practices can be pretty effective at preventing
modifications. They can also be sold as 'security' rather than 'fuck you we
want as much control as possible'.

------
intrasight
Only the wise men in congress would say "being able to fix your own car is a
great idea, so we're going to allow that - for three years"

------
shmerl
There needs to be a stronger push to completely repeal DMCA 1201.

------
awqrre
If something like the DMCA was illegal, it would make sense.

------
rms_returns
The power of DMCA is only because of Google. The day we find an alternative to
this great search engine of our times, DMCA will render itself toothless.

~~~
nercht12
I fail to see how you think Google is responsible for the DMCA power. Google
fought against acts like SOPA because it would have seriously hurt their
business. The real people pushing DMCA power are Sony, RIAA, Warner Bros, and
the entertainment industry who have the most to lose when it comes to this
issue.

~~~
rms_returns
Then why do they remove the results from their so-called organic search based
on DMCA requests?

I can also understand if the results are removed just from the USA based
(google.com) site, but they are also removed from google.co.uk, google.co.in,
etc. Since US Govt. has no jurisdiction over these other countries, I think
its improper to apply DMCA blacklisting over there.

~~~
johncolanduoni
How does that equate to google search results being the only reason the DMCA
has teeth? Do you think they're funding Jon Deere's legal team?

------
kobayashi
For those who don't take the time to read the (short) article, here's the most
important part (IMO):

>The downside: In 2018, advocates will have to ask for permission to repair
their cars again—a daunting process that costs a massive amount of time,
effort, and legal fees.

>But we’re trying to change that. Yesterday, iFixit and Repair.org submitted
comments to the Copyright Office in support of carving out a permanent
exemption for all repair and security research—for cars and everything else.
Hopefully, fixing your tractor or hunting for security vulnerabilities in your
car won’t be a jailable offence ever again.

>If you want to help make the world safe for repair, join Repair.org—they’re
on the front lines every day, fighting for your right to fix everything you
own.

~~~
ethbro
In the spirit of hyperlinks, [https://repair.org](https://repair.org)

------
silon7
This applies to my computer as well. I use it to drive on the information
superhighway.

