Love it!Originally Posted by RevolverRob
Love it!
Technical excellence supports tactical preparedness
Lord of the Food Court
http://www.gabewhitetraining.com
First of all. let me say that I think this is is pure bovine excrement. I’d like to think we live in a world where that will come back and bite them in the keister. But sadly, I don’t think it will. IANAL, however, I suspect there is legal precedent on their side.
If I understand correctly they don’t claim licensing of any physical part of the equipment, only the software that comes with it. You have an implied license to use that software (by operating the vehicle) for the life of the equipment. You may not alter, copy or reverse engineer that software. Sound familiar? That’s the way computers have been sold for the last 3 decades.
Now when the Open Source guys start producing GNU versions of the code that runs on the equipment hardware, you will most likely be legally able to remove the current version and install the Open Source version.
In the mean time, as much as I think it sucks and is an inditement of the morals and integrity of the companies pulling this stunt, I think they’ve probably got the legal high ground.
^^^That right there.
It'd be a string of military-style poetic vulgarity that would make some rude assumptions (and in my opinion, likely correct) about the genetic shortcomings, upbringing, sexual preferences, and moral structure of the folks that espouse such legal manipulations in lieu of simply having the spine to deny warranty coverage to those who have violated the terms of the warranty agreement.
In other places I don't censor myself in such a way, but here I feel it'd simply add noise where signal is needed. Perhaps I should have used the world 'won't' in place of 'can't'.
N00b here. I've lurked this forum a bit in the past, but had to actually sign up to weigh in on this subject, as it is near and dear to my heart from several directions. I wouldn't call myself an avid shooter, as compared to some others here, but suffice it to say that I enthusiastically approve of legal shooting activities. I have been home repairing and modifying cars for just about twenty years now. I have personally run up against the ugly barrier that is the DMCA in my hobbying on other fronts. Where this all ties in is that I like to work on old video game consoles.
As far as I can tell, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was originally set up to keep people from copying music, movies, and proprietary software, but has since gone way beyond that. According to the provisions and exceptions of the DMCA, as they currently stand, and according to how I (not being a lawyer) understand them, you may jailbreak your iPhone, or root your Android device, but it's illegal to do the same modification to a tablet. About ten years ago, you could order a mod chip for your Xbox that would allow you to flash a custom OS to it. This would allow you to install a larger hard drive, save games to the hard drive, browse the internet, stream music and movies from a server, run game emulators, display HD graphics (up to 1080p, even), and do all kinds of stuff that the hardware was fully capable of, but Microsoft didn't build into the software. This is now illegal, and the cottage industry that manufactured these chips is essentially dead, because the video game manufacturers were afraid that their customers would use the technology to pirate games. The way the DMCA reads, not only is it illegal to modify your own Xbox or Tivo (not even kidding), if you disable the lockout chip on an original Nintendo NES so it doesn't give you the flashing gray screen, you may be running afoul of the law. Say you want a device to record live TV to watch later. If you set up a PC to do it, you can set it up to skip commercials. Although it is possible to modify a commercial, purpose-built device to act in the same way, it is illegal do do so. Although it is possible to set up an original Xbox or a Wii to stream your recorded shows from a home server, it is illegal to do so, and punishable by law, even though you paid for the physical product, and ostensibly own it, free and clear. The way the act reads, if you wanted to A/V mod your Atari 2600 so you could plug it into your modern TV set, you might just be breaking the law. Because although Atari is essentially dead, you're violating their copyrights, apparently.
Applying this act to the automotive industry is not a joke, nor is it an idle threat. The DMCA is real, and it overreaches in ways that blot out businesses and make criminals of entrepreneurs already. See George Hotz or Michael Crippen. This is serious business that needs to be known by the shade tree and professional mechanic shop alike. My fear is that people will blow it off, thinking that it's not that big a threat, when it absolutely is. If applied to automobiles the way it is to electronics, it may make it illegal for you to change your own belt or alternator. You had better believe that it will make it illegal for you to put an aftermarket exhaust or intake on your car. If taken to the extreme, this would put every non-licensed car shop, from oil change, to audio/tint shops, to heavy-line out of business, at the whim of the OEM.
My car has 183K miles on it, and it has only been in a professional shop for recalls, body work, and most recently for exhaust work. I personally rebuilt the engine in that car. I've repaired the suspension. I opened up the intake and exhaust and dropped out the balancer shaft assembly to wake up a few more HP. I relocated the battery to the trunk and installed an aftermarket stereo. If they apply the DMCA to the automotive industry, none of this would be legal, and I'd have to take it to the Nissan dealer anytime it needed any work, even though it's long since paid off, out of warranty, and I've owned the sucker for ten years.
If you aren't a mechanic, and only ever have the dealer service your vehicle, and you'd never dream of making any modifications to it, then this does not affect you. If that sentence does not apply to you, then application of the DMCA will be a life changer. I hate to be all doom and gloom about it, but there it is.
Sorry for the ranting debut post, but as I said, near and dear to my heart on several levels.
Welcome to doom-and-gloom-and-pistol-forum.com!
You sound like you do much more varied tinkering than I. In the software space, the free software movements are a very real counterweight, if not a total fix, for this kind of chicanery. When hardware is more involved, like a car, game console, or DVR, the restrictions become much more difficult to live with. Do you see any movement, or even possibility, that would be a real counterweight in those situations? I know there's a few "open source hardware" projects out there, but I don't have a sense of how effective they might become, or what they need to really take off. My reasonably deep knowledge of how that happened in software might be relevant, or it might be totally misleading....
The answer, it seems to me, is wrath. The mind cannot foresee its own advance. --FA Hayek Specialization is for insects.
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