Interesting article about modifying cars and copyright law

[Ciaran]

I was sent this recently and it's an interesting read for people like us who like to shall we say, tinker with cars.

You may be aware of a controversial piece of legislation called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US which is aimed at governing intellectual property (such as music, movies, and crucially, software) and the right of the user to copy and modify these things.
Usually this is only really relevant in IT / legal circles but there's now an inkling that the automotive industry wants to use the DMCA laws to make modification of the software in car ECUs an illegal act - essentially making it against the law for you to maintain and modify your own car. You essentially wouldn't own the software in your ECUs therefore it would be illegal and actionable if you were to change or reverse engineer it in any way, you would be 'licenced' to use it in ways the manufacturer intended and nothing more.

Of course the industry has denied that they are taking a profiteering approach and are saying that they're only doing it in the interests of safety etc, but none the less it's a worrying precedent IMO.

I'm glad XMs are just old enough that we don't have to worry about nonsense like the software that is in modern cars, however going forward this is probably something that's going to come up more and more in new cars.

Just thought I'd share this here in case anyones interested in reading.

Ciarán

[russ92xmsed]

I'm surprised this hasn't happened already to be honest. What about removing said ECUs entirely and replacing with completely different aftermarket ones, instead of tweaking the factory ones. I suppose they would find away of stopping that too.

But in general this means you don't truly own your own car. Great!