Wired has an article which responds to the view of John Deere and General Motors on what the people who buy their vehicles actually own, which was expressed during comments on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):
John Deere—the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker —told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”
It’s John Deere’s tractor, folks. You’re just driving it.
Several manufacturers recently submitted similar comments to the Copyright Office under an inquiry into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
...
General Motors told the Copyright Office that proponents of copyright reform mistakenly “conflate ownership of a vehicle with ownership of the underlying computer software in a vehicle.” But I’d bet most Americans make the same conflation—and Joe Sixpack might be surprised to learn GM owns a giant chunk of the Chevy sitting in his driveway
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @05:27AM
If they own it, they are responsible for it. Put it in law and ensure that the buyer is thus protected. Oh - that's for the life of the vehicle, regardless of how long it lasts.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Friday April 24 2015, @05:33AM
If there is product with a black box of secrets, the answer is to simply not buy it. If you buy something with a black box, don't complain when they do something bad to you, reverse engineer it or buy something without a black box. There is almost nothing that doesn't have an open and free or reverse engineered alternative. The general populace started the PC revolution with proprietary everything and we are still working hard to undo that mistake.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday April 24 2015, @06:04AM
Very funny. That is not how businesses work. They buy the thing they need at the best price they can get. Moral stands to achieve an aim that will never work due to the phenomenon known as the "fate of commons" (originally also about farmers) is not part of good business. This also goes for the other "consumers" as well.
That's right folks this is the new economy in which your role is consumer wage slave and you own nothing, not even yourself!
For the average slave:
1) You will buy their shit (typically on credit) to live and "be happy" which result in you struggling to make ends and being miserable while being perpetually in debt.
2) You will pay premium prices to house, clothe, feed, etc you and your family with substandard products.
3) You will not longer actually OWN anything: it will be leased, licensed or borrowed from a major corporate. This includes yourself.
4) The Corporates/Wealthy will use all the money you give them (which they owned anyway) to buy your politicians (who are part of the club and were never yours to start with) and ensure you NEVER escape.
5) Much like a concentration camp, the people with their boot on your neck should you step out of line or have an opinion will be other slaves who secretly enjoy this sort of thing.
For the enlightened "revolutionary" slave:
1) Exactly the same as above but with more moaning and bruised necks.
And this system will be so cunning and brilliantly designed that there will be no need for physical walls, gates or even mainstream acknowledgement of its existence.
Bow to your masters folks, slavery is alive and well in the USA! (and almost everywhere else)
The future is now.
Not pessimistic enough for you?
Well this Utopian future will only last until robots are capable of replacing workers - then the REAL fun starts!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Friday April 24 2015, @07:10AM
Over the top. Sure.
More true than it should be. Yup.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday April 24 2015, @06:08PM
I was going for hyperbole but then I also realized that it was more true (for many people not all) than it should be NOW, let alone in the future.
meh...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @07:11AM
Please, where can i get a NEW car, muscle or otherwise, with a carburator and without a HEI? Because that's the only way there is not a black box in the car, assuming of course that the lights and stuff are just wired aswell instead of going through a fieldbus.
(Score: 2) by TK-421 on Friday April 24 2015, @10:48AM
Just to be clear, High Energy Ignition (H.E.I.) as designed and marketed by GM does not run any software what so ever. It is simply a solid-state based ignition system. It works extremely well, however it stopped being produced in the late 90's.
It works so well, without software, that many GM enthusiasts chose to adapt it to older models (much older, think '57 Chevy) to get away from the old points and condenser systems.
My point is this, you say you want a car without all of the software controlled aspects, then H.E.I. is something you DO want.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday April 24 2015, @01:36PM
(Score: 2) by TK-421 on Friday April 24 2015, @03:19PM
I definitely see your point. My first car was a similar setup to your Dodge...points. I never had any problems with it, but then again I never let the car sit un-started with the key in the run position and it is a Chevy (still got it) so setting point dwell is pretty straight forward.
I contrast that with drivers who routinely let the points burn out by using the wrong key position (engine off key on) and Ford thin-wall Henry's that I never could set a proper point dwell on.
One solid state ignition I would avoid though is Opti-Sparc, that was a turd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @02:33PM
Alrighty then, replace the HEI in the text with modern electronic ignition-mathingy.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 24 2015, @11:22AM
Wasn't there recently a ruling that the consumer has the right to jailbreak their phone? Wouldn't that also apply here?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by monster on Friday April 24 2015, @03:46PM
It was an exemption given by the Librarian of Congress [wikipedia.org]. As such, it's given case by case and not on a general basis. The exemption you point to, for example, was given only to iPhones and doesn't cover Android handsets with locked boot, even if they look like an almost equal case. Same here, it would need a new, different exemption.
It's just a very imperfect solution for a really bad law.
(Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Friday April 24 2015, @02:35PM
Then don't buy movies on BluRay.
Once the internet or the DRM servers are gone, so is the movie you "bought"
(Score: 1) by trimtab on Friday April 24 2015, @08:49PM
You do realize that with vehicles that have government mandated pollution control devices that altering or replacing the "black box" with an alternative not blessed by government is a crime. And there are usually NO government blessed alternative "black boxes."
So only the only alternative is to buy vehicles made before there were "black boxes".... so say 1978.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday April 24 2015, @05:39AM
If we want to fight this madness we need to attack it at the root. Go read some Stallman and realize the idiocy of 'Intellectual Property.'
We need to start the fight on the idea copyright gives the author 'ownership.' In the U.S. the -only- justification can be found in the U.S. Constitution where it says "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." And that is all.
To promote progress we require patents to be published so that other may build upon them. At the time the clause was written it was simply taken as a given that the same situation existed for copyright. We need to press to formalize this assumption. No copyright should be valid on a binary other than as a derived work. Every copyrighted piece of software should be required to be delivered as buildable source and that the physical embodyment permit modification by the end user under clearly defined rules.
Note what I am not saying. I'm not calling for mandating Free Software or even Open Source. Rights holders should, if they want, be permitted to exercise the exclusive rights granted under copyright which restrict selling copies, public performance and in the case of software even of installing more working copies than licensed. However every user should have the right to read the Source, learn from it in exactly the same way they can study and learn from a book. They should be able to modify their copy for their own use and even sell that service or the actual modifications in the form of patches requiring the original copyrighted work. Signed binaries should be legal only under strict limits. For example a secure endpoint could require signed binaries but it should also be possible to blow the original keys and replace them if an owner wants to repurpose the hardware. A vehicle owner should certainly be permitted to install modified software but only after some sort of unlock process which would forever mark the equipment as modified and outside of all warranty since it is fairly easy to destroy a modern engine with bad firmware. Only an end owner should have the right to lock the hardware for anti-theft purposes.
Copyright should not be usable to convert what would otherwise be an outright sale of tangible property into a lease.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @06:16AM
Its not like there are are mo alternative sources. You can find replacement software for most cars from the performance industry. Just google engine performance chips. Dozens of companies.
Get behind the The Right to Repair Movement [wikipedia.org], and get it passed in your state.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @07:16AM
Except if the car etc manufacturers get DMCA protection, then those performance chips become illegal, because they can just add some pretty trivial "protection" and if you "decrypt it", you've broken the law, and your new chip/software is illegal. So no alternative sources anymore.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @01:46PM
In many cases these performance chips are totally new developments from the ground up and use nothing of the original.
In other cases, they simply intercept or replace can-bus instructions in the vehicle's data stream.
I suspect this isn't so much about any secrets in the software. Its more about driverless car manufacturers making sure no one can tinker with their produces when they finally start producing them. The next tactic will be to demonize car hacking and blame all sorts of deaths on it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @06:27PM
Yes the aftermarket stuff is their own, new stuff yes, but even if there is one part using "encrypted" communication with the ECU, you are fubared, because hacking that encrypted connection is protected, so even if you replace the ECU, you need to replace all the parts that use that "encrypted" communication with it. So through enough "encrypted" shite around and it's very much unfeasible to do any changes, since you need to replace all of it.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 24 2015, @11:20AM
Those "chips" aren't replacements. They're just a resistor to fool a sensor.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by broggyr on Friday April 24 2015, @01:33PM
Some "chips" are in fact a resistor. Some are not.
Taking things out of context since 1972.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 24 2015, @04:36PM
Do any actually fully replace the computer?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday April 24 2015, @07:24AM
Attack it at the root? Go read Karl Marx. Yes, you have heard of him. But have you ever actually read him? The opening of "Das Kapital" is a masterful critique of the idea that commodities have any intrinsic value. Of course they do not, it is only speculation, or actual need, or the cost of production that gives value to a commodity. Of course, property and commodities are not the same things. Commodities are exchangable properties, where actual properties cannot be sold or bought, only given as a gift or lost by means of a market. Is this really a debate that Soylent news wants to get into at this point? We have a lot of libertarian property fanatics here who have no idea what property actually is, and it will take a very long time to educate them. I suggest we let sleeping libertarians lie. At least until Rand Paul self-destructs on the campaign trail. \
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday April 24 2015, @07:41AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday April 24 2015, @08:16AM
The weasel word here is "educate". With which you say that difference in opinion is entirely due to lack of education.
Not a weasel word, a fact. You are wise to not disagree with . . . facts.
Property is one of those things that everyone thinks they know what it is, but the more we try to analyze and specify, the more amorphous the concept becomes. And the point with Marx is that the idea of property radically shifts under capitalism to things that were not even property prior, and posits alienation of property that did not exist previously. Real Estate was just that under Feudal economics, an estate, and land could not be sold or bought. Ever notice there were no Century 21 Gold Blazers in the Middle Ages? So, yes, to affirm my original point, which you were so bright as to pick up on, confusions over property are the result of a lack of education. That and the Digitial Millennial Copyright Act. We don't "have you," babe, anymore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Friday April 24 2015, @07:46AM
Also read Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant....
Nice "summary" here:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/ [stanford.edu]
Tl;dr: no one has ever agreed on definitions.
Anyone spending time arguing anywhere knows, debating with undefined definitions is ... meaningless.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @01:43PM
My ex-wife was a Marxist, and the best she could ever do to explain it was
1) Revolution
2) ???
3) Utopia
Where "???" seemed to me to be some sort of miraculous fundamental change in human nature.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday April 24 2015, @06:57PM
some sort of miraculous fundamental change in human nature.
This is neither the time nor the place to engage in commie bashing or Red-baiting, but let me remind you of my point. "Property" is not a simple transparent concept, and Marx's point is that it is a social construction dependent upon the mode and relations of production in society. This is not a theory of a purfect utopia, it is a critique of capitalism. Capitalism changed what property is and what it does, and in so doing it has changed human nature. This happened mostly by the capitalization of knowledge, what some here might call "tech". And of course, human nature and modes of production are not likely to stop evolving anytime soon, as much as some may try to use the legal regime to freeze their temporary personal advantage in place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @09:08PM
When violence and force is used to select leaders, >90% of the time those capable of the most violence and force rise to the top.
And when they do, most of them continue to stick around long past their welcome- after all they have the most violence and force, and have beaten all others.
No surprise the popular implementation plan for Communism and other violent revolutions usually result in Dictatorships.
From what I see in the American Revolution was more of a secession than a revolution most of those at the top in the USA (yes I know it wasn't the USA back then but you know what I mean ;) ) still stayed in power in the USA, it's just they stopped reporting/paying to the British. Whereas the French and Chinese revolutions they got rid of a lot of those at the top in their countries - and got dictatorships for their efforts.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday April 24 2015, @09:31PM
It's the words, isn't it? The M -word and the C-word? Makes it impossible to stay on topic and have a discussion. Oh well. You know what else Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels advocated? A Central Bank! (right there in the https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ [marxists.org] Communist Manifesto)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @02:11PM
This thread is an interesting discussion. Usually, on Slashdot, it's "Of course government has to protect American jobs and private property, if you don't support that you must be a COMMUNIST." And in the next breath, "Copyright and intellectual property are imaginary concepts, enforced by big businesses backed by FASCIST governments". Guessing these are mostly upper middle class males in their 20's, with lots of electronic gadgets lying around, along with hard disks and SSDs stuffed with torrented music files, games, movies, commercial apps, textbooks, and what-have-you.
It's wishful thinking for them to suppose that this lazy mob of rich kids has any influence at all on public policy.
OP and GP are among the first to point out that there's really no difference between the philosophy underlying the concept of private property and intellectual property. Why Capitalism? Because we need to reward the creators of wealth that contributes products and services that benefit the community. Why intellectual property? Because someone spent a substantial amount of time creating something that many others feel is worthwhile to consume. If you don't reward creators, then over time you're going to get less and less superior work.
Who decides products and works are beneficial to the community, and to what extent they should be rewarded? The marketplace. Capitalism lets the marketplace decide, unless the creators or owners decide to release their product for free. Governments are charged with enforcing the laws giving owners the right to collect money for their product or work. Consumers have the right not to buy it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @07:21PM
our current system has little to do with the idealized capitalism that lets "the marketplace" decide. There are too many factors, like advertising and subsidies, that can lead to marketplace contusion.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday April 24 2015, @06:00AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mtrycz on Friday April 24 2015, @08:15AM
I'm happy this comes out, but it shouldn't go without a simple explanation, imo.
The project was founded by an engineer as an open documentation effort: "is it possible to successfully complete an open, distributed documentation contributed by dozens of people that are mainly volunteers?" Or something along those lines.
They chose a focus on something that is both very useful and dominated by traditional industry: open hardware farm machinery.
It's a great project, I sometimes wish to have a farm to build these do-it-myself tractors and stuff. They're awesome.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 5, Informative) by number6 on Friday April 24 2015, @09:39AM
If you visit OpenSourceEcology you are also being tracked by the business corporation named Facebook via its buttons embedded in an iframe on the page.
IMHO, the terms "Facebook" and "Open Source" fit together like a wolf in sheeps clothing.
If "social networking" must be baked into global internet activity, then a business corporation such as Facebook should NOT be the controlling agent of this activity.
Such projects should only be accepted if they are FOSS (Free and Open Source and have copyleft licenses such as the GPL).
FOSS replacements for Facebook et al are beginning to happen and gaining momentum; for example the GNU Social project [gnu.io].
More food for thought......
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @09:59AM
And don't use Google, either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Friday April 24 2015, @10:48AM
I imagine Joe Sixpack really doesn't give a hoot. He buys it, drives it, takes it into the garage, and when he's bored of it he'll sell it, same as before.
I did like the John Deere comment about "implied license". It always seems that manufacturers are incredibly reluctant to clarify the issue - here, as in other fields, the assumption is that you own it, unless the manufacturer decides you don't.
I imagine what would really upset them was if their John Deere tractor was legally considered a lease.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kromagv0 on Friday April 24 2015, @12:13PM
If I don't own all of the vehicle then why am I being taxed on the entire ownership of it every year.
Also the title document that I received from the state of Minnesota clearly states that I am infarct the clear and outright owner of the vehicles in my possession and that there are no other parties that claim ownership or have a lien against it. I would imagine a tractor would also have a title document for it. Although if John Deere is making these claims I guess the old Johnny Poppers will just go up in value since you can outright own them.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 24 2015, @06:05PM
With vinyl records (and later) the decision was that you owned the atoms, but not the information encoded onto them. That would be a reasonable distinction if we had reasonable copyright laws. As it is.....
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @10:00PM
>> Although if John Deere is making these claims I guess the old Johnny Poppers will just go up in value since you can outright own them.
I believe that is and probably has been happening for some time already.
I visited my brother who runs the family farm just last week. We drove past a John Deere dealership where we have done business for decades. My brother commented that there were only a couple of used tractors on the lot where I could remember growing up that they had (typically) a dozen or two at any given time.
He commented that the reason was that the newer ones were so complicated and expensive with electrically controlled hydraulic systems where the older one were controlled with mechanical linkages. People were keeping their older tractors because they were easier and cheaper to maintain.
(Score: 1) by Anne Nonymous on Friday April 24 2015, @12:20PM
> Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors
Nothing Compiles Like A Deere!
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Friday April 24 2015, @01:40PM
... and nothing smells like a john.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday April 24 2015, @01:47PM
I was hoping for "Nothing Segfaults Like a Deere!"
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday April 24 2015, @02:31PM
There Was A Time when all the systems on cars were mechanical. You pushed the brake, it created friction. Electronics slowly crept in, originally around the edges. Power steering. Electric fans and fuel pumps. Then sensors for potential problems/issues. Your car would generally run without the electronics, but not nearly as well.
But as time has gone on, there have been more and more systems that are automated and computer controlled that are core to the functionality of the vehicle. Brake override systems [howstuffworks.com] are an important safety advance that will legitimately help save lives. But now we've suddenly put a computer in control of decisions that used to be purely made by a human through mechanical linkage (when to accelerate, when to brake). This IS a radical step, and as we put more and more distance between "a human moved a thing" and "the card did a thing," there's the opportunity for signals to get interpreted incorrectly and the car to do something dangerous.
Tinker with your home computer and stuff it up, and you've inconvenienced yourself. Tinker with your car computer and stuff it up, and it's possible you will injure or kill someone. That someone might not be you.
This is a real problem, not a theoretical one. We have (and people demand) stringent safety standards for vehicles on our public roads. We're now to the point where the computer code running on several car-related systems must be considered part of the decision on whether a car is "safe."
The question is how to do that. I don't think the automakers' proposed solution (make it so ONLY WE can change the software) is sensible, any more than a requirement that you can ONLY buy shocks and struts from a dealership would be reasonable. But the opposite position of "it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it!" isn't reasonable either - just as you can't legally remove certain structural parts of your car, or alter certain mechanical systems, and still have the car be street legal, it's not reasonable that whatever code you want to run should inherently be considered OK.
A better solution would like be to have standards for roadworthiness, and have car computers (like other car parts) be subject to regular review and certification, as well as being subject to review by law enforcement when reviewing other driving infractions. However, such a framework does not exist, and IMO will take considerable time to come into existence.
(Score: 2) by monster on Friday April 24 2015, @04:02PM
In Europe there are already such standards. Do you want to legally drive a vehicle on public roads? You need the proper documentation. The car periodically has to be checked for compliance. You take the car to an authorized checker, pay the duties and, if everything is fine, get your car licence renewed.
Now you may ask: What happens if I want to modify my car? Well, you can do it as long as it has the proper paperwork also signed by an engineer. The engineer verifies that the modifications are correctly made and don't compromise the integrity of the car or the safety of the passengers/other users of the roads. It's called "homologation" and allows you to do really big customizations while staying legal. It may be expensive, because complex modifications would require much more than rubberstamping by the engineer, as he's on the line if he signs a badly made modification, but it's legal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @04:37PM
When you buy a car or a lawnmower, you don't sign a Bill of Lease, you sign a Bill of Sale. It was sold to you, you own it. Period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @06:27PM
It's not that they don't want you to fix it yourself, it's that if you get into messing with things on the software-level, you will be making possibly dangerous changes to real time operating system code; more importantly to them, within that code there are numerous proprietary stacks like J1939 or ISOBUS which the industries really doesn't want you to see or analyze without licenses costing on the order of thousands of dollars.
Stop complaining, you really don't want to F with the software in a Deere, it's not worth your time. Here, you should rely on a mfg guarantee to keep it functioning. If you don't like that, then buy analogue or machines that are open + repairable. You don't expect to be able to mess with firmware in that apple computer laptop, do you? No, you get a PC instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @02:08AM
Stop complaining, you really don't want to F with the software in a Deere, it's not worth your time.
How could you possibly know this? Especially the "what I want" part? My plan is to install WiFi on the tractor, so I can control the darn thing from the bar down the road. What could go wrong?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday April 24 2015, @06:30PM
Alright, so they own part of my car. What's the value of that part which they own? If it's nonzero, then they owe me money for taxes which I paid on something which they own. If it's zero, I'm going to take all the code they claim to own and post it online, and when they sue me for millions in lost revenue, I can prove they couldn't have any lost revenue because the code has no value.
...and if it's below zero, then I can post the code online and sue THEM for lost revenue, right? :)
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Saturday April 25 2015, @10:42PM
So if it's John Deere's tractor after the farmer forks over $150k+, then I guess that means:
*It's still the farmer's money, which means he hasn't purchased a product, he's brought shares in the corporation and is entitled to dividends and/or is able to take out his money at any time on the condition that the product is returned OR the product is leased and as such the farmer is entitled to a new one every so many years
*There is an implied warranty for the life of the product (whether that's 3 or 30 years), so they have to maintain the hardware for the lifetime of the product
*There is an implied warranty for the software, so they have to provide firmware updates for the lifetime of the product
*If something goes wrong resulting in injury or death, the corporation is liable for 100%
...and I'm sure there are other things too, but the basic idea is either it's mine after I fork out a bunch of money OR it's yours, I'm licensed to use it, but as a consequence you're responsible for any and all eventualities.
Sadly, a "black & white" law like that is probably asking too much.
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley