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Car owners and security experts can tinker with automobile software without incurring US copyright liability, according to newly issued guidelines that were opposed by the auto industry.
The Library of Congress, which oversees the US Copyright Office, agreed with fair use advocates who argued that vehicle owners are entitled to modify their cars, which often involves altering software.
Automakers including General Motors and other vehicle manufacturers such as Deere & Co opposed the rules. They said vehicle owners could visit authorized repair shops for changes they may need to undertake.
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US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software
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It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday October 28 2015, @08:31PM
This isn't a copyright issue, but rather a liability issue masquerading as a DMCA issue.
If GM protects their software via encryption (or just about any other method) and you hack your way through that protection you have technically violated DMCA. Hence the frikken Library of Congress, which was NEVER intended to be a regulatory agency now gets a say in what you do under the hood.
If you hack your car's software, and promptly crash the car, and try to sue, the automaker could still be held liable, even though you put in a subtle throttle boost adjustment into the code to get off the line faster. They want to outlaw that so that they don't have to retrieve the software from the crashed vehicle just to prove it wasn't their software, but rather yours.
Its the same mentality that is being used everywhere else these days. The government is the leader in this nonsense. The FCC wants to make it so can't hack your router just because you MIGHT hack the radio blob to wander into un-authorized frequencies. If there is a corner case SOMEWHERE that opens a possibility of an error in judgement causing harm, the knee jerk reaction is to ban even thinking about it.
So instead of worrying what copyright has to do with it, we should be asking WHY is it ok to hack a car, (where you can get someone killed), but not OK to hack a router where nobody outside of 90 foot radius will ever be bothered in the slightest.
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