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It’s Finally Legal to Hack Your Own Devices (Even Your Car)

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday November 02 2016, @01:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the phone-phreaks-rejoice dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

You may have thought that if you owned your digital devices, you were allowed to do whatever you like with them. In truth, even for possessions as personal as your car, PC, or insulin pump, you risked a lawsuit every time you reverse-engineered their software guts to dig up their security vulnerabilities—until now.

Last Friday, a new exemption to the decades-old law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act quietly kicked in, carving out protections for Americans to hack their own devices without fear that the DMCA's ban on circumventing protections on copyrighted systems would allow manufacturers to sue them. One exemption, crucially, will allow new forms of security research on those consumer devices. Another allows for the digital repair of vehicles. Together, the security community and DIYers are hoping those protections, which were enacted by the Library of Congress's Copyright Office in October of 2015 but delayed a full year, will spark a new era of benevolent hacking for both research and repair.

Unfortunately, the exemptions are only temporary and will need to be re-approved the next time the Copyright Office reviews its exemptions, in 2018.

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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday November 04 2016, @12:00AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday November 04 2016, @12:00AM (#422301) Journal

    Let me explain. According to the article you linked, the provision about voting machines won't take effect until after this month's elections. Hence the fruits of such research won't be available prior to those elections, which is unfortunate.

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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday November 04 2016, @12:15AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Friday November 04 2016, @12:15AM (#422307) Homepage Journal

    Let me explain. According to the article you linked, the provision about voting machines won't take effect until after this month's elections. Hence the fruits of such research won't be available prior to those elections, which is unfortunate.

    I misunderstood your point. My apologies.

    Yes, that is unfortunate. I'm not sure how concerned I should be about that, but I guess we'll find out soon enough, since I'm sure that many folks will be taking a close look at voting machines as soon as they can.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr