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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, 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