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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: 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.