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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, 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.