Working on your own vehicle illegal?

**Rick** · 04-28-2015, 12:29 PM

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You couldn't glow red and not be evil.

**crashdive123** · 04-28-2015, 05:53 PM

Just remember....although I am an assassin for hire, sometimes I kill for the pure pleasure of it.

**canid** · 04-28-2015, 09:30 PM

I'm sorry Rick but ratoinal basis does not make a piece of legislation responsible. It's trivially easy to find responsible justification to act in response to a problem. It's much harder to draft a law which resolves the problem, does not attempt to do more and is sufficiently strong and narrow to be effective and not have further reaching, detrimental effects even when that is what one is trying to do. My view of DMCA is far more cynical.

Let's try paralleling this with gun crime or with accessibility of firearms to prohibited persons where the result is assault weapon bans and periodic pushes for universal registration, firearm safety certification, etc. Do we still attempt to conflate basis, legislative intent and acceptance of deliberate or collateral infringement by the same standard?

**canid** · 04-28-2015, 09:42 PM

I understand that you didn't in fact justify the bill as much as correlate the piracy and p2p explosion to the response, so please don't feel I'm making assumptions about your intent.

**Phaedrus** · 04-29-2015, 03:36 AM

Originally Posted by Rick

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I suppose an artist's copyright or their ability to earn a living should not be considered. It must be those evil corporations again. You do know that single owner, mom and pop shops can also be corporations, right? If it weren't for corporations and free enterprise this country would look a great deal like Russia or China.

The DMCA was set up because this country's moral compass is going to heck in a hand basket. Everyone wants something for nothing and they couldn't resist downloading music and movies for free. Congratulations, we earned the DMCA.

Sure, that was the stated intent but it was quickly perverted. No one complaining about legitimate copyright protections. If you write a book then you should reap the benefits. But most of the other stuff is not so clear. If you buy a compact disc, is the disc yours? What if you want to rip it and listen to it on your computer. Is that legal? Should it be legal? Some of the stuff if baffling. For example a few years back a company made a device called "Kalediscope". It allowed you to rip your own legally purchased DVDs and store them in the devices internal server to watch back on your own TV. They paid licensing and the applicable royalties to all the relevant IP owners and the hardware guys also signed off on it. But when they brought it to market, all those same guys they paid changed their minds and filed a DMCA lawsuit! Just cracking certain encryption is illegal, no matter why you do it. Talk about your lack of moral compass! Is there any reason you should be barred from decrypting or decompiling something you legally purchased, for your own personal use?

Worse yet, something can be fair use under the DMCA and illegal a few years later. Lots of things that used to be considered legal fair use have been made illegal later on.

I agree the moral compass is off, but it's not off in the way you suggest! DMCA is being abused, and the abuse is reliably coming from the guys with best paid lawyers.

To be clear we're not talking piracy here- that's a straw man. We never needed the DMCA to stop that, it's been illegal for decades. We're talking about the abuse of ELUs, locked items forcing you into proprietary technologies and lack of choice. It's the definition of anti-competitive markets.

A last example; say you buy your car from Zoomie Motors, a 2016 Zapster. Five years down the road the Zapster is discontinued and Zoomie folds. Someone buys their IP for pennies on the dollar. Even though Zoomie no longer exists whoever owns the IP may be able to make it criminal for you to hack your computer to fix your busted Zapster. Yes, this is something that really happens now.

**Rick** · 04-29-2015, 08:15 AM

My reference was only to the DMCA legislation and I'm certainly not justifying it. Only pointing out that our lack of moral compass (stealing copyright material) lead to its inception. Whether it is or is not a good law is another subject entirely. To see corporations like Ford and Toyota taking advantage of it come as no surprise.

A corporation has one/two roles depending on size. The first is to make a profit. The second, if they are structured with shareholders, is to provide a return to their shareholders as dividends. That can be done inside or outside of a moral culture. Whether we like it as a customer or not really isn't the issue. Protecting that position is a natural part of running the corporation. It will be up to the government through input from customers as to whether locking chip sets for example constitutes an unfair business practice. My suggestion, if you are against it, is to let the Federal Trade Commission know how you feel.

**Wildthang** · 04-29-2015, 03:39 PM

There are a lot of techy type people out there that can connect a laptop to a car or motorcycle and go through the codes and adjust air fuel ratios as well as many other parameters. The manufacturers just want to put them out of business and make more money! ASE certified mechanics are trained to run diagnostics on almost any new car in lots of Auto Tech schools around the country! I guess technical training will soon be illegal to!

**DSJohnson** · 04-29-2015, 05:43 PM

Originally Posted by Lamewolf

Go to your local library and see if they have access to AllData.com library version. If so, you can get schematics from there.

Thanks I did not know about this resource.

**Rick** · 04-30-2015, 06:10 AM

Originally Posted by Wildthang

I guess technical training will soon be illegal to!

Or not.....

"While the act could hypothetically lock customers out of key safety features, it would still allow owners the ability to repair other areas of the vehicle’s onboard computer as they see fit. It’s a slim compromise, but one that may be more closely based in reality."

**hunter63** · 04-30-2015, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by Lamewolf

Go to your local library and see if they have access to AllData.com library version. If so, you can get schematics from there.

Haven't made a trip to the Library yet.....did check out the site.
Seems you can get a vehicle specific pay subscription.

As it turned out a member here, (at the time) worked for a dealer, loaded images of the schematic, form his closed system and E-mailed them to me......at risk of losing his job......

So the whole deal of a owner/customer being cut out of the loop....has already started....and will get worst, be it officially legal/illegal.

I can see a time here private ownership will end....and you can only lease of rent a "Unit"....be it able to keep at home or call for a Unit.