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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

The problem there is that the software is proprietary, not that it has an electronic throttle pedal.

A million times this, I'm currently installing a hidden pass-through can-bus logger before I take my car to the dealership because of this insanity. So much of my life is wasted reverse engineering stuff when I could be doing shit that actually contributes to humanity. This is the cost of a broken IP system.

I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think IP law is to blame. I think it's consumer protection law that is the problem here. Magnuson–Moss should be amended to require warrantors to provide repair information. (edit: and tools)

IP law is the problem. The anti-circumvention clauses (that kinda make sense for media DRM) are used to criminalize tools that make unofficial repair (or just "repair", because official repair is just swapping entire modules) possible.

Nobody would even need to make circumvention tools if the manufacturers are required to provide you a mechanism for doing what you want to do.

Yes and no. We absolutely should be amending Magnuson-Moss, but the reason for why we need to legally mandate access to repair manuals is very much downstream of current copyright law. Companies realized that once you put software into a device, they owned the thing that makes the device useful at all, and they could then charge access to that software in the same way one charges access to a scummy mobile game.

Furthermore, because the law surrounding creative works is extremely strict, any repair that might touch something that could be construed to be DRM protecting the manufacturer's software becomes legally dicey. You also can't tell anyone how to break that DRM, no matter how justifiable repair is. So if you somehow figure out how to reserialize new parts onto a locked-down vehicle, you're probably allowed to do that; but you can't legally sell that knowledge onto other repair shops.

> You also can't tell anyone how to break that DRM, no matter how justifiable repair is. So if you somehow figure out how to reserialize new parts onto a locked-down vehicle, you're probably allowed to do that; but you can't legally sell that knowledge onto other repair shops.

Nobody would have to do any of that BS if it was illegal for that DRM to exist under Magnuson-Moss to begin with.

What can't you do? Everytime I dig into this I discover someone wants to violate emissions laws. Sure you can change your throttle response without that, but the only people who want to are trying to break emissions.

I'm still waiting for an example of where DRM stops a normal repair

The classic example is anything that's signed by crypto. So, often, pieces of the security systems or infotainment systems on a vehicle. But I was thinking more broadly, about other types of consumer products, once I started talking about Magnuson–Moss above.

Well, first off, DMCA 1201 is part of copyright law; it's not a generic prohibition on removing any code that enforces a law. It's only for code or mechanisms that checks if you paid for a creative work. If you want a law that makes it illegal to tell people how to roll coal, pass a separate law that does just that. Bending copyright law to serve every imaginable prosocial benefit has inherent harms to it.

The example of DRM stopping normal repair is serialized parts: lots of vehicles, farm equipment, and phones are designed to refuse to work if you swap certain parts on them. The only way you are supposed to be able to swap parts is to pay the manufacturer's branded repair firms to make the swap for you, and then send some kind of signature to the computer in that vehicle that says the repair was authorized. Bypassing these schemes requires tampering with DRM code, which trips DMCA 1201. Yes, it may be legally unenforceable, but to get there requires a decade's worth of expensive litigation to prove that something that was legal before you put a computer in a car should be legal after you put a computer in a car. And even then you almost certainly can't distribute the tools you made to do what should be a legal repair because those tools might be used by someone else to pirate the ECU firmware or something.

Car owners like that as it means stealing a car for parts isn't worth it

I think there are likely ways to weaken IP law that solve this problem and since I generally tend toward reducing complexity and already want to weaken IP law for a host of other reasons I prefer that approach.

Weakening IP law is the complicated way to do it, because you're touching so many other things that are not just "embedded software in hardware products".

The simple way to protect consumers ability to fix products is to simply require manufacturers to provide the information to do it.

We shouldn't focus on patching stuff when the core of the system is rotten, we need to dig deep, possibly do a rewrite. This is a peripheral thing that may just be fixed for free if we deal with the core.

Regardless of the validity of that statement -- it will never be politically feasible to rewrite a large chunk of IP law on such a niche issue. If we want this to actually happen, we need to propose a solution where there are more people who support it than there are who are concerned about it. Rewriting all of IP law means you're just going to make enemies with all of the major media companies who don't have anything to do with selling hardware devices.

But, I still don't think this is an IP law issue. IP law should not be a weapon used to prevent you from repairing your devices -- but neither should anything else. If you only change IP law, companies are just going to find a different way to prevent you from mucking with their stuff.

There's a reason we call this "right to repair" and not "right to make an attempt to do hacky DRM workarounds"

I don't think this is a niche issue though.

The current discussion is about fixing cars. But the right to repair is a problem for everything with a computer in it.

You could take the title of this article and replace "an electric vehicle" just about any electronic device most people would own.

It's not a niche issue to anyone on this forum -- politically, it's a niche issue.

https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro...

cant you just pay the mechanic to take care if it for you while you are doing your important humanity saving work?

Do you want to debug your own throttle software? Download 3rd-party firmware for your car?

> Download 3rd-party firmware for your car?

I imagine insurance companies will eventually have clauses that prevent this.

They don't prevent me from modifying my car now. In fact, they'll explicitly give me coverage for aftermarket equipment upon request.

"Evenutally". There's little reason now, with 99.99% of cars being human driven, where a dropped Twinky has a higher chance of causing an accident than some slightly modified ECU curves.

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