Whose Car Is It Anyway? - Comments Page 1

Love the title of the article, Bob.

It would be interesting to see a John Deere invoice.

You got to be kidding. You mean to tell me that the next time I open my refrigerator door, I will be blasted with some cool music that it downloaded from a website? Oh my, the next happening will be the sheriff will be here to arrest me for the fridges download. Watch out,better not buy a smart watch.

Ownership is mine and the government should keep their grubby hand off. Lawyers also, no wonder that lawyers are lower than snakecrap in popularity. Now lets get a lawyer to push to have this revised so that only the life threatening devices are blocked or protected. Damm, now my toaster is playing a rerun of I love Lucy.

If ownership is not final,does this mean any maintenance costs will be met by the manufacturer?

The more restrictive government gets, the more people ignore the laws. The black market, the economic activity that doesn't report to government and doesn't pay taxes is the prime example of this. As government gets more controlling, more people will opt out of the system. That is just the way things work. Do you want your car reporting to the police that you are speeding? Or keeping a record of that? Or how about rolling a stop, or any of a multitude of other traffic laws that could result in fines that enrich some government entity? Society breaks down under such authoritative controls.

This is happening not only in cars. The phone carriers have been trying for year to stop you from doing things. At first they tried to claim you could damage their network. In the 1968 Carterfone decision, it was finally decided you could connect certified devices to the phone network (answering machines, your own phones, etc.). More recently, they try to prevent you from modifying the software in your phones. There is some justification having to do with the software that controls the radios (frequency, power, protocol, etc.) but most of what they try to prevent you from doing is BS (removing apps they installed, changing built in sounds, etc.)

But now cars?

Is there any chance that the Chinese government hasn't already reverse engineered all these devices, hardware and software, long ago. Isn't that where the real threat is?

I'll sign right up.
If they want to claim ownership, then they can pay for any 'scheduled' maintenance.
"It's not my car, officer."

Does this mean that if my tractor is involved in an accident that damages property or kills someone that the injured party can sue John Deere? They must be able to, as Deere is the actual owner of the device- I was just using it.

"to reduce the level of non-compliance with regulatory standards.”
This, I think is the most alarming sentence of the whole article. If my vehicle isn't getting the gas mileage that the government said I had to get, then I will be fined. If we tinker with their computers, it will make it hard to ensure compliance to the government. This is alarming on so many levels.

Golly gee. So the GOVERNMENT all by its lonesome self decided to impose restrictions. The automotive industry--all of it--had nothing to do with it. Get real!

Since the big companies run the government I don't think there will be much to stop it.The companies have been laying the stepping stones to this for a long time and we have been using and loving every one of them. so I suppose the only satisfaction we will get is to say we never saw this coming.
Personally I Thing it is just the beginning of things to come.We are not willing to say enough is enough so we loose even the ownership to ourselves just to enjoy silly toys.Very sad.
Hope articles like yours open more peoples eyes. You are doing your part. great article as usual.

You have to remember the mindset of most people who _try_ to reprogram their new / nearly new cars - first, they don't know enough to know how much they don't know. 2nd, they think it's OK to sue the manufacturer for not fixing what they screw up under warranty. As far as I know, the DMCA has only been used against people in this area as a defense against a frivolous lawsuit (I broke it on purpose, you should fix it for free under warranty).

Thanks for letting us know about this issue. I just signed the petition.

I see this trend as being in the same direction as stating that corporations are people. Taking away the rights that used to belong to real people and giving them to corporations and businesses.

Ridiculous that any company can say that you don't really own what you have purchased. If that's the case, they should also have the responsibility of all the repairs and maintenance as well.

This article made me see red and I'm still talking to myself.
I also sent it off to a few friends, which is something I don't normally do.

Like the engine and drive train, if you modify it, you void the warranty.

This is BS but too true. How are they going to know if/when I tweak my car? Is it going to call home and sic the Copyright Cops on me? Possibly.

Thanks again for bringing something like this to our attention. With what we pay for our vehicles and then to be told we don't have the right to tinker with them is absurd! Ever since the first cars, people have enjoyed working on them and customizing them. Yet today is hard to work on them and now they are telling us this. Unless this is changed, they will have a lot of people breaking these laws.

As a software developer (including safety critical systems in aircraft) I think that it should be possible to review what software is doing. As for user modifications it may make sense to limit modifications to safety critical systems, but if I want to tweak some function (e.g. I would love to modify the cruse control to be less aggressive at maintaining speed) or changing some operational parameters should be, the software should be somewhat open to user modification. Since I doubt that you have source code the process would be like reverse engineering the code, saving operational copy, and applying patches. If the patches did not work out, restore copy of operational code. I suspect if this was done, it would "void the warranty"

Maybe some forward thinking auto manufacturer would allow customization and provide operational code extracts and guidance.

[I hit post too soon by accident, could you add this to the post just submitted?]
Some method of code review for modifications should be considered - whether by the manufacturer or some car related forum.