Right-to-Repair Law To Get DRM Out of Your Car 403
eldavojohn writes "Ralph Nader's back to hounding the automotive industry ... but it's not about safety this time, it's about the pesky DRM in your car. Most cars have a UART in them that allows you to read off diagnostic codes and information about what may be wrong with the vehicle so you can repair it. Late model cars have been getting increasingly complex and dependent on computers which has caused them, as with most things digital, to move towards a proprietary DRM for these tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information. This has kept independent auto-shops out of the market for fixing your car and relegating you to depend on pricier dealers to get your automotive ailments cured. The bill still has a provision to protect trade secrets but is a step forward to open up the codes and tools necessary to keep your car running."
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like them to take it a step further and have it so the owner can see the error codes and refer to the manual. I got a check engine light on a 2 month old car while driving across country with no dealer for 800 miles. I chose to risk it rather than have to pay a local mechanic to look at it. As it turned out it was only a dirty fuel filter caused by crappy gas. Forcing me to worry and go to a dealer 700 miles before my destination is really a crappy way to squeeze money out of someone who just gave you 30 grand.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame Nader, blame your lousy voting system that discourages a third party from forming. Your voting party system is only one party better than the Communism your country hates.
Captcha was: protest
Re:I believe in free market capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to miss the point, pornologist. In a free market, ANY mechanic would work on ANY car he/she felt like figuring out. We have a government-enforced monopoly on any car with a computer in it, thanks to the DMCA and similar laws. That's not freedom; that's not capitalism, that's corporatism.
DRM when your life is at stake? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its one thing to introduce DRM to protect the copyright on a song, book or video. That isn't fair but it's also unlikely to get anyone killed. (Laws that introduce overly harsh penalties like jail time, ruin a career, or bankrupt someone are a whole other kettle of fish). How can any company justify pricing people out of having their car repaired? Lives are at stake. I wonder how long it'll take before people start suing because repair work was so unreasonably expensive via authorized channels that it leads to injury and death? It should be illegal to lock up certain kinds of information. It should be illegal to use laws like these to prevent competition where lives are at stake.
Re:This is a very old issue (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument for DRM in the car MIGHT fly in cars that are leased (which in my lay-person's brain sounds somewhat similar to a license for using software), but there can be absolutely no reason for preventing me from accessing information on something that I own outright.
Its not like I bought a license to drive the car (that was provided freely (sans a few yearly fees) by the government of my state), I own the metal. What possible argument can there be for preventing me from reading the information in my car's engine?
Re:They can have their DRM...or not (Score:1, Insightful)
sure they can have their drm..as long as it's still THEIR car.. once it becomes MY car, then no, they can't.
Re:I believe in free market capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not freedom; that's not capitalism, that's corporatism.
Also known as "Trickle-Down Economics" aka "Trickle-Upon Economics" aka "Reagan Free Market Capitalism", as in big corporations a "free" to fuck you six ways till Sunday.
He made it perfectly clear what he was referring to. I don't know why you were confused!
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Me too. The Corvair was a cool little car, especially if you dropped a 350 in it. Unsafe at any speed my ass.
If it is equally unsafe regardless of speed, it makes perfect sense to drive as fast as possible so you can get to your destination sooner.
Seems like you're using sound logic to me.
Re:I believe in free market capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why you pay top dollar at the dealership, and when they screw you without lube you just shut up and take it.
Most of us are trying to avoid that. Some of us even (gasp!) do the work ourselves, learning as we go along. YIKES!
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
A better option is to just reform software patent laws. If we make software patents work like machinery patents this whole thing would be solved.
Specifically-
Source code == Blueprint
Compiled code == working model
You can get a patent with one or the other, or both, but then you have to file it with the patent office.
Any changes to the patented design of a significant functional nature invalidate the patent, just like with hardware.
If I make a device that is designed to alter your product, it is NOT a patent or copyright violation, until you enter the world of software. This is horsecrap. Being able to not only patent a specific program, but an entire algorithm and everything it applies to is a drastic abuse of the very idea of patents.
sigh..
Re:now that's just dumb (Score:2, Insightful)
You should look to the 120,000 democrats who voted for Bush in florida.
Exactly. The result had more to do with the fact that Gore is as big an idiot as Bush, albeit one with less of a bend on world domination.
I can just picture him boring the Taliban out of Afganistan with a powerpoint presentation.
some comments on OBD-II (Score:5, Insightful)
OBD-II (the UART mentioned in the article) does not really tell you what is wrong with your car. It gives you another clue. Experience, know-how, tools, other clues, and a process of elimination tells you what is wrong with your car. OBD-II tells you that something was detected like a knock, misfire, oxygen rich, emissions leak, etc. Now a mechanic has to hunt down the cause and fix that. I just wanted to make that clear. It is like looking at iostat not dtrace.
It will be nice to get the codes, but most of them are pretty much known by now. Some ranges are pretty defacto standard too. It's annoying though that the codes can be different on the same model car sold in CA vs IL though. That can trip you up when you have a code list that does not include the correct region.
Re:This is a very old issue (Score:4, Insightful)
The same argument that says you can only used licensed DVD players to play the DVDs that you own.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame Nader, blame your lousy voting system that discourages a third party from forming. Your voting party system is only one party better than the Communism your country hates.
Captcha was: protest
I think the ideal would be for candidates to run as individuals with no such thing as a political party. Then, y'know, people might actually have to think about what the individual candidate stands for (or claims to stand for anyway) rather than reducing voting to the 50/50 chance of "is he a member of my party?" Then the next step would be to get rid of the concept of politicians and return to the concept of the statesman.
If anyone is aware of any writings the Founding Fathers have left behind about political parties in general I'd appreciate any reference you can provide. Ok, mod me off-topic now if that makes you feel better.
Re:DRM when your life is at stake? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lives are at stake
see: big pharma.
clue: no one cares about 'lives'. the world is only about money and power and control.
(sorry for the wake-up call).
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please read and at least attempt to understand comment before replying...
Could you repeat that comment one more time so I can be sure I have it right?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
you already can. Go get an OBD2 reader or have a shop pull the codes. Interpreting them is a bit harder - I thought there was legislation requiring manufacturers to divulge the codes, but I'm not sure.
Point of the article is that the standard OBD2 readers aren't cutting it anymore, they're giving the legally required (smog related) codes and nothing else. If you want a reader like the dealer uses, prepare to fork out more than you paid for the car... This is why the independent mechanics are feeling screwed.
Re:Not technically necessary, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
...auto makers from trying to sue you with their army of lawyers.
The most accurate statement of the reason American automotive companies are failing -- focusing on developing fine points of law instead of the fine points of automotive engineering.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything I have described above costs less than one air-bag, and should be standard equipment on all but the most basic models, and provided as an "at cost" option for any car it doesn't come standard on.
Should... in a fantasy world where the corporations are actually serving their customers.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Well, most car manufacturers ARE offering pretty reasonable warranties anymore. 10year/100,000Miles is not unheard of, and actually pretty common. When they're backing the car for that much time / wear should they not have an exclusive right to the work done on the vehicle?"
They are offering those to be competitive, it isn't generosity, and the warranties are not for every part of the car under every circumstance. For example, what about someone repairing crash damage? Should they be forced to go to a dealer?
A ten-year-old car is often not worth paying dealer labor rates to fix, so this is really "planned obsolescence by vendor lock". As a mechanic I gan get around this affordably by playing "swaptronics", but the general public are not so fortunate.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are mostly right but the problem isn't that the vehicles don't spit out all of the codes (they will), the problem is interpreting them in a meaningful fashion.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have the perfect excuse: Money.
They have the perfect backup bs excuse: Cars is hard!
They are protecting the poor, stupid, car owner. Who undoubtedly is incapable of understanding the workings of the modern car and therefore should always be directed to an authorized dealer to diagnose and repair any issues that pop up. Therefore, providing too much information must be avoided. The owner must prove they understand the workings of the car in order to access the information concerning the workings of their car.
You see, it's all for you really.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all Nader voters needed to feel that way. Only a signficant fraction of the ones in Florida needed to.
Re:DRM when your life is at stake? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your post is kind of vague but it sounds like your criticizing the evil pharmas for not giving away patents on drugs they spent billions researching when no one else did the same with the success they had, and that this therefore proves that the law doesn't care about saving lives.
I think it's an unfair criticism.
If you were to void all patents today, yes, you would make some medications more affordable and save more lives. You would also make these pharmas think really, really hard about investing another penny into drugs, and cancel work on anything that they can't break even on within about a month. You'd also scare the shit out of anyone who wants to make a long-term investment, since the government would reveal just how capricious it's willing to be.
Now, you may disagree about how exactly resources would be redirected if patents were voided, but it's certainly not a clear case of the law sacrificing lives for profits. It's sacrificing X1 lives and Y1 profits for X2 lives and Y2 dollars, where no one knows for sure what the relative values of those four are.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Washington thought there shouldn't be any political parties at all.
Which he probably got from Rousseau, who reckoned that political parties made democracy impossible.
Re:I believe in free market capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody's arguing against your right to contract with a dealer and get whatever repairs done you'd like. Other people would like the liberty to choose a different path. Why do you want to deny them that?
Re:Outright Dangerous (Score:2, Insightful)
Be sure your Congressman and Senators know about your experience before they consider this bill.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, very simply, you could use range voting [wikipedia.org] which is not limited by Arrow's impossibility theorem as it does not satisfy the hypotheses.
In reality, pretty much any voting system other than the current first past the post [wikipedia.org] would be a massive improvement due to strategic voting [wikipedia.org]. All voting systems have problems with it, but under plurality voting, it essentially forces a two-party system. By allowing voters to rank their preferences, votes would come much closer to revealing the true preferences of the electorate, and therefore the government would be closer to what the people really want (or at the very least, the politicians would be claiming to support what the people really want).
In the current system, the major parties are able to shape the debate and effectively silence any opposing viewpoints as no major party candidate holds them so they will get no votes. Admittedly, the major parties tend to absorb popular third-party positions in order to avoid getting voted out, but that is a very slow process.
The voting system does not have to be perfect, but you must keep in mind that it indirectly influences political debate and the responsiveness of the government to the people.
To be fair, the choice of a voting system (and the entire structure of the political process) is a choice of what actually matters in government. A two-party system theoretically forces moderate views and compromise instead of ending up with multiple warring parties sharing power. Also the argument can be made that plurality voting is easier to understand, especially when compared to range voting. That is part of why, despite its flaws, I suspect instant-runoff voting [wikipedia.org] is the most reasonable choice for a voting system.
Re:DRM when your life is at stake? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just finished listening to the latest econtalk podcast and they covered this very thing. The majority of the sunk cost in bringing a drug to market is in the clinical trials. You could get rid of patents on drugs by simply requiring any competing manufacturer who wanted to make the same drug to buy out the original drug company's clinical trials investment. Let's say the first company spent $800M on those trials. Somebody else wants to make the drug? No problem, pony up $400M and you now have two manufacturers. Subsequent companies also pay $400M but it gets split up among the prior license holders.
It's an ingenious way to spread the costs so drug innovation continues without patents.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
And the idea of any political party having that type of power should be giving you nightmares.
Re:I believe in free market capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
There was never a law saying to have to tell anyone how your stuff works.
No, but there is a law saying it's illegal for you to figure out how someone else's stuff works and another that stops you from creating something that works the same way.
Them having to tell you is irrelevant most of the time, because humans can (could) figure most things out... Until they started calling it "Reverse Engineering"...
GrpA
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
It wouldn't be perfect but I'd rather know if its something thats easily fixable or something I need a pro to do.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell can you blame a guy for running for president when it was the *millions* of other people who voted for the guy who was actually elected? Or are people not suppose to vote for the guy who they feel is the most qualified? When did casting a ballot equate to throwing away your vote if your guy doesn't get elected?
What kind of democracy do you expect to have, where any qualified candidate is required to sell their soul for the funding required from one of your two parties, who stand for nothing more than merely getting their own reelected? They've both been running to center trying to grind out the votes necessary to win without any concern for what principles or political values they're even suppose to stand for anymore. Isn't politics suppose to be the art of comprise rather than forcing down your tyranny of the majority as an entitlement program? Shouldn't be have politicians more focused on what is best for all of us, rather than those they are beholden to? Do you really enjoy run on sound bites and highlight reels rather than any meaningful political discourse?
I understand you're bitter. I'm pretty bitter too. But why derisively spit at anyone who wants to try and stand up and thinks they might be able to do a better job than the other guy. Or maybe just because they believe the other guy is wrong. Do you really find that the politicians getting elected actually represent you and your world view?
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
if there was a way for the data to be displayed on what stands to be an included (chances are #price rank of car#* 10%) display then even if its gibberish to a non mechanic then all i would take is a mechanic to see the display (maybe via cell phone pic) to advise the person from the "oh not serious come in when you are ready" to "STOP THE CAR RIGHT NOW IM SENDING YOU A TOW TRUCK" range.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, it's still Nader's fault, because despite the faults of the US voting system, Nader knew those faults, and knew exactly what he was doing. He thought that getting more funding for his party was worth 4 years of George Bush and as I recall he didn't even get enough votes to get the extra funding anyway so he shafted us, and everything he stood for for 8 years to prove a point.
That is utter bullshit. I didn't vote for Nader, but even I understand that the only reason Nader got votes is because he offered something the other parties didn't. Blaming Nader for being the best choice in some people's eyes is like saying that the only people who should be allowed to vote are those will vote for the status quo.
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
A two-party system theoretically forces moderate views and compromise instead of ending up with multiple warring parties sharing power.
Well, either that or you get two parties that are equally extreme but on opposite ends of the spectrum. Moderates then have to go with the party they find least distasteful at the moment.
The main advantage, in my humble opinion, of a two party system is government stability. The parties in a multi-party parliamentary system may better represent the views of their constituents. However, the large numbers of parties ensures that governments, when they are formed, consist of large, weak coalitions that are often unable to accomplish anything for fear of causing an allied party to go into opposition.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
in Socialist Europe, 60-70% taxation.
Here on the Left coast, we're already there...
California state income tax is ~10%, California sales tax is 9%, Federal income tax is 36%, SSI 6%, Medicare 2%, plus all the little add on stuff to the phone bill, electricity, vehicle license fee.
Except that my RSU stocks are taxed at 70% of value the day they are granted. So they are basically worthless... (RSUs are Registered Shares that high tech workers now get instead of options, thank the Carpenters Union)
A friend of mine lost his house over RSUs, he did not unload them when he received them. In the 2001 crash, they went from $70 to $13, and the tax bill was 70% of $70, so he had a tax bill of $49 on an asset worth $13. Multiply this by a few thousand RSUs.
The tax man was less than sympathetic.
Re:I believe in free market capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
I want the mechanic who knows what to do.
And currently, you get the mechanic hired by the franchise. If, say, the franchise owner is looking for spare cash and hires a guy whose total experience is earning a C+ in high school shop, then that's your tough luck.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is bad... how?
Re:DRM when your life is at stake? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why then would you want to risk $800M in the first place when you can let your competitor spend the $800M, pay them a paltry $400M for the one thing that succeeded and then split the much larger profit to be made? Extra points if your marketing department is much better and you take a much larger fraction of the resulting market.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Because he thought he'd make it big. He'd not be complaining if they went from $70 to $200. He took a gamble, and he lost. He was, or should have been, aware of the risks.
Honestly, neither am I. The stock market is not a zero risk endeavor.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
The Whigs and Tory parties have been around for about as long as the Parliamentary system. Even before that there were factional grouping that were analogous to parties.
I think the default state of a parliamentary system or any reasonably free group of humans is for factions to form around individuals. Later on those factions become bound by ideology and become parties. Actually even inside a political party there are always competing factions based around individuals. The winning individual gets to define the ideology to some extent so long as they are party leader. Actually that defining process is really a test whether they still are leader - most British Prime Ministers go because the rest of their party opposes on some ideological issue and unseats them. Arguably even the ones that lose elections have already lost the suppport of their own party.
So I'm not sure what you mean by "the British originally had no political parties". Even during the days of absolute monarchy there were competing factions at court. In fact there were regular uprisings where one faction would try to take over. Post Glorious Revolution the power of the monarchy was limited and the factions moved to Parliament. Formal parties formed soon after. Actual the Conservative party was very informal until quite recently - it was much more like a club or faction, 17th Century style. E.g. leaders 'emerged' rather than being elected until 1965 [wikipedia.org].
A free society is really a set of rules that everyone agrees to on how to decide which faction is in charge peacefully. Those factions would still exist in an unfree society, it's just that they would have to compete for power in a non peaceful way. Given the pressure of open competition factions will turn into parties with more formalised rules eventually. Though the Conservatives managed to do OK as an informal 'faction' for a hundred and thirty years.
Actually the LDP is Japan is an interesting example. It has been in power for most of the time since Japan was a democracy. Still it is highly factional and the policies of one LDP faction can be completely different from another. Back before it lost elections it was widely touted as an alternative model to a multi party system - essentially a single party which contained mutiple competing factions. Even now it's longevity is probably due to the fact that it is not really one party in the normal sense.
Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Premier said to Gorbachev that "in the short term we will democratize the [Chinese Communist]Party but in the long run a multi party system is inevitable". Of course he was deposed and imprisoned by more traditional types and Leninist party discipline was reimposed ruthlessly. Still it's easy to imagine that his model would work a bit like the LDP in Japan for a while until some factions turned themselves into alternative parties.
Actually the KMT in Taiwan used to be the only party but looks like it has managed to transition to being a Conservative style natural party of government in a democracy. Quite possibly if the CCP had followed Zhao's advice it would have been able to pull off the same trick.
Re:Prediction (Score:1, Insightful)
Every 3rd party candidate got more votes than the difference between Gore and Bush in Flordia, the real reason Bush became president is because Scalia voted him in.
Nader only spent 3 days in Flordia, he spent 30 days in New York. He was only working to maximize his vote, and its obvious that he was not ruining the election. Hes not a hypocrit.
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
Hear hear!
A government too weak to pass any laws but those that are blindingly, obviously necessary is my kind of government.
Anyone know where I can get one of those?
Re:I can access codes on my car without any tool. (Score:1, Insightful)
All BMW models I see on the road have at least one dipstick. Trust me on this.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really want politicians to sit there and debate about everything and not actually get anything done?
Yes.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
With elections seeming to get even closer, third parties have increasingly more importance.
Re:Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should it give you nightmares? Do you really want politicians to sit there and debate about everything and not actually get anything done?
Your reasoning is an example of a 'false dilemma'. Lawmakers and members of the executive branch should debate everything AND get things done.
'Getting things done' without the possibility of debate is dictatorship.
Too much info/BS. 100% pure BS. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prediction (Score:2, Insightful)
A friend of mine lost his house over RSUs, he did not unload them when he received them. In the 2001 crash, they went from $70 to $13, and the tax bill was 70% of $70, so he had a tax bill of $49 on an asset worth $13. Multiply this by a few thousand RSUs.
With a normal stock you can write this off as a loss by closing the position. Can you not do this with an RSU?
Under normal federal income tax rules, an employee receiving Restricted Stock Units is not taxed at the time of the grant. Instead, the employee is taxed at vesting (when the restrictions lapse) unless the employee chooses to defer receipt of the cash or shares. In these circumstances, the employee must pay statutory minimum taxes as determined by their employer at vesting, but payment of all other taxes can be deferred until the time of distribution, when the employee actually takes receipt of the shares or cash equivalent (depending on the company's plan rules). The amount of income subject to tax is the difference between the fair market value of the grant at the time of vesting or distribution, minus the amount paid for the grant (if any).
It seems that you can... And 70% seems like an awfully high statutory minimum! Yikes!
Re:Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I'm making the bold assumption that electing Al Gore is a different (and better) outcome than electing W. I think history has proven that we would have been better off if the President had been choosen entirely at random (or was a random "yes/no machine").
Anyone who frames an election in terms of a "democrat" vs. a "republican", and yet somehow denegrates the two-party system as limiting choices or thought among the voters, is ridiculously inconsistent.
That said, I do think that Nader voters thought "Heh, there's no difference between a generic democrat and a generic republican, so I shouldn't look at the individual people running." Those people are morons.
Nader voters who refused to vote for Al Gore hated the player, not the game.
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet he wouldn't be arguing that he'd owe tax on the entire $200 if they'd reached that price.
My point still stands - it's not a hidden fact that stocks received are income in the IRS's eyes. That he didn't set aside money for that deferred tax liability is not anyone else's fault. That he lost his house is horrible and extremely unfortunate (though that makes me raise an eyebrow - why wasn't the IRS willing to arrange a payment plan, as they are obligated to do?), but ultimately, blame lies in one place only.