GM, Ford, And Others Want to Make Working on Your Own Car Illegal

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Ooooh. It worried me (a tad) how quickly you came up with that picture...

Lord Vader, your tee time is available...

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Lord Vader, your golf cart is here....

I think one in midnight blue would be nice. With a gun mount...er, a baggage rack that you can mount things on.

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I think one in midnight blue would be nice. With a gun mount...er, a baggage rack that you can mount things on.

Mental note: avoid American golf courses.

[murg]

Originally Posted by ApK

Don't worry...it's one of the first things to come up in a google image search of "bad ass golf cart." He's probably not the Mad Max of the PGA.

Ha! Ha! Made you look!

[murg]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I think one in midnight blue would be nice. With a gun mount...er, a baggage rack that you can mount things on.

You mean sorta like this...

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I think one in midnight blue would be nice. With a gun mount...er, a baggage rack that you can mount things on.

When you have the Force, guns are trivial...

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by murg

You mean sorta like this...

Not to scare anyone, but my neighbor owns one like that in green. Every time we see him driving it down the street we wonder, "what does he need that for?"

No, we aren't planning on asking him.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

When you have the Force, guns are trivial...

Speaking of the Dark Lord of the Sith on the links, this is absolutely worth 30 second of your time:

[Greg Anos]

See, he need a cart like that to relax between holes...

[Rbneader]

Originally Posted by gmw

...
I still say the DMCA is the wrong battleground. Leave copyright out of it. This is a public safety issue, not a copyright one. Legislation needs to address the real issue - maybe it already does.

Exactly. But the car companies are dragging the DMCA into it, precisely because it gives them an unprecedented amount of control over other people's property. That's the problem.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Rbneader

Exactly. But the car companies are dragging the DMCA into it, precisely because it gives them an unprecedented amount of control over other people's property. That's the problem.

That's a rather distorted way of phrasing it. Yes, they will undoubtedly try to take advantage of anything that will lock a buyer into using their service and parts but - as others have pointed out - there is nothing new in that. However, a car continues to be a device made up of replaceable parts (much more so than modern electronic devices like ereaders etc.). As such, it may be viable to use the DMCA to argue about what you can do to the internals of a particular part, it cannot be used to argue about replacing that part with some third-party equivalent. So the hazards they are talking about still remain and must be addressed.

And, aside from all that, the old capitalist mantra still remains: competition. If one manufacturer (be it of whole cars or just replacement parts) can be convinced to let buyers play with their components (at least to some extent) then all manufacturers face losing out to that competition unless they offer the same. Are there enough petrol-heads to support such competition? - from what I've seen, I'd say yes.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by gmw

That's a rather distorted way of phrasing it. Yes, they will undoubtedly try to take advantage of anything that will lock a buyer into using their service and parts but - as others have pointed out - there is nothing new in that. However, a car continues to be a device made up of replaceable parts (much more so than modern electronic devices like ereaders etc.). As such, it may be viable to use the DMCA to argue about what you can do to the internals of a particular part, it cannot be used to argue about replacing that part with some third-party equivalent. So the hazards they are talking about still remain and must be addressed.

And, aside from all that, the old capitalist mantra still remains: competition. If one manufacturer (be it of whole cars or just replacement parts) can be convinced to let buyers play with their components (at least to some extent) then all manufacturers face losing out to that competition unless they offer the same. Are there enough petrol-heads to support such competition? - from what I've seen, I'd say yes.

Except that if there are other computers that require encrypted information in the propritary part being replaced, you can't just plug in another third party part...

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Except that if there are other computers that require encrypted information in the propritary part being replaced, you can't just plug in another third party part...

That will play a part in the game (and I can see this becoming a game between manufacturers of cars and manufacturers of replacement parts), but secure encryption in this sort of situation is not easy - not when there's a world full of people that enjoy a challenge.

However this is where cromag's earlier example of manufacturers trying the same thing back before the software aspect comes into it. (You know, the post that some others scoffed at as irrelevant.) There are other issues that will come into play here, about anti-competitive practices and so on, that manufacturers will face if they try to take this too far.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by gmw

That will play a part in the game (and I can see this becoming a game between manufacturers of cars and manufacturers of replacement parts), but secure encryption in this sort of situation is not easy - not when there's a world full of people that enjoy a challenge.

However this is where cromag's earlier example of manufacturers trying the same thing back before the software aspect comes into it. (You know, the post that some others scoffed at as irrelevant.) There are other issues that will come into play here, about anti-competitive practices and so on, that manufacturers will face if they try to take this too far.

There is no anti-competitive aspect of copyright, it is a granted monopoly...

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

There is no anti-competitive aspect of copyright, it is a granted monopoly...

I thought that's the whole point of the argument:
Copyright is a limited-time granted monopoly on intellectual property, and here automakers are trying to extend the blanket of that monopoly onto auto parts, mechanical services, and other things it was never intended to cover. i.e, use it anti-competitively.