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EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

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Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#91

Post by xg15 »

Three interesting tidbits from the Wikipedia article about the Librarian of Congress:

> There is no official term limit for the Librarian of Congress, but in the 20th century a precedent was established that Librarians of Congress are appointed for life.

> There is very little legislation for the Librarian of Congress or rules regarding who should be selected for the position. In 1989, Representative Major R Owens (D–NY) proposed a bill in Congress that would set stricter requirements for who may be appointed. (...) This bill did not pass.

> James H. Billington has served as Librarian of Congress since 1987, and announced plans to retire from that post in 2015.

This sounds to me as if the position hadn't really been designed for the amount of power that it has been given now by the DMCA. With a vacancy apparently right ahead, wouldn't that make it the next prime target for lobby efforts or corruption?

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#92

Post by StavrosK »

jnbiche wrote: post #86
StavrosK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I've never seen those before, and I own a diesel car. Are they worth it? What do the tweakers do that the entire Mercedes crew couldn't?

> What do the tweakers do that the entire Mercedes crew couldn't? Openly flout emissions standards.

Interesting, thanks.

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#93

Post by alkonaut »

xg15 wrote: post #89
robryk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can repair your car's mechanical brakes yourself now. If you disable them (accidentally or otherwise) and render the car unsafe, the results of that are your responsibility. Is there a reason why software modifications can't be handled the same way?

Well, the whole point of car inspections is that "your responsibility" is not enough. It's possible that you as the owner of a modded vehicle are perfectly fine with the risk of an accident, but the other potential participants of such an accident might not. I think the question has a point: Modified ECUs are different from modified brakes, because the modifications could likely not be found in an inspection - in fac…

The simple solution for safety I think is to just include the software checksum/signature in the approval documents for a car model.

At an interval check, the inspector does the usual sampling tests (brake effect, emissions, looks for rusty brake lines etc), and then validates that all critical computers (ECU's and other systems such as computers related to brakes etc) run software that match the signature of the manufacturer, and that it is the latest version of the sowftare. After a recall such as the VW case, the inspector could fail cars that haven't upgraded to the latest version (which would be required since the original one is known to be cheating on emissions).

This is a bit harsh compared to other modifications: an owner can put on a set of extra lights or cool wheels without necessarily failing an inspection, whereas even changing a single bit of the software would immediately fail it in this case.

I can't see any way around this though, apart from separating programs into critical (brakes, ECU) /non-critical (Media, nav,...) software, where only the critical software would be checked.

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#94

Post by versteegen »

shkkmo wrote: post #48
coldpie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system sucks, but it's the system we have, and it costs money to fight these battles. If you like the result here, consider setting up a recurring donation to the EFF.

My "recurring donation" is to buy every humblebundle and give everything to the EFF.

Also, when you buy a game on the Humble Store you can select which charity gets 10% of the purchase price. It gets set to some default, and it took me a long time to realise that you can change it. I have mine set to the EFF, but there are hundreds of options. The Humble Store is incidentally a great place to buy games.

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#95

Post by Natanael_L »

MichaelGG wrote: post #83
VonGuard wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I can answer questions on this if you'd like. I also clarified what's legal in a comment below.

Snarky, but, does "shut down" include when big launch games are overwhelmed or said systems suffer other availability events?

For legal purposes, I think it would apply when the official servers are shut down and there are reason to believe they will not be restarted.

For example if the company is out of business, or they announced they'll close it permanently, it got effectively abandoned and there's been a very long time without any official statement on if/when they'll bring it back up, etc...

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#96

Post by Natanael_L »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #66
TeMPOraL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that comes to my mind is that now it may make commercial sense for GOG to ask publishers for rights to sell games that require activation systems / servers that are no longer maintained.

But if you're selling it with the blessing of the owner, what was stopping you from asking "oh, we also need to patch the game so it will run - I assume you don't mind?" For GOG to sell a game at all already requires that they explicitly cut a deal with the game owner. Fixing the game to run on a modern computer is a trivial part of that deal (and something they already do with their whole inventory).

It could however mean that GOG doesn't need any terms for how to achieve it, allowing them to have patches created and updated for use on arbitary systems without asking for permission, once they already have permission for redistribution.

So if they got permission to sell a version that can run on Windows, then they could later on patch it to make it run on Linux and other systems as well.

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#97

Post by PeterisP »

jxcl wrote: post #44
VonGuard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually worked on this part of the exemption. It was granted in two parts. First, fans may now reverse engineer and host servers for games that are no longer hosted online. Metal Gear Solid 4 is a perfect example, but there are plenty of others. This is now legal, and considered fair use. MMO's are exempted, and defined as games where the world is persistent reguardless of number of players connected (IE, is the g…

> This does not mean these titles can be redistributed, only that they can be modified for the sake of preservation. But once the copyright expires on the disks, they may then be redistributed?

Theoretically yes, but I don't really expect to see copyright on any, even the oldest, software expiring during my lifetime.

Re: EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software

#100

Post by paulmlewis »

jnbiche wrote: post #86
StavrosK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I've never seen those before, and I own a diesel car. Are they worth it? What do the tweakers do that the entire Mercedes crew couldn't?

> What do the tweakers do that the entire Mercedes crew couldn't? Openly flout emissions standards.

I'm sure there's some irony in that sentiment ;-) Aside from the VW thing I think pretty much all diesels are above emissions standards in open road testing.
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