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Originally Posted by Luckrider
I see nothing relating to ECUs in the latest version of the law as seen here: https://www.eff.org/document/final-rule-2012
One thing to realize is that the DMCA laws apply to the regulation of end user license agreements, and right now, I have never seen one for an ECU from any manufacturer which means vehicles are excluded simply because the manufacturers have not included them. It sound like the EFF is pushing for protective legislation in advance of manufacturer intrusion. |
DMCA is just one amendment in a much larger corpus of copyright law.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luckrider
As for your points.
1. Without a copyright being claimed by manufactures, the distribution of a ROM would be legally gray. In the US, a copyright must be registered in order to be eligible for statutory damages. Source |
This is not remotely a gray area. It is flat out illegal distribution without permission.
Statutory damage eligibility is a separate matter, and it's not the only type of damage you can claim. Even when not registered, automatic copyright still affords actual damages -- basically taking your loss and the defendant's gain into account. It's tricky and a lot more work to calculate actual damages, and it'd be hard to find such damage by end users, but companies like OpenFlash and Ecutek who are actively distributing derivative works and directly or indirectly profiting from that could have a problem.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luckrider
2. Copyright doesn't allow for the circumvention of security measures. There is nothing illegal about changing software on a device that doesn't provide such a mechanism. As of right now, our ROMs are not encrypted. They are stored as hex values on the ECU and "cracking" an ECU really refers to translating it. This is not illegal for personal use.
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This point being true or not is the entire question EFF is raising. I have a better understanding of copyright law than most and I've always thought it was iffy, so I'm happy to see someone else questioning it as well.
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Originally Posted by Luckrider
The final point on this subject, if manufacturers prevent modification in this sort of way, they would be killing a large support for their enthusiast portion of their customer base which would turn those people to other brands. Even if that didn't deter people from certain brands, aftermarket ECUs would become a much more popular option for people.
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Unfortunately large industries aren't always known to do what's in their best interests in these situations. We can only hope.