‘Your’ Car?
The government wants to control your car – how it’s made, what it comes equipped with and (of course) how you’re allowed to drive it. Now comes the other half of the pincers:
The car companies want to prevent you from working on the thing.
Modifications – performance enhancements – and even routine maintenance are to become illegal via the application (and enforcement) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to cars.
They are claiming propriety rights to the software embedded in the computer – technically, the Electronic Control Unit or ECU – that pretty much runs a modern car. They claim – and you knew this was coming, right? – thatsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety is threatened by people doing their own maintenance or tweaking/tuning as such might affect how the varioussaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety systems embedded in the car and controlled by the ECU operate.
A blind stroke victim ought to have seen this coming.
Cars, claim the car companies, are mobile computing devices – you know, like sail fawns – and so fall under the aegis of the DMCA. Have a read:
“Automobiles are inherently mobile, and increasingly they contain equipment that would commonly be considered computing devices… Many of the ECUs embodied in today’s motor vehicles are carefully calibrated to satisfy federal or state regulatory requirements with respect to emissions control, fuel economy, or vehicle safety. Allowing vehicle owners to add and remove programs at whim is highly likely to take vehicles out of compliance with these requirements, rendering the operation or re-sale of the vehicle legally problematic. The decision to employ access controls to hinder unauthorized “tinkering” with these vital computer programs is necessary in order to protect the safety and security of drivers and passengers and to reduce the level of non-compliance with regulatory standards. We urge the Copyright Office to give full consideration to the impacts on critical national energy and environmental goals, as well as motor vehicle safety, in its decision on this proposed exemption. Since the record on this proposal contains no evidence regarding its applicability to or impact on motor vehicles, cars and trucks should be specifically excluded from any exemption that is recommended in this area.”
This statement (see here for the full text) was issued by the Auto Alliance – the great collective that speak for every major car company doing business in the United States, including Ford, GM, Mazda, Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota, VW/Audi, Mitsubishi, Mercedes, BMW and Volvo, et al.
Note carefully the way that government edicts relating to saaaaaaaaaaaaafety (and emission and fuel efficiency) are now being turned outward, against the car owner. Heretofore, these mandates directly affected the car companies, who were forced to add, as an example, a (cue El Guapo) plethora of air bags to new vehicles, or direct injection and auto-stop/start (more recently) to eke out a fractional gain in MPGs in order to appease the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) fatwa.
But now, the wheel turns – and what’s been good for the goose (the industry) is going to be good for the gander (us), too. It’s a kind of vengeful lashing out, on the one hand. The industry – sick, probably, of taking these endless demands on the chin – with most consumers being engineering illiterates and just expecting cars to become ever saaaaaaaaaaaafer, ever more fuel efficient, by decree.
Just – cue Captain Picard – make it so.
Well, no.
It takes a lot of brain sweat to figure out how to – for example – maintain the capability to get to 60 MPH in less than 10 seconds while also averaging 35.5 MPG (next year’s CAFE fatwa). Let alone 50 MPG (the proposed CAFE fatwa for 2020). Let’s make the consumers feel our pain, they reasoned. Perhaps they will begin to ask questions and come to understand that there truly ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
More likely, though, is that the perfect vehicle for exercising complete control over “our” (air quotes) cars was conceived – and is now in the process of being born. It is genius, really. You have to admire it.
First, establish the principle in law that the government’s job is to be your parent – to protect you from yourself. From theoretical risk, as defined by government. You might wreck your car. If you do, an air bag might save your life (it might also gouge out one of your eyes, but that’s a mere incidental). Ergo, government has the right to require that you buy a car equipped with an air bag.
Because the government is your Mommy.
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