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

Jeff Perez
April 22, 2015


One of the inherent rights of owning a vehicle is the ability to get on one’s backside — a wrench in one hand and a grease rag in the other, and just tinker to your little heart’s desire. Since the vehicle was invented, it’s been an important facet within the community of gearheads.

General Motors — the same company responsible for 87 deaths related to faulty ignition switches, FYI — wants to take that right away from you citing safety and security issues. Along with a few other big names.

It’s called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It’s been around since 2000 and started as anti-Internet piracy legislation. But automakers want to use it to try and make working on your own car illegal. Yes, illegal. The general premise is that unlike cars of the past, today’s vehicles are so advanced and use such a large amount of software and coding in their general makeup, altering said code could be dangerous and possibly even malicious.

Listing the vehicle as a “mobile computing device,” the law would hypothetically protect automakers from pesky owners looking to alter any sort of technology in the vehicle that relates to the onboard computer. Flashing your ECU would be a big no no, which could also lead to all sorts of problems for aftermarket shops.

What GM, and even tractor companies like John Deere, argues is that you, as an owner, don’t actually own your car. Rather, you’re sort of just borrowing it for an extended amount of time and paying for the rights to use the technology. If it sounds ridiculous— it is. But it gets even more ludicrous.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Deere argued that “letting people modify car computer systems will result in them pirating music through the on-board entertainment system.”

That’s right— pirating music. Through a tractor.

DMCA does give a little bit of leeway, though. While the act could hypothetically lock customers out of key safety features, it would still allow owners the ability to repair other areas of the vehicle’s onboard computer as they see fit. It’s a slim compromise, but one that may be more closely based in reality.

As it currently sits, there are 13 (!) large automakers on the list supporting the DMCA. Want to know who they are? Of course you do:

General Motors Company
BMW Group
FCA US LLC
Ford Motor Company
Jaguar Land Rover
Mazda
Mercedes-Benz USA
Mitsubishi Motors
Porsche
Toyota
Volkswagen Group of America
Volvo Cars North America

Ironically, one of the brands that relies most on technology in its vehicles — Tesla Motors — in not in support of DMCA. While other American companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler all agree that working on your own vehicle should be punishable by law.

Funny how three brands that pride themselves on American ingenuity don’t want customers to work on their cars.

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

 

This article should begin with the words, "As quiet as it's kept". Another under the table movement for total control.

Face it, most automotive corporations are in bed with the government now, and reliant upon them. This is merely code for government controlled and manipulated. They are fast becoming nationalized and internationalized as we swiftly are being herded toward total, global socialism.

If or when this bill passes, it will be as a silent rider and not evident to us on some other main bill. When the time comes, they will slide it right by, right under our noses without us knowing it. George Orwell was a little hasty in his visions of impending total control of our lives (and deaths) with his book '1984'. But it is here now as we have snowballed into a near totally plebeian society, soon to be globally so.

Our tenure as America, as it was meant to be, is now gone. As I have said before............If you cannot see what is going on, you either aren't paying attention or you are the proverbial ostrich, by refusing to acknowledge what you see for some other more immediate and self serving sake.