EU drops rule that would prevent self-driving car data from being copyrighted
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
Should probably be something like "EU states that telemetry data collected from self-driving cars may be subject to copyright protection".
Then the bigger discussion should probably be - 'What is telemetry data?'.
If telemetry data is _any_ data collected from a car that could be remotely accessed, then in theory I'd argue that digital oil sensor readings, digital odometer readings and digital tyre pressure readings are all telemetry data if they are stored in a place that can be remotely read.
If that's the case - it could lead to the situation where car manufacturers demand (by law) that you are only allowed to service your car with them and not be a mechanic of your choice.
That may start as a small inconvenience that luxury car owners may be able to afford but as those features come to lower end models it may hurt average or less well off consumers.
Further more, what happened to 'facts' not being copyrightable (generally speaking).
(I'm sure you are correct but it feels absurd)
Will software companies claim copyright on logs?
With self driving cars, and other devices (like apple electronics) the logs they keep give you really really good insight into what sensors, techniques, and algorithmic approaches they are taking to problems, and those directly expose proprietary information. I would argue that this information entirely belongs to those companies (with an agreement to send this data to their servers).
Also most AI and self driving companies use the data collected by their existing fleet to further improve AI systems in these vehicles. The competitive advantage of most of these companies is how much data, with what sensors they are able to collect. Making that information public will have a huge negative impact on the tech and AI industry, essentially pulling the carpet out from underneath everyone.
Sure, but do they claim copyright on that? Am I not allowed to paste a log online?
... and those directly expose proprietary information.
How would copyrighting that information make any difference? As long as competitors can get to your logs (which is orthogonal to whether they hold a copyright) the copyright doesn't stop them from gaining that understanding. They could even publicly disclose their understanding.
Just encrypt the logs. Then no one will get at them and even if they manage to the act of decrypting them is illegal in most places so they probably won't publish it. And even if they do that it will be from one car, not a whole fleet.
Maybe I just don't understand copyright.
This is doubly so when driving on private property or in sensitive areas that forbid photography.
I doubt that public telemetry would have a negative impact on the tech itself. Quite the contrary. Not necessarily true for the business case of course. And although there is a connection, it would boost the tech if there would be publicly available telemetry.
Yes, however "you're removing my competitive advantage" has always an enormously bad argument for (or against) legislation.
If you use the footage in any commercial manner, though, the MPEG LA [1] may want to have a word with you.
Second, you may still use that footage in any commercial manner, royality free. At worst, you need to transcode it into any open standard. The footage is always yours, only the encoding might be encumbered.
MPEG LA won't get copyright on my material. It's just that the format used is patent encumbered. I guess I could just transcode it to a different format and be safe?
Ignoring that however, you cannot be bound by a EULA that you receive _after_ signing a contract. If you receive the eula before or with a contract, it may be valid
In any event it doesn't apply here. Because noone can tell who pressed accept.
edit: Also, if you open a new account as an existing customer that's because you've agreed to the terms previously and identified yourself by logging in.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but this explanation seems weird to me. If I get someone to accept instead of me, can I then abuse the software legally and they can't even (legally) revoke the license? That is very weird. What about Netflix accounts, is my girlfriend not bound by the ToS when I was the one who clicked Agree, and thus she could legally rip their content and share it? Very weird.
Just because the EULA isn't legally binding doesn't mean that the company in question can't act upon it. But you have no legal obligation to follow the EULA (because you didn't sign it).
When it comes to a "physical" license that makes it a bit more tricky, I'm not sure of the details. But they certainly can revoke the online-aspect of a product (tesla will (I believe) revoke super-charger access and mobile-app access if they feel that you violated their terms).
If you cheat in a multiplayer game that will probably violate the EULA (but not any laws). If you are caught you will likely be banned.
> * What about Netflix accounts, is my girlfriend not bound by the ToS when I was the one who clicked Agree, and thus she could legally rip their content and share it? Very weird. *
You both could legally rip their content (as long as you don't break any laws doing so (and by ripping and circumventing their encryption you most likely would break a few laws)). If they detect it they can and probably will terminate your account (even if what you did was legal). But you didn't break any laws by not following the EULA.
IANAL.
(Though I'll admit that that annoying screen was at least a partial inspiration for my original comment.)
Anyway, all the screen says, in essence, is that Nissan is using the aggregate data blah, blah, and if you want to use the nifty history telemetry, well, you're going to have to let the car send those data. Or not; car works just fine if you press "decline".
Of course, this data is yours, same with the car.
[0]https://www.vda.de/dam/vda/Medien/EN/Themen/Innovation-und-T...
Longer-term, I wonder if that isn't what will ultimately happen anyway if the concept of car ownership sufficiently changes to be predominantly renting from a pool of vehicles, or a model where you "own" it, but lease it out to the pool.
Also, this case doesn’t (as of yet) declare that data is copyrightable; it just removes a clause that explicitly states it isn’t.
Much of this data is treated as a legitimate trade secret by the manufacturer and is generally deemed to be owned by the manufacturer for legal purposes, though they are sometimes required to share it with regulatory bodies. Automotive companies would strongly object to this data becoming public because it would adversely impact their ability to maintain a technological competitive advantage. That their engineering trade secrets are covered under GDPR makes it that much more awkward, but owning a copyright on this data at least gives them legal standing to enforce compliance. I've worked with major European automotive OEMs -- they would lose their minds if you told them this data is no longer theirs to control.
Any country with "democratic" or "people's" in the name is not democratically run and the people have pretty much no say in anything (Congo, DPRK, etc).
Any armed faction that references a religious figure or text in their name commits atrocities condemned by that religion (LRA, ISIS, etc).
Any state that calls itself "commonwealth" is run by a political elite that does a piss-poor job looking out for the interests of the commoners (maybe worth granting an exception for Kentucky, I've never been there and don't know many people from there so it might be alright).
The car dealership that has radio ads talking about what a great value they are is nothing of the sort.
A political party that prioritizes business over people calling itself the "people's whatever" seems pretty standard as far as naming conventions go.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to compare the People's Party to the North Korean regime, just pointing out that organisations can pick their own name, and that doesn't necessarily have to reflect what they are, or what they will become years after they have chosen the name.
E.g.: Amazon reviews, IMDb reviews and data, YouTube videos, etc. Most of this data belongs to our culture.
If the compiler vendors could have pulled this crap back in the 80s, the Internet as we know it would not exist.
Well, probably because their EULA says so. Hence my question: "can we have a rule".
My question was rhetorical - asking what is right, not what legal mechanisms are being abused to create the current state.
Isn't that mostly the case when we post about some (perceived) injustice on HN?
Take for instance the patent system. Every now and then people come up with ideas for what the system should really be like, but nobody ever provides any hints for actually getting these ideas implemented, and almost always the forces that keep the current system in place are totally ignored.
Talking generally about "what ought" seems distinct from powerlessness. At the very least it delegitimizes the current status quo, even if only in a subculture. For instance, all of the HN (and wider tech) discussion of the NSA has done nothing to actually get those criminals any closer to prison. But designers of new protocols start with a background of making them surveillance-resistant rather than surveillance-supporting.
I apologize for starting my original comment somewhat aggressively - I wanted to draw attention to your idea behind the phrasing, with constructive criticism addressing why (hopefully) yours was downvoted, but edited it to be (too) simpler.
Why would it be public domain?
Honest question, I'm not understanding how telemetry data is different than airborne laser scanner data, Streetview, map data, satellite pictures, etc.
Or even server logs generated by an iPhone for Apple, Tesla's car data logs, etc.
Not sure if that's the case but they do not have element of creativity. They just copy real world so why would they deserve any monopoly?
Shouldn't you?
PS: Not including the weird exceptions in the EU of monuments and such.
Somehow I have thought that monopolies are so generally accepted as harmful, that it would be the proponents of monopolies that have the burden of proof. Not the ones who oppose monopolies.
So instead of just assuming that copyrights are good for society, can you provide some evidence?
Other than that, just thing of photographers who spend their life working on photography. Copyright allows them to charge for their work, or for a software developer to charge for their work.
Removing copyright entirely means you can only monetize your work based on the marginal cost, the result is zero monetization for any type of work that has near-zero marginal cost, such as a book, movies, photography, etc.
Sure, you can argue that we should move to the fairyland dream scenario where everyone is beautifully funded by fans and so on. We've been there, it was how art in the Middle Ages worked.
Anyway, that is a separate discussion:
1) Given that copyright exists, should X be copyrightable?
2) Should copyright exist?
But copyright is likely moot anyway, as the cars will be imprisoned [0] with strong digital restrictions to siphon the data to manufacturers while preventing access by people.
[0] The complement of "jailbreak", right?
Think of it as Google Analytics. If you run a site and use Google Analytics on it, do you own the copyright of the data generated by it?
You can consider copyrightability of something produced by intelligent machine (human like), but that's a whole topic in itself and not even the case here.
A map is a dataset of facts. The MLB stats are a dataset of facts.
Copyright doesn't mean that you can't create a work that is similar based on the same facts, it just means that to do so you can't copy the original work.
You can create a new map of the streets, but you can't just do so by copying an existing map (with the exception of certain licenses and so on).
Copyright is supposed to protect creative works. There is such a thing as a threshold of originality. There are database rights, but that is separate from copyright.
Somehow the EU is always the bad actor, it doesn't matter which side it ends up favoring in some specific action.
Of which there are probably thousands, if not tens of thousands every year. But sure, the world ending always hinges on exactly the one action some commenter happened to dislike that day.
Copyright is intended for the protection of literary or artistic works, but it's been extended to cover recordings and performances. Those arguably have some artistic or creative properties, but I find it hard to argue that telemetry data has any real creative properties.
The truth is, you don't need copyright on telemetry data for machines you control and own, because that data never leaves your control.
It only matters for machines you don't both control and own. Who benefits from differentiating between ownership and control?
* Is the driver the author of this data? If yes, does the car company need to get a license to fetch this data or are they pirates? Is the driver permitted to exercises authorship rights like distribution? Why not?
* Or is the car's creator author? Then the driver had no influence on the creation of the data, so can't be responsible for anything: His actions had no consequences.
* Or are both parties co authors? Then you need agreement from every author before you can do anything. This causes both problems at the top at the same time.
This decision doesn't seem pro consumer.
Maybe automakers control EU and it's a way to secure their future cash cow.
Preferring a car with more freedomey™ qualities because you don't want to be tracked, analyzed and want to increase the security of your car (as in, to be managed only by yourself) hardly qualifies as being a luddite.
If you don't actually own the thing, then it's harder to claim the data is yours.