Mercedes, BMW Cars Have DLC Now

kotaku.com

7 points·WaitWaitWha··4 comments

All the way back in 1998, when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was being rammed through, we warned the world that this would be the result -- that the law which prohibits circumvention of "access control technology" in things you own would ultimately mean that you no longer actually owned the devices you purchased.

We were derided and mocked and accused of being hysterical, of using the "slippery slope" fallacy.

Whelp, that slope was pretty damn slippery after all, wasn't it.

The thing is though, at least in the US and Canada, the law explicitly says you can swap out parts in your car with third party parts, and auto makers are not allowed to void your warranty.

A heated seat is really just a coil in the seat you feed voltage through, and it gets hot. So if you find the input to that coil, and find a 12V rail or run a line from the battery, you can install a little rocker switch to power the heated seat, and there’s nothing the manufacturer can do to stop you.

This would all work today, though if it became a trend, manufacturers could start adding vehicle integrity checks into the power-on sequence that would refuse to start if modifications are detected -- and if they had the first-party components use cryptographic signatures to authorize themselves, DMCA would then step in and make circumvention probably criminal again.

This really goes to heart of what it means to actually OWN something. Can it still be called ownership if a few years down the road cars come with a paid subscription and not paying for that subscription stops the car from functioning altogether? That would be more like leasing or renting, rather than owning.

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