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Comment by _nullandnull_ | Hacker News Reader

That is pretty shady of Ford. They were one of the few American car companies I kind of respected. Not anymore.

> Autel violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by writing a program to defeat the "encryption technology and obfuscation" that Ford used to make the file difficult to read.

This sounds a lot like Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

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It is like Sega v. Accolade, in the sense that it’s clear abuse of IP law to limit competition. But there are two major differences: Although there were accusations of unauthorized copying in Sega v. Accolade, the major issue was that Sega forced the console to display their trademark upon successfully loading a game, and then claimed that Accolade was committing trademark infringement by making a game that could successfully boot. Additionally, the DMCA didn’t exist back then, so violating copy protection wasn’t actually against the law on its own.

There have actually been several copyright cases with good results (Sega v. Accolade, Galoob v. Nintendo, Sony v. Bleem, Sony v. Connectix, Lexmark v. Static Control), but so many cases that have ended in a negative result (Blizzard v. Jung, Universal v. Reimerdes, Macrovision v. Sima) did so largely due to the DMCA. This is why, although I hope Ford loses this case, I hope even more for active effort to fix the DMCA through Congress, not the judiciary.

Thank you for the response. I have not heard of some of those cases. I'm looking forward to reading up on those.

Same here - I just purchased my first brand-new car from a dealership, and never thought it'd be a Ford. I've really come to respect them in the last year and they have actually become a close second in my top list under Tesla...

But this really hurts. I hope they realize how bad this looks in modern times.

Yes, Henry Ford also was one of the big business man in history, that realized that also his well-being was depending of the well-being of his workers. But since that time, the shareholder value has taken over the government.

(Edit: Tried to correct my bad English, sorry!)

that realized that also his well-being was depending of the well-being of his workers

Ford was incredibly nosy into workers' lives. If you wanted the infamous "five dollars a day," you had to let management make sure you were living decently at home, including the wife staying at home if she had a husband.

But since this time, the shareholder value has taken over the government.

I'm not quite sure, but I think this is saying that Ford got taken over by the government following bankruptcy. But Ford (unlike GM and Chrysler) did not go bankrupt.

In this case "the government" refers to the upper management of Ford, or at least that's how I read your parents post.

To reword:

> But since this time, the shareholder value has taken over the government.

But since that time, Ford management only cares about maximizing shareholder value.

> If you wanted the infamous "five dollars a day," you had to let management make sure you were living decently at home, including the wife staying at home if she had a husband.

This is something I'd happily put up with if I could find this mythical job that pays well enough to support a family on a single income.

The median income for an individual with a Bachelor's Degree was around $49,000 per year (2003 census data). That's enough to support a family -- maybe not in your favorite high-cost-of-living city, and maybe not with a lot of expensive hobbies, but it's perfectly doable.

> Ford was incredibly nosy into workers' lives.

Not sure about Ford, but it's the same thing with Tomas Bata, famous Czech shoemaking enterpreneur and contemporary of Ford. He is also still lauded as a progressive by some, and he was for his era (he built homes for his workers, paid them well, etc.); however, judging from the today's moral standards, we would consider him very elitist and also nosy. For instance, he put part of employee's savings into his own bank.

I interpreted that as corporate governance, not US government.

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Maybe "Zeitgeist" would be a reasonable fit?

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