Denuvo Is Still Claiming It's In The Anti-Piracy Business Even As Games Continue To Strip Out Denuvo Post-Launch

from the useless dept

For a three year period or so, we had a ton of coverage on Denuvo, a DRM platform once touted as undefeatable. That era of invincibility soon crumbled completely, with cracking groups eventually figuring out how to get around the DRM. Cracking times on games went from months, to weeks, to days, to essentially games being cracked at launch. Games started patching Denuvo out of games, which is roughly the equivalent of admitting defeat. In response, Denuvo began claiming that it's platform was still a success because it could protect some games for some number of hours at the time of launch and the company apparently believed that really should be good enough. The company also announced a pivot to providing anti-cheat software for online games, though publishers began ripping that out of their games at record speed as well.

So, where are we now? Well, the new status quo appears to be this: Denuvo still advertises both its anti-piracy and anti-cheat platforms as successes while games that use the software are still having them peeled out via patches. Notably, Denuvo's marketing material now reflects the emphasis on the initial release window, where Denvuo claims its platform can protect a game for 14 days after launch, during which publishers earn "59% of their revenue from their new title."

As with all things Denuvo, this claim should be taken with enormous grains of salt for a variety of reasons. First, that revenue claim seems spurious, given how many games make revenue in how many different ways. Online games make their revenue on an ongoing basis, while single-player only games may make the largest chunk at release. But many single-player games make lots of money on an ongoing basis by embracing their modding community, updating games to keep them relevant to new buyers, releasing DLC, etc. It's also worth noting that Denuvo has failed spectacularly to protect many, many titles for anything close to 14 days.

But most important to note is that this represents the continued moving of the goalposts by Denuvo. The platform was once touted as "the end of gaming piracy." Now the focus is on 14 days of protection. Why? Well, the answer is that games long in existence are still patching Denuvo out.

When Monster Hunter: World launched on Steam in 2018 it came with a DRM system to deter pirates by requiring online activation to launch the game. This is often a source of ire for players because of a perception that it causes higher CPU usage and more frequent utilisation of storage devices that could affect gameplay or damages hardware. Denuvo has denied these claims.

Monster Hunter: World’s latest patch has removed around 500MB of files from the game, and the steam page no longer states that MH:W has some form of DRM.

That post, in addition to noting Denuvo's denial that the DRM has literally any performance impact on a gamer's machine, also goes on to claim that "it is not uncommon for companies to remove the DRM in a patch once it is no longer necessary."

That may be true for Denuvo's anti-piracy platform specifically, but it certainly is not the case for how DRM has been handled generally throughout gaming's history. In addition, think about what is being said in that claim. A DRM that has at least some utility and no performance impact on gaming machines is stripped by publishers like that of Monster Hunter: World because... why? Just because of public perception on gaming performance? A perception that exists at launch? Why, after a couple of years of the game being sold, would the publisher now even bother to strip out the DRM if it has no actual negative downside?

Well, there are three possible answers. One is that the game publisher knows that, in fact, Denuvo does have an effect on the game's performance on a buyer's machine. Another is that the game publisher realizes that the DRM does not in fact have any actual utility. The third option is that the game publisher concludes that both are the case.

Either way, a successful product doesn't get stripped out of games through patching. Unsuccessful products do that. No matter what Denuvo wants to claim for itself in its marketing material.

Filed Under: denuvo, drm, video games
Companies: denuvo

Bipartisan FTC Study Confirms Everything 'Right to Repair' Advocates Have Been Saying For Years

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

For years, "right to repair" advocates have been warning about the problems with efforts to monopolize repair. Whether it's Apple's efforts to bully small repair shops, Sony and Microsoft's efforts to monopolize repair of game consoles, or John Deere's implementation of DRM and repair restrictions so onerous customers have to drive a thousand miles and pay a small fortune to repair their own tractors, the impact is rather obvious. And the impact has only been more pronounced during Covid, as hospitals complain about the difficulty in obtaining the documentation and parts necessary to repair ventilators in a timely fashion.

There's of course numerous other problems with making it harder to promptly and inexpensively repair products consumers and companies own, including the environmental impact and waste. Pushed by Congress two years ago to issue a report on the growing problem with repair monopolies, the FTC released a new bipartisan study this week that effectively confirms what "right to repair" reformers have been arguing for years, namely that such onerous and self-serving restrictions harm consumers, innovation, and the planet itself.

Like so many other monopolization issues (broadband comes quickly to mind), the FTC study found that these restrictions often unfairly impact marginalized communities where money is already tight:

"The burden of repair restrictions may fall more heavily on communities of color and lower-income communities,” the FTC found. “Many Black-owned small businesses are in the repair and maintenance industries, and difficulties facing small businesses can disproportionately affect small businesses owned by people of color."

Annoyance at this problem has driven bipartisan calls for new right to repair legislation in more than dozen states, as well as a new federal right to repair law. Worried that this could impact revenues, companies have been doing their best to try and smear these reform efforts as some kind of dangerous, leftist cabal, an extreme risk to user privacy and security, a boon to dangerous hackers, or even a massive gift to sexual predators. None of of these things are remotely true, but so far they've been fairly effective at stalling legislative progress in numerous states among legislators who don't understand the subject.

The FTC's report dug through many of these claims, and found that the majority of them simply don't hold water:

"Although manufacturers have offered numerous explanations for their repair restrictions, the majority are not supported by the record,” the FTC said. The agency also noted that industry efforts at self-regulation had fallen well short of solving the problem."

The report also digs through the litany of ways companies try to monopolize repair, whether it's through obnoxious DRM, specific adhesives companies know can't be removed, aggressive tactics on copyright, legal attacks on small third party repair shops, or onerous restrictions on gaining access to documentation and parts. In addition to recommending better stronger state and federal laws, the FTC makes it clear the government could do a lot better job enforcing existing warranty laws, as well as the whole "unfair and deception" aspect of the FTC Act.

While right to repair advocates welcomed the FTC report as confirmation of what they've been saying all along, they were quick to note that acknowledging the problem--and taking substantive steps to fix it--are very different things.

Filed Under: drm, ftc, innovation, ownership, right to repair

Captive Markets Are Just Hostages; Or Why Your McDonalds Never Seems To Have A Functioning Shake Machine

from the it-would-be-a-shame-if-your-machine-didn't-work...-oh-wait dept

McDonald's shake/ice cream machines are notoriously flaky. The most common response to requests for ice cream are sullen statements that the machine is down. It's so much a part of popular culture, an enterprising individual crafted a bot that lets people know which machines are up and which machines are going to be a waste of their time.

To be sure, the shake/ice cream device used in almost every McDonalds is a complicated piece of machinery. Not only does it need to provide two different kinds of ice cream-related products from the same machine, but it must do it while operated by employees whose fast food careers can be measured in days, if not hours.

But there's got to be a better way. And there probably is. But the company that makes the machines -- Taylor Restaurant Equipment -- doesn't want there to be a better way. It wants it to be Taylor's way... or no way at all.

A captured market is always a great thing... for product makers. As long as you don't care about end users -- whether they're people seeking ice cream or people wondering why they can't use their scanner because they're out of cyan ink -- you can corner a market and let the endless revenue streams wash over you.

A lot of companies have discovered this one simple trick: the best captive audience is one you hold hostage. That's how Taylor runs its ice cream machine business. It has hooked up with major players in the fast food industry and has limited franchisees' ability to handle any issues with their equipment on their own.

When the shake machine is down, no one onsite can fix it. That goes beyond planned obsolescence to planned incapacity. Wired has a fascinating article that touches on how Taylor has muscled everyone else out of the market by making its machines solely beholden to Taylor techs. (Please go read it. It is worth every minute of your time.) This means every franchisee must sign a lengthy service agreement if they expect to provide this product to customers on a far-from-regular basis.

Some enterprising hackers found out how to bypass the built-in problems Taylor inserts into every machine it sells. There's a code that allows access to the inner workings of the machine -- one that can also help translate its cryptic error messages. If franchisees had this information, they could do their own troubleshooting and repairs, rather than paying Taylor techs exorbitant amounts to, I don't know, press the reset button to allow the resumption of service.

So two years ago, after their own strange and painful travails with Taylor’s devices, 34-year-old O’Sullivan and his partner, 33-year-old Melissa Nelson, began selling a gadget about the size of a small paperback book, which they call Kytch. Install it inside your Taylor ice cream machine and connect it to your Wi-Fi, and it essentially hacks your hostile dairy extrusion appliance and offers access to its forbidden secrets. Kytch acts as a surveillance bug inside the machine, intercepting and eavesdropping on communications between its components and sending them to a far friendlier user interface than the one Taylor intended. The device not only displays all of the machine’s hidden internal data but logs it over time and even suggests troubleshooting solutions, all via the web or an app.

Franchise owners loved it. McDonalds was somewhat ambivalent... at least at first. Taylor hated it. It gave franchisees easily understandable information on their $18,000 machines, allowing them to head off problems and take care of issues that rose frequently, like inattention to detail when cleaning the machine or -- as in one case cited in Wired's report -- an overly enthusiastic employee loading up the machine with too much mix.

Taylor considers literally any information extracted from its machines to be proprietary. It spent months trying (without avail) to obtain a Kytch of its own to, presumably, reverse engineer or sue into nonexistence. One McDonalds exec apparently saw the value of the product, though, and gave it some free advertising during a franchisee conference.

But in the end, Taylor won. It used its leverage to hold McDonalds hostage, which resulted in every franchisee feeling the cold steel of Taylor's shake gun pressed to its head. It told franchisees use of the device would void the warranty. Then it made a device of its own to cut Kytch out of the market.

The very next day, McDonald’s sent another note to franchisees announcing a new machine called Taylor Shake Sundae Connectivity that would essentially duplicate many of Kytch’s features. The note ended with a repeat of its boldfaced warning not to use Kytch.

As McDonald’s restaurant owners canceled hundreds of subscriptions, trials, and commitments to install Kytch over the next months, the startup’s sales projections evaporated. Finding new customers became impossible. Their sole, flabbergasted salesperson quit.

Who needs to break knees when you can just instantly void franchise agreements? And who needs Stockholm Syndrome when the only other approved option for McDonalds franchisees is made in Italy and can cost thousands of dollars more?

But franchisees buy the machine. They own it. But they're unable to do anything with their purchase unless Taylor says it's ok. And right-to-repair laws won't change much -- not when McDonald's can literally end the lease on the property the restaurant is sitting on.

The fix is in. And actual fixes are expensive, thanks to only-game-in-town pricing that benefits Taylor and leaves customers wondering when the shake machine will be back up. If there's one thing to take away from this (beyond the borderline extortion masquerading as a business model), it's this: if the machine is down, don't yell at the employees. They can't do anything about it. And neither can the owner, most likely. Send your complaints to Taylor Restaurant Equipment, which is almost solely responsible for the inconvenience.

Filed Under: competition, drm, fast food, hacking, ice cream, kytch, shake machines
Companies: mcdonald's, taylor restaurant equipment

Game Publishers: If Your DRM, Anti-Cheat Software Does Creepy Installs, Warn Your Customers First

from the creepware dept

Any cursory review of our stories involving DRM will leave a sane reader with only one impression: the spectrum of customer viewpoints on video game DRM ranges from total and complete disgust and hatred to tolerance of DRM as an annoyance. In other words, there is no positive side of this spectrum. There are no gamers that are pro-DRM, only those that put up with it. On the flip side, there are many folks who not only hate DRM in video games, but also many who are quite wary of what that DRM is and is doing on or to their machines. There are historical reasons for this, from DRM support falling off and bricking previously bought games to DRM practices that appear to install shady shit on gamers' PCs.

In these modern times, it would be absurd to suggest that the general public has mostly graduated to a new level of technical proficiency... but I think we can also say that the average gamer is probably more aware of how these games operate and install on their machines than they have been in the past. Which is probably why, in 2021, it was a really bad idea for one game publisher to use anti-piracy measures that install what sure looks like unknown, shady software on customer machines.

Fans of the RPG Another Eden—out this month on PC—this week discovered that, alongside installing the game itself, copies of the game obtained on Steam were also installing something called ‘wfsdrv’ which seemingly had nothing to do with the game.

Initially believed to be some kind of driver, then suggested as something more sinister, fans scrambled to try to discover just what was nestling itself into their system32 folders, and could have been...literally anything.

Finding a game randomly installing something unexpected obviously throws up all kinds of red flags. Then, when you go looking for any information on this mysterious software and come up with nothing, it's likely to send your concern into overdrive. People on Steam and social media went nuts trying to figure out what this software is and why it was being installed on their machines.

As you've probably already guessed, it turns out it's a DRM/anti-cheat software. Another Eden developers eventually jumped into the Steam forums to try to calm everyone down.

We have been recently made aware about concerns users are having with the “wfsdrv” program that is installed along with the Steam version of Another Eden.

We take information privacy seriously at WFS and would like to alleviate any fears our users might have about the security of the recently released Steam version of Another Eden. The program in wfsdrv is an anti-cheat kernel driver, and is installed to protect the integrity of the Another Eden experience so that all players are able to operate in a fair play-environment.

This just isn't good enough. We'll leave aside for a moment that DRM and anti-cheat software is largely trash. Instead, it seems like a decent proposition that in 2021 you should give your customers a heads-up if you're going to be installing stuff on their machines that doesn't appear to be part of the game they bought. Something on the Steam page, or in the release notes. Maybe an FAQ that names the software by name so that anyone searching for information on it can see it.

Anything other than simply dropping it onto customer PCs without telling anyone and then trying to manage the fallout afterwards. Or, hey, maybe don't use this software that probably doesn't work anyway.

Filed Under: another eden, anti-cheat, drm, wfsdrv
Companies: wfs

Activision Forces Online Check DRM Into New Game, Which Gets Cracked In One Day

from the totally-worth-it dept

By now it should be clear that DRM is essentially an arms race that will never be won by producers and publishers of content. While the fall of even the most vaunted DRM platforms has shown how useless those platforms are, the more consequential outcomes of DRM tend to be the way it bricks the products people bought or else limits the use of those products once the DRM is no longer supported. In sum total, it's very clear that DRM is very much anti-consumer, while failing completely at being anti-pirate.

It's a lesson that some in the video game industry insist on re-learning over and over again. Activision recently re-released Crash Bandicoot 4 for the new generation of consoles... and a long-awaited debut on PC. Despite the game having no online gaming components in it, Activision decided to put an online DRM requirement in the game, forcing it to check in with the Battle.net app for it to work. To be clear, there was no reason to include the DRM beyond it being a piracy check. And to be equally clear, even that reason was silly. Why? Well...

By midday Saturday, one day after the game's Battle.net launch, cracking-group Empress claimed first dibs on stripping Crash 4's PC version of its online check-in system. Their crack replaces one file in an otherwise vanilla install, and the group's release notes don't clarify what the crack does, other than describing the game's defeated DRM as "Battle.net + online only." (We thus believe this isn't a case of someone defeating Denuvo, even though a joke in Empress' release notes mocks the much-maligned DRM provider.)

As of press time, Crash 4 has zero online content, in spite of a couch co-op mode (designed to let a parent and child take turns with the single-player campaign) and a simple four-player versus mode dubbed Bandicoot Battle. Thus, the Battle.net handshake appears to revolve entirely around DRM, as opposed to checking for add-on content like new levels or even score leaderboards.

It's all so pointless. I have no idea how much time and effort it took for Activision to build this online-check into the PC release of the game. And it really doesn't matter, because literally every second of time and energy spent on it was completely wasted. The game was cracked in a day. Previous PC releases of Activision titles didn't include this DRM, though some will like to argue that any title released on Steam technically has DRM saddled into it. Still, as a new effort, this was all pointless.

Which is why it's so frustrating that game publishers keep going down this futile road. Instead, developers and publishers should be focusing on creating great gaming experiences for the public, building a bond with that public by treating them well, and not hampering their efforts with stupid online-checks that are defeated on the order of hours.

Is that really so hard?

Filed Under: copy protection, copyright, crack, crash bandicoot 4, drm, online check, video games
Companies: activision

Cricut Hastily Walks Back Plan To Charge Cutting Machine Owners $10/Month To Fully Use Their Purchases

from the lol-check-out-these-Cricut-tools dept

Cricut -- the leading brand of home use CNC machines -- has decided to alienate the people you'd think it would most want to embrace: its paying customers. Cricut machines allow users to upload designs and put their machines to work cutting materials from paper to cloth to metal to whatever will fit into the machines, giving hobbyists and craftmakers control of a small-scale manufacturing operation. They're pretty amazing. And they're pretty expensive.

They're also subject to a whole lot of rules -- some written and some unwritten. Cricut has made efforts to lock competitors out of the market by limiting cutting tool compatibility and restricting sheet size to increase sales of its own line of Cricut raw materials. Most designer paper comes in a standard 8.5" x 11" size. Sheet size in Cricuts is limited to 6.75" x 9.25", meaning off-the-rack, non-Circut-branded papers are about 20% useless.

Things like this help Cricut make the most of its multiple revenue streams. Cricut has apparently decided it has at least one too few revenue streams. As Hackaday reports, the company is now asking customers who've purchased printers to start paying the company in exchange for the privilege of fully utilizing their purchases.

[Cricut] has dropped a bombshell in the form of an update to the web-based design software that leaves their now very annoyed users with a monthly upload limit of 20 new designs unless they sign up for a Cricut Access Plan that costs $9.99 on monthly payments. Worse still, a screenshot is circulating online purporting to be from a communication with a Cricut employee attempting to clarify matters, in which it is suggested that machines sold as second-hand will be bricked by the company.

Well, that's at least two levels of suck contained in a single announcement. First, the decision to hit people who've already shelled out hundreds or thousands to Cricut with perpetual fees is inexplicable. Cricut isn't the only cutter on the market and a move like this just talks loyal users out of their loyalty and encourages them to explore their options. In exchange for smaller fees, Cricut seems willing to watch thousands of dollars exit the market for their competitors.

Second, the bricking of secondhand devices is pure bullshit. A Cricut is a Cricut. Anyone who bought one should have the right to sell it. And anyone buying one from a former user should rightfully expect it will be fully functional, not bricked by a company willing to compound its errors.

Fortunately, the company has listened to its users. It has dropped the rent program and said that anyone who buys a cutter before the end of this year will be grandfathered into the existing unlimited free program. Buyers who purchase one after December 31, 2021 will apparently be expected to purchase a subscription, which means this mini-debacle will be revisited later this year if Cricut refuses to drop its subscription program completely.

Cricut has also clarified that it's not moving forward with a plan to brick secondhand machines. New users will need to set up their own accounts, but the machines will function as normal.

All's well that ends well, I guess. But anyone outside of Cricut could have informed Cricut how this was going to play out. Chances are, some people inside Cricut realized that as well, but were overridden by those willing to ask what the market was willing to absorb, even if it meant shedding a few more reputation points.

Filed Under: business model, cnc, connected devices, drm, iot, subscription plan
Companies: cricut

DRM Screws People Yet Again: Book DRM Data Breach Exposes Reporters' Emails And Passwords

from the was-that-really-worth-it? dept

I have a few different services that report to me if my email is found in various data breaches, and recently I was notified that multiple email addresses of mine showed up in a leak of the service NetGalley. NetGalley, if you don't know, is a DRM service for books, that is regularly used by authors and publishers to send out "advance reader" copies (known around the publishing industry as "galleys.") The service has always been ridiculously pointless and silly. It's a complete overreaction to the "risk" of digital copies of a book getting loose -- especially from the people who are being sent advance reader copies (generally journalists or industry professionals). I can't recall ever actually creating an account on the service (and can't find any emails indicating that I had -- but apparently I must have). However, in searching through old emails, I do see that various publishers would send me advance copies via NetGalley -- though I don't think I ever read any through the service (the one time I can see that I wanted to read such a book, after getting sent a NetGalley link, I told the author that it was too much trouble and they sent me a PDF instead, telling me not to tell the publisher who insisted on using NetGalley).

It appears that NetGalley announced the data breach back in December on Christmas Eve, meaning it's likely that lots of people missed it. Also, even though I'm told through this monitoring service that my email was included, NetGalley never notified me that my information was included in the breach. NetGalley did say that the breach included both login names and passwords -- suggesting that they didn't even know to hash their passwords, which is just extremely incompetent in this day and age.

So, from my side of things, this means that the company put me and my information at risk for what benefit? To make my life as a potential reviewer of a book more difficult and annoying, and limiting my ability to easily read a book? DRM benefits literally no one. And in this case, has now created an even bigger mess in leaking my emails and whatever passwords I used for their service (thankfully, I don't reuse passwords, or it could have been an even bigger problem). For those who say that the DRM is still necessary to avoid piracy, that's ridiculous as well. If the book is going to get copied and leaked online, it's going to get copied and leaked online. And once one copy is out, all the DRM in the world is meaningless.

Rather than focusing so much on locking stuff up and making it impossible to read, while putting people's personal info at risk, just stop freaking out, recognize that most people are not out to get you by putting your stuff on file sharing sites, and focus on getting people to want to buy your books, rather than putting their data and privacy at risk.

Filed Under: advance reader copies, data breach, drm, emails, galleys, hacked, passwords
Companies: netgalley

John Deere Promised To Back Off Monopolizing Repair. It Then Ignored That Promise Completely.

from the freedom-to-tinker dept

Five years or so ago, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM helped birth a grassroots tech movement dubbed "right to repair." The company's crackdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM (and the company's EULA) prohibited the lion's share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair (which for many owners involved hauling their tractors hundreds of unnecessary miles), or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

John Deere certainly isn't alone in trying to monopolize repair, resulting in massive backlash and proposed legislation in more than fourteen states. Hoping to appease angry consumers and lawmakers, in late 2018, John Deere and a coalition of other agricultural hardware vendors promised (in a "statement of principles) that by January 1, 2021, Deere and other companies would make repair tools, software, and diagnostics readily available to the masses. In short, they managed to stall right to repair laws in several states in exchange for doing the right thing.

As it turns out, they never bothered to really follow through:

It is now three years later. The agreement is supposed to be in effect. No right to repair legislation has been passed. Deere, the dealers, and the manufacturers got what they wanted. And, yet, farmers are still struggling to get anything promised in the agreement."

Groups like US PIRG, which are spearheading the push for right to repair legislation, were notably unimpressed in a report released last week:

"The increased presence of software in agricultural equipment has allowed manufacturers such as John Deere to take control of the repair process at the expense of the equipment owner. The creation of software locks and keys required to authorize repair severely limits farmers and independent repair shops’ ability to fix broken farm equipment themselves."

John Deere, Microsoft, Apple, and countless other companies have a vested interest in making independent repair impossible and cumbersome. And as they attempt to scuttle the more than a dozen right to repair laws winding their way through various state legislatures, they've leaned on all manner of dodgy arguments, from claims such laws will result in hackers running amok in your state, to claims that such legislation would result in a spike in sexual predators.

In reality, they just don't want to lose control and repair revenue to competition, the environmental, consumer, and real world impacts be damned.

Filed Under: drm, right to repair, tractors
Companies: john deere

Auto Industry Pushes Bullshit Claim That 'Right To Repair' Laws Aid Sexual Predators

from the fear-mongering-ahoy dept

A few years back, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM culminated in a grassroots tech movement dubbed "right to repair." The company's crackdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM (and the company's EULA) prohibited the lion's share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

Of course the problem isn't just restricted to John Deere. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and countless other tech giants eager to monopolize repair have made a habit of suing and bullying independent repair shops and demonizing consumers who simply want to reduce waste and repair devices they own. This, in turn, has resulted in a growing push for right to repair legislation in countless states.

To thwart these bills, companies have been ramping up the use of idiotic, fear mongering arguments. Usually these arguments involve false claims that these bills will somehow imperil consumer privacy, safety, and security. Apple, for example, tried to thwart one such bill in Nebraska by claiming it would turn the state into a "mecca for hackers."

While there's been no shortage of bad faith arguments like this, the auto industry in Massachusetts has taken things to the next level. The state is contemplating the expansion of an existing state law that lets users get their vehicles repaired anywhere they'd like. In a bid to kill these efforts, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers, has taken to running ads in the state falsely claiming that the legislation would aid sexual predators:

The primary message of the ads is that if we allow people to more easily repair their vehicles, data from said vehicles will somehow find itself in the hands of rapists, stalkers, and other menaces. Granted actual experts have made it abundantly clear that this is utterly unfounded. The existing law requires that automakers use a non-proprietary diagnostic interface so any repair shop can access vehicle data using an ordinary OBD reader. It also makes sure that important repair information is openly accessible. The update to said law simply attempts to close a few loopholes in the existing law:

"Question 1 seeks to close a loophole in that earlier law, which exempted cars that transmitted this data wirelessly. As cars become even more computerized, independent repair shops are worried that manufacturers will do away with the OBD port and will store this data wirelessly, exempting them from the earlier law. The new initiative simply guarantees that car owners and independent repair companies can access this data wirelessly without "authorization by the manufacturer," and requires car manufacturers to store this data in a secure, "standardized, open-access platform."

One local ABC affiliate in Massachusetts thoroughly debunked the ads' claims. Experts told Matthew Gault at Motherboard that the real goal of the auto industry here is to simply shift all of this diagnostic tech to wireless to wiggle around the law. In part to maintain a monopoly on repair (letting them drive up the cost of taking your vehicle to the dealership), but also to further obscure all the driving, location, and other data automakers are collecting and selling to a long list of companies:

"My guess is what automakers really don't want to talk about is all of the data that they are collecting from connected vehicles that they're not telling us about,” Paul F Roberts, founder of Securerepairs—a group of security and repair professionals who advocate for security and repair issues—told Motherboard on the phone.

“The backup safety cameras that go on every time you put your car in reverse, are those on all the time and are they observing your surroundings and inferring data about your whereabouts and preferences?” Roberts said. “The in-cabin cameras that we know Tesla has on their cars, are those just monitoring you all the time… are they monitoring your GPS data and mining that or selling that? We don’t know."

Of course they're collecting and selling that data with minimal oversight. The United States still lacks any meaningful privacy laws for the modern era, in part because many of these same companies have opposed such legislation. Because it's hard for the auto industry to honestly admit it wants to monopolize repair, drive up consumer costs, and obfuscate the wholesale hoovering up and sale of your data, they've apparently concocted a grotesque bullshit narrative that the legislative updates will somehow aid sexual predators. Stay classy, Alliance for Automotive Innovation!

Filed Under: auto industry, cards, drm, freedom to tinker, independent repair shops, massachusetts, predators, right to repair
Companies: alliance for automotive innovation