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Ford Tries to Shut Down Independent Repair Tool with Copyright

252 points by guiambros 12y ago

monocasa 12y ago
IANAL, but I'm not sure Ford actually has a leg to stand on. 1) If I understand it correctly this data could be considered a list of facts and thus isn't copyrightable (just like a table of contents, or the list of ingredients in recipe). If it's not copyrightable, then the DMCA doesn't apply. See Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components. 2) The DMCA has a specific exemption for "interoperability purposes" which I could see this falling under as well but that's a weaker argument.
- eli 12y ago
  Point 1 is not a given. I think it's actually the heart of the case. Ford is arguing that their list of parts is copyrightable and their case is plausible even if I don't agree with it.
- kw71 12y ago
  There is a little more. I believe that in every firstworld country, there are legislative mandates that car makers must make proprietary information required for servicing their products available. This is colloquially known in the USA as 'right to repair' and the idea is to prevent a situation where independent mechanics, or owners themselves, will be unable to repair vehicles because the information and tools to do so are held only by the manufacturer or his agent (dealer.) Some other carmakers have apparently decided that leaked/extracted information or software is not really a big problem for them. I know that one carmaker that I have worked with views that situation as a sales driver for car parts, and would rather be on friendly terms with its customers anyway. Ford Motor Company, on the other hand, simply refuses to support old cars. They seem to have a very efficient system to landfill old parts inventory as soon as they are no longer legally required to support the cars that those parts apply to. While other carmakers shift production of parts for old cars to secondary vendors, I have not seen any examples of Ford doing this.
_nullandnull_ 12y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
- anjbe 12y ago
  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.
  - _nullandnull_ 12y ago
    Thank you for the response. I have not heard of some of those cases. I'm looking forward to reading up on those.
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  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!)
curiouscats 12y ago
Ford looks even worse when you see how Tesla and Toyota behave. Ford is trying to take the most hostile to customers action it can get away with under the broken copyright system. Meanwhile Tesla and Toyota are giving away patent rights in order to encourage innovation and help customers. This is just a very visible example of how Ford thinks and how Tesla and Toyota think. Sadly Ford's behavior is a very common USA management practice while Tesla and Toyota are rare. It is short sighted thinking and results in many less visible bad decisions that cripple companies in the long term.
- blackaspen 12y ago
  Patents aren't everything though: From ToyoDIY: December 6, 2009 The diagrams are no longer available on this site per demands of Toyota Motor Sales Inc. Yes, they still have part number listings/search (which is awesome), but they did use to have more.
  - kw71 12y ago
    This site has extracted the databases of the "Toyota EPC" application and put them on the internet with a web usable UI. If you want this material, one place I know you can find it is rutracker and you should simply search for "Toyota EPC." A site called 'realoem' did the same thing with BMW's database, and seems to have had no trouble for the years that it's been online.
- talmand 12y ago
  Toyota has had their questionable behaviors before. Tesla just hasn't been around long enough to be labeled with bad behavior yet. Which possibly may never happen, we'll have to wait and see.
- kw71 12y ago
  Hasn't Tesla been angry at an owner for investigating the ethernet link in his vehicle?
  - jrockway 12y ago
tokenadult 12y ago
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) article kindly submitted here points out, there is just about surely no copyright protection under United States law for the Ford FFData file, so this effort on Ford's part should fail if litigated. But pulling in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as an additional layer of protection for Ford's data file complicates the legal analysis, and I'm glad that the EFF is on this case to urge a clarification of how that act applies to cases like this, so that buyers of cars can have choices in seeking service for their cars. Of course, on my part I am appalled that Ford is even trying this, and so as a consumer I am now less likely to suggest to any of my friends that they should consider buying Ford cars. (Disclosure: we own two Toyota vehicles, both bought new from the local Toyota dealer in the last few years. Before we bought the first one, we shopped at a Ford dealership but didn't like the cars we tried as well as the Toyota cars we tried.)
- kw71 12y ago
  The app that this data was "stolen" from is a big java mess. The files are encrypted with AES but it takes about three seconds to find the key in the jar file. It doesn't really take any thought or effort to get. The app also contains material from other carmakers, because of mergers and acquisitions. For instance, there is material from BMW so that Ford is able to support certain Land Rovers built by BMW which have BMW engines and electronics. I'm sure that the developers of the free "Forscan" app have examined the material in question too.
  - lsiebert 12y ago
    Remember, you don't have to have a good copyright protection scheme to limit circumvention. You could rot13 something and the DMCA applies.
    - alanfalcon 12y ago
      Is that literally true?
      - 12y ago
stealthlogic 12y ago
Piss off Ford.
rocky1138 12y ago
Is there any sort of "frivolous claims" counter one can make for bad DMCA requests? Perhaps some sort of exponential backoff for companies who submit requests which are found to be bad, e.g., * 1 bad DMCA take-down, no action. * 2 bad DMCA take-downs, 1 month until future DMCA take-downs accepted. * 3 bad DMCA take-downs, 2 months...
- lugg 12y ago
  Sounds like a fix for a symptom not the root problem. Reading about DMCA makes me feel sick to my stomach. Scrap the lot, the resulting mess would probably be less awful than what we have now.
- MereInterest 12y ago
  IANAL, so take everything I say with a truck of salt. The DMCA requires that each takedown notice is made under penalty of perjury. However, the statement is "I believe that this work infringes on my copyright." rather than "This work infringes on my copyright." So long as the person issuing the takedown notice believes that it is valid, there are no consequences.
- monocasa 12y ago
  Ostensibly DMCA claims are made under threat of perjury which is supposed to be the check and balance. That being said I can't think of a single case of that portion of the law being enforced. Unfortunately if a group were to take the action that you suggest, they would forfeit their safe harbor and be able to be sued just as had as the original "infringer". You don't get hardly any leeway in responding to DMCA requests.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    I don't think perjury is an enforceable solution because there is no way to prove that you knew that the claim was invalid. "It seems I was mistaken" or "I disagree with the court's decision" is an iron-clad defense.
markc 12y ago
Massachusetts tackled this with a ballot initiative and legislation, so they can't do that here. Supposedly there's a "memorandum of understanding" that would prohibit it in all 50 states (but no federal legislation signed yet) I'm guessing this is a violation of the MOU. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners%27_Right_to_Repair_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners%27_Right_t...
slg 12y ago
Does anyone have a reference for the EFF claim that factual data collections can only be copyrighted "if the selection and arrangement are sufficiently creative"? I always thought the method of acquiring these facts was also important. Isn't that the point of inserting trap streets[1] and other fake entries[2] into your data, a practice that many tech companies including Google[3] still do? [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry [3] - http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-...
- shakethemonkey 12y ago
  Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)
- dsp1234 12y ago
  http://www.copyright.gov/reports/dbase.html http://www.copyright.gov/reports/dbase.html which includes references to Feist
trhway 12y ago
DMCA was created to defend platforms not creative authors. And Ford cars and ecosphere is a platform the same way like for example Apple's iPhone/iOS/iTune/etc ecosphere. Independent auto-repair shops, after-market parts manufacturers and the likes have to be ready to start paying a "Ford(GM/Toyota/etc) tax" similar to the "Apple tax".
esaym 12y ago
Having a family owned auto shop, I'll chime in here. I didn't read everything but here is what the facts seem to be: I found it odd that a "part list" is the root of the issue here since common repair software has lots of "lists" and diagrams. ex: http://www.ondemand5.com/ http://www.ondemand5.com/ yet Ford isn't suing them... The issue seems to be that this company hacked/stole/cracked/reverse engineered Ford's own software and is now giving non public data to the public. You really can't think that this is right... They clearly had to circumvent some kind of encryption. An obvious sign that you shouldn't be doing this... (hence why the encryption is there, no matter how simple) Competition is a big issue in the automotive industry. There will be no "github" for your vehicle. Auto repair and manufacturing is a totally different world. And plus lives are at stake here. You can't have people unofficially getting part specifications and blindly stamping out inferior (and unauthorized) replicas. Protection of IP is a big thing still in many industries. Even at my family's small shop, we get regular calls from people that download $10k auto repair software from bittorrent and call up the shop asking if they can install some "awesome" software for our shop for a low price of $500... There is a lot of money to be made by stealing in the auto industry.
- nathan_long 12y ago
  > You can't have people unofficially getting part specifications and blindly stamping out inferior (and unauthorized) replicas. Why not? If the part itself is not patented, and the branding is clear, and any safety regulations apply to the competing part, it's just competition and should result in cheaper, better, safter parts.
  - esaym 12y ago
    The point is that a part manufacture has to go through the right channel (ie, get certified, inspected regularly) to have the 'right' to make parts. You wouldn't want parts of questionable quality being put on an airplane, some goes for your car too. Even certified after market parts have their issues too and seem to get worse (in quality) every year.
icbm504 12y ago
this is not just about Ford. eff is pointing out a common business practice of using DCMA to undermine competition and maintain market share. The link at the end of the article is laundry list of what i view as disturbing behavior. https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-years-under-dmca https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-ye...
nathan_long 12y ago
In the last few years, Ford has bought spots on some tech podcasts, talking up their tech-savvy CEO and geek-friendly innovations. If they want to appeal to geeks, "you can't examine and fix your vehicle" is a bullet to the foot.

252 points by guiambros 12y ago

IANAL, but I'm not sure Ford actually has a leg to stand on. 1) If I understand it correctly this data could be considered a list of facts and thus isn't copyrightable (just like a table of contents, or the list of ingredients in recipe). If it's not copyrightable, then the DMCA doesn't apply. See Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components. 2) The DMCA has a specific exemption for "interoperability purposes" which I could see this falling under as well but that's a weaker argument.

eli 12y ago
Point 1 is not a given. I think it's actually the heart of the case. Ford is arguing that their list of parts is copyrightable and their case is plausible even if I don't agree with it.
kw71 12y ago
There is a little more. I believe that in every firstworld country, there are legislative mandates that car makers must make proprietary information required for servicing their products available. This is colloquially known in the USA as 'right to repair' and the idea is to prevent a situation where independent mechanics, or owners themselves, will be unable to repair vehicles because the information and tools to do so are held only by the manufacturer or his agent (dealer.) Some other carmakers have apparently decided that leaked/extracted information or software is not really a big problem for them. I know that one carmaker that I have worked with views that situation as a sales driver for car parts, and would rather be on friendly terms with its customers anyway. Ford Motor Company, on the other hand, simply refuses to support old cars. They seem to have a very efficient system to landfill old parts inventory as soon as they are no longer legally required to support the cars that those parts apply to. While other carmakers shift production of parts for old cars to secondary vendors, I have not seen any examples of Ford doing this.

_nullandnull_ 12y ago

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

anjbe 12y ago
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.
- _nullandnull_ 12y ago
  Thank you for the response. I have not heard of some of those cases. I'm looking forward to reading up on those.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
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!)

curiouscats 12y ago

Ford looks even worse when you see how Tesla and Toyota behave. Ford is trying to take the most hostile to customers action it can get away with under the broken copyright system. Meanwhile Tesla and Toyota are giving away patent rights in order to encourage innovation and help customers. This is just a very visible example of how Ford thinks and how Tesla and Toyota think. Sadly Ford's behavior is a very common USA management practice while Tesla and Toyota are rare. It is short sighted thinking and results in many less visible bad decisions that cripple companies in the long term.

blackaspen 12y ago
Patents aren't everything though: From ToyoDIY: December 6, 2009 The diagrams are no longer available on this site per demands of Toyota Motor Sales Inc. Yes, they still have part number listings/search (which is awesome), but they did use to have more.
- kw71 12y ago
  This site has extracted the databases of the "Toyota EPC" application and put them on the internet with a web usable UI. If you want this material, one place I know you can find it is rutracker and you should simply search for "Toyota EPC." A site called 'realoem' did the same thing with BMW's database, and seems to have had no trouble for the years that it's been online.
talmand 12y ago
Toyota has had their questionable behaviors before. Tesla just hasn't been around long enough to be labeled with bad behavior yet. Which possibly may never happen, we'll have to wait and see.
kw71 12y ago
Hasn't Tesla been angry at an owner for investigating the ethernet link in his vehicle?
- jrockway 12y ago

tokenadult 12y ago

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) article kindly submitted here points out, there is just about surely no copyright protection under United States law for the Ford FFData file, so this effort on Ford's part should fail if litigated. But pulling in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as an additional layer of protection for Ford's data file complicates the legal analysis, and I'm glad that the EFF is on this case to urge a clarification of how that act applies to cases like this, so that buyers of cars can have choices in seeking service for their cars. Of course, on my part I am appalled that Ford is even trying this, and so as a consumer I am now less likely to suggest to any of my friends that they should consider buying Ford cars. (Disclosure: we own two Toyota vehicles, both bought new from the local Toyota dealer in the last few years. Before we bought the first one, we shopped at a Ford dealership but didn't like the cars we tried as well as the Toyota cars we tried.)

kw71 12y ago
The app that this data was "stolen" from is a big java mess. The files are encrypted with AES but it takes about three seconds to find the key in the jar file. It doesn't really take any thought or effort to get. The app also contains material from other carmakers, because of mergers and acquisitions. For instance, there is material from BMW so that Ford is able to support certain Land Rovers built by BMW which have BMW engines and electronics. I'm sure that the developers of the free "Forscan" app have examined the material in question too.
- lsiebert 12y ago
  Remember, you don't have to have a good copyright protection scheme to limit circumvention. You could rot13 something and the DMCA applies.
  - alanfalcon 12y ago
    Is that literally true?
    - 12y ago

stealthlogic 12y ago

Piss off Ford.

rocky1138 12y ago

Is there any sort of "frivolous claims" counter one can make for bad DMCA requests? Perhaps some sort of exponential backoff for companies who submit requests which are found to be bad, e.g., * 1 bad DMCA take-down, no action. * 2 bad DMCA take-downs, 1 month until future DMCA take-downs accepted. * 3 bad DMCA take-downs, 2 months...

lugg 12y ago
Sounds like a fix for a symptom not the root problem. Reading about DMCA makes me feel sick to my stomach. Scrap the lot, the resulting mess would probably be less awful than what we have now.
MereInterest 12y ago
IANAL, so take everything I say with a truck of salt. The DMCA requires that each takedown notice is made under penalty of perjury. However, the statement is "I believe that this work infringes on my copyright." rather than "This work infringes on my copyright." So long as the person issuing the takedown notice believes that it is valid, there are no consequences.
monocasa 12y ago
Ostensibly DMCA claims are made under threat of perjury which is supposed to be the check and balance. That being said I can't think of a single case of that portion of the law being enforced. Unfortunately if a group were to take the action that you suggest, they would forfeit their safe harbor and be able to be sued just as had as the original "infringer". You don't get hardly any leeway in responding to DMCA requests.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  I don't think perjury is an enforceable solution because there is no way to prove that you knew that the claim was invalid. "It seems I was mistaken" or "I disagree with the court's decision" is an iron-clad defense.

markc 12y ago

Massachusetts tackled this with a ballot initiative and legislation, so they can't do that here. Supposedly there's a "memorandum of understanding" that would prohibit it in all 50 states (but no federal legislation signed yet) I'm guessing this is a violation of the MOU. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners%27_Right_to_Repair_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners%27_Right_t...

slg 12y ago

Does anyone have a reference for the EFF claim that factual data collections can only be copyrighted "if the selection and arrangement are sufficiently creative"? I always thought the method of acquiring these facts was also important. Isn't that the point of inserting trap streets[1] and other fake entries[2] into your data, a practice that many tech companies including Google[3] still do? [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry [3] - http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-...

shakethemonkey 12y ago
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)
dsp1234 12y ago
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/dbase.html http://www.copyright.gov/reports/dbase.html which includes references to Feist

trhway 12y ago

DMCA was created to defend platforms not creative authors. And Ford cars and ecosphere is a platform the same way like for example Apple's iPhone/iOS/iTune/etc ecosphere. Independent auto-repair shops, after-market parts manufacturers and the likes have to be ready to start paying a "Ford(GM/Toyota/etc) tax" similar to the "Apple tax".

esaym 12y ago

Having a family owned auto shop, I'll chime in here. I didn't read everything but here is what the facts seem to be: I found it odd that a "part list" is the root of the issue here since common repair software has lots of "lists" and diagrams. ex: http://www.ondemand5.com/ http://www.ondemand5.com/ yet Ford isn't suing them... The issue seems to be that this company hacked/stole/cracked/reverse engineered Ford's own software and is now giving non public data to the public. You really can't think that this is right... They clearly had to circumvent some kind of encryption. An obvious sign that you shouldn't be doing this... (hence why the encryption is there, no matter how simple) Competition is a big issue in the automotive industry. There will be no "github" for your vehicle. Auto repair and manufacturing is a totally different world. And plus lives are at stake here. You can't have people unofficially getting part specifications and blindly stamping out inferior (and unauthorized) replicas. Protection of IP is a big thing still in many industries. Even at my family's small shop, we get regular calls from people that download $10k auto repair software from bittorrent and call up the shop asking if they can install some "awesome" software for our shop for a low price of $500... There is a lot of money to be made by stealing in the auto industry.

nathan_long 12y ago
> You can't have people unofficially getting part specifications and blindly stamping out inferior (and unauthorized) replicas. Why not? If the part itself is not patented, and the branding is clear, and any safety regulations apply to the competing part, it's just competition and should result in cheaper, better, safter parts.
- esaym 12y ago
  The point is that a part manufacture has to go through the right channel (ie, get certified, inspected regularly) to have the 'right' to make parts. You wouldn't want parts of questionable quality being put on an airplane, some goes for your car too. Even certified after market parts have their issues too and seem to get worse (in quality) every year.

icbm504 12y ago

this is not just about Ford. eff is pointing out a common business practice of using DCMA to undermine competition and maintain market share. The link at the end of the article is laundry list of what i view as disturbing behavior. https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-years-under-dmca https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-ye...

nathan_long 12y ago

In the last few years, Ford has bought spots on some tech podcasts, talking up their tech-savvy CEO and geek-friendly innovations. If they want to appeal to geeks, "you can't examine and fix your vehicle" is a bullet to the foot.