The worst thing to happen to home automation was companies trying to lock customers into their ecosystem without greater interoperability.
Many manufacturers appear to be OK with especially resourceful owners optimizing their cars in this way. Home Assistant's integration library features at least six automakers, including BMW and Volvo, while Tesla recently published details of its new, official, open API for third-party developers to employ.As it turns out, you need both the piece of paper underwriting your rights and the force necessary to exercise them.
It could be argued Mazda doesn't want to be on the hook for end-user customizations that may potentially jeopardize safety.
Now yes, if a driver modifies his car's code or the results of that code and causes an accident that's on him and not Mazda. But you and I and everyone here all know the media will jump at the chance to plaster sensational headlines for click monies.
They need to be deterred. They should know that every time they do this, people will start recommending their competition.
Since when is an API call proprietary information? Can they even claim a DMCA against it? That's like claiming DMCA for telling someone how to flick a light switch.
[0]: >>37874220 [1]: >>37921584
This is sort of the point of arbitration.
Lately I've been fighting with things like iOS, Chromecast, "smart" lightbulbs, vacuum robots and smartwatches and all of these go out of their way to lock these down and force their shitty and buggy and probably illegal spyware on me.
I'm honestly asking why this is the default. What do the companies have to lose in people making their products suck less?
In practice, the company still has a big advantage in arbitration.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-binding-arbitratio...
> The problem is that companies generally know more than customers about an arbitrator’s record and thus are likely to strike out arbitrators who are more inclined to rule in favor of consumers. On average, each securities firm in the study had been involved in 81 other arbitrations. In non-securities disputes, such as those with cellular carriers, the average company had been in 133 hearings. By contrast, most consumers have never been involved in a previous arbitration and tend to strike arbitrators randomly. As a result, the firms’ informational advantage leads to systematically biased outcomes.
Looks like the pain was big enough.
If the EFF is motivated to reach out to the original DMCA recipient, then they could definitely present this avenue. That leads us to the next question, is the original DMCA recipient interested in pursuing a (now funded) defense? If not, are they interested in handing it off to someone else? Who? Would that person be an effective defendant?
Really, what we are doing here is speculating on one person's level of disinterest in pursuing the legal defense of their work.
It’s not just home automation, commercial automation is full of single source vendor ‘solutions’.
Building automation: Johnson Controls, Carrier, Siemens, Honeywell, Trane (and others) all provide proprietary controllers and software. There are some ‘open’ systems where multiple dealers sell a product line, Distech and Alerton are the big ones that I’ve seen.
Fire alarm: Johnson Controls (Simplex), Siemens, Honeywell, Bosch. Honeywell has their own internal product line that they sell, as well as two other lines that they have dealers sell (Notifier and Silent Knight).
Nurse call, duress, security, surveillance (and probably other low-voltage/control systems I’m not familiar with) have the same problems with proprietary systems.
This is true in American elections too. I can’t remember the exact number, but something like 80% (or more) of elections are won by the candidate with more money.
When everything is tied to money like this - legal, democracy etc, the little guy is always going to lose
It's understandable, but it fails to be an excuse for the behavior.
Not as big as in litigation. Yes, companies have familiarity. But the win rates in arbitration are way more favourable. Because you can’t starve your opponent as a strategy.
I know they aren’t required to, but I remember the olden days when more companies would fight dmca requests. But I suppose they were much less common then.
The EFF might help, but even expecting individuals to appeal to the EFF is probably too much work and too much risk.
I’d like to see GitHub partner with EFF to have first look at these requests and choose to fight ones that seem invalid. I’d donate to they cause.
That money you could be making, yeah we don't like you getting it instead of us, so cough it up! Also, while we're at it, cool idea...thanks for the work! Here's nice thankful lawsuit for your hard work. We'll go ahead and privately fork that repo and totally not rip your functionality off and somehow manage to mess it up while overcharging for it! :)
Worst regards, thx for the moneys and screw you,
Mazda
Without copyright law, any actor can take your open system and close it.
It probably doesn't make sense for Github to indemnify them, and short of that, there's not really a lot of convincing they can do if someone isn't interested in engaging in litigation with some huge company.
In this case the code was on GitHub before, so they wouldn't even need to give the code to the new target entity, this entity could just copy it from an undisclosed person who has a copy.
On purpose, or from incompetence.
No Mazda does.
We spent months agonizing over an interior temperature sensor, which was only used to display the information to the user on a smartphone app. We built both the hardware and software, and it was offered as an add-on at the dealerships. After months of negotiations, after the hardware was already built and the packages assembles, they decided temperature sensors were too inaccurate (+/- 5 degrees F) to use, and that it could present a legal liability. Again, this was nothing else but displaying the information on the app - and the user could then make a decision whether to remote start the car to cool it or heat it (no automatic process took place either).
This was at the height of "unintended accelerator" issue in Toyotas, so everyone was walking on egg shells playing it ultra safe to not invite any more lawsuits.
What surprises me is that this culture of "playing it safe" remained to this day, some 10 years later (but maybe it shouldn't).
This is about "engagement". There are a lot of oxygen wasters out there whose careers and paychecks depend on "engagement" metrics aka how much time has been collectively wasted wading through the cesspool that their software is. The annoyance and wasted time is the point, and an alternative client (or other way of automating it) goes against that.
People often talk about "bullshit jobs" around here, but what everyone overlooks (or refuses to acknowledge as it's uncomfortable) are all the bullshit jobs in the tech/software industry who derive their careers out of end-user annoyance and misery.
I would bet this is some overzealous safety executive somewhere.
That is, it's easier (and quicker and simpler) just to say no than do things case by case. It also mitigates any possible future fiction.
I'm not saying it's right. But knowing how these Big Incs operate it makes sense.
I think this is because Graeber had little familiarity with this industry so it doesn't appear in the source text.
> Proposed Class 7: Computer Programs— Vehicle Operational Data > MEMA petitions for a new exemption to ‘‘access, store, and share vehicle operational data, including diagnostic and telematics data’’ from ‘‘a lawfully acquired motorized land vehicle or marine vessel such as a personal automobile or boat, commercial vehicle or vessel, or mechanized agricultural vehicle or vessel.’’ 182 The petition limits circumvention to ‘‘lawful vehicle owners and lessees, or those acting on their behalf.’’ > The Office encourages proponents to develop the legal and factual administrative record in their initial submissions, including describing with specificity the relevant TPMs and whether their presence is adversely affecting noninfringing uses, whether eligible users may access such data through alternate channels that do not require circumvention, and the legal basis for concluding that the proposed uses are likely to be noninfringing. In general, the Office seeks comment on whether the proposed exemption should be adopted, including any proposed regulatory language.
- From Page 14, of October 19, 2023 – Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-10-19/pdf/2023-2...
The US Copyright Office goes on to say *they want feedback on this potential exemption*:
> The Office encourages proponents to develop the legal and factual administrative record in their initial submissions, including describing with specificity the relevant TPMs and whether their presence is adversely affecting noninfringing uses, whether eligible users may access such data through alternate channels that do not require circumvention, and the legal basis for concluding that the proposed uses are likely to be noninfringing. In general, the Office seeks comment on whether the proposed exemption should be adopted, including any proposed regulatory language.
Note that final sentence!
As a result of the BS in TFA, I'd put Mazda in the same corner, except they were never a contender because they don't build cars that I might buy (well, okay, maybe a Miata).
Never underestimate the ability of a manufacturer to select subpar parts to save 25 cents on the BOM and spend 6 figures elsewhere trying to fix the resulting issues though.
Scientific sensors are highly accurate and can also be small, but you have a steep cost increase of course.
Or do something even worse, have functionality we didn't paid Mazda to have.
One of the problems is the heat from the device itself, as well as limited airflow creating localized hotspots.
In lieu of the touchscreen while cars wheels are rolling, Mazda expect you to use this odd rotary controller in the center console, on the assumption it will be safer.
It's not safer at all though - you have to turn the rotary controller and watch CarPlay or android auto do the equivalent of a tab key in the browser until it highlights the correct field, then press it in to select. It genuinely takes my eyes off the road longer than just stabbing a touch screen with my finger, as you have to make sure you have got the rotary controller to highlight the right button etc - you can overshoot just like tab in a browser.
What's even funnier to me is that Mazda have no qualms about putting a switch to disable stability and traction control instantly right next to the steering wheel on a light weight rear wheel drive sports car; burnouts and oversteer are apparently perfectly acceptable usecases for a Miata, but selecting a song from the touch screen while moving? No way guys...
If you are only concerned about a 20 or so degree temperature range it's not an issue, but if you are trying to read over a 100 degree range, you'll want to account for non-linearity as well.
Also, accurate and precise to 10ths of a degree isn't really attainable unless you do fancy math as the sensor will heat each time you read it. The idea is to take multiple readings and average them but unless you are accounting for the heating of the sensor, your numbers will be garbage.
This is for consumer grade sub $50 sensors. Of course you can go fancier but you have to pay for it.
For JAMS and AAA, compared to federal courts, after accounting for litigation costs, on average, no. (At the tails, yes. But this doesn't apply if you can pull off federal litigation.) Do you have research to the contrary?
I mean, if I were the author, had put my effort and time into solving my own itch and released it as FOSS, only to receive a Cease and Desist, my itch would still probably be there, but GitHub would probably comply and close the repo.
So I'd just cease, desist, and my project would suddenly appear again in some other Git server. Surely, without my name on it, and hosted from whatever country seeming less likely to follow up on similar requests.
Japanese culture tends to white-list permitted activities.
The API was designed for a purpose other than what this developer used it for. Therefore his code is proscribed.
What is it about that device (or similar) that would put it out of scope?
[1] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/19-046_6706ef32-...
I made a comment regarding this, before realizing yours, so I'm kinda repeating myself here, but it's something that piques my curiosity:
What would stop you from just continuing in a different repo (even different host like Gitee), with a pseudonymous, and claim that you have no idea who's that mysterious person that forked and continued working on the project?
They could even sue for damages from false claims since API can’t be copyrighted.
There’s tons they could do. Microsoft has immense resources and far greater than Mazda.
No popular open source license that I am aware of attempts to emulate a no-copyright situation:
If there was no copyright, you could not force anybody to provide the source code of any derivative work (situation for copyleft licenses). On the other hand, in a no-copyright situation, you are not able to sue anybody who attempts to reverse-engineer such a derived binary blob and publish the reverse-engineered source code.
Thus, an open-source license that attempts to emulate a no-copyright situation would in my opinion have clauses like the following:
- you are allowed to create binary-only derived works, and are allowed to sell copies of it
- you must not sue anybody who redistributes these copies (even for money)
- you must not disallow any licensees to reverse-engineer these executables
- you must not disallow any owner of a copy to create any derivative work (even using reverse-engineering techni, as long as this work is licenses under this license. This in particular means that, if you create a derivative work, you have to take care that you cannot redistribute copies that (statically) link the work with parts for which this is disallowed
What about a DAO specifically built for that purpose exclusively?
Just looking how to fuck back those lawyers
I looked at the code some, there are some app secrets stored and used, so they probably have at least a thin claim.
Pretty much everything you need can be done with at most a few steps of the commander interface which are easy to learn.
Like, the literal least Mazda could have done to support their users here was nothing, and they found a way to do worse than that.
Lines of ink on plant fiber by themselves have never stopped anyone.
It's a Miata. You should be listening to the sound the car makes. Car speakers sound like shit with the top down at highway speeds anyway.
The AC in my RX7 hasn't been charged in 20 years either and I live in the southeastern US. Driving these cars is a full experience...
And the bullet proof glass thing I shouldn't even respond to because of the ridiculous extreme you've had to go to, trying to argue against me saying the companies should play it safe, but I'll reply this one time. I'm not asking the car company to protect me from an assassin's bullets. That is not something they control. I'm asking them to "play it safe" when developing components for the car so the car doesn't kill me while I'm in the car. They are responsible for their domain and are not producing armored vehicles for war time. So ridiculous lol
Is there any hack that fixes this? It's my number 1 annoyance with my Mazda.
> there is no such thing as excessive "playing it safe"
As you noted in your other comment:
> I'm asking them to "play it safe" when developing components for the car so the car doesn't kill me while I'm in the car.
As in the old adage in computing ("the only unhackable computer is one that isn't connected to anything"), there's no way to ensure that the components of a car don't fail, even while in routine use. There is only more or less likely that they won't fail, and of course, less and less likely to fail is more and more expensive.
We might say that the only uncrashable car is one that sits in the garage and never goes anywhere. Obviously, that would be playing it safe excessively, since it would defeat the purpose of having a car to begin with. But what about less obvious cases? Toyota recalled millions of cars for their "unintended acceleration" issue. The merits of that particular case aside, how much more would someone pay for a Corolla that would be progressively less likely to have safety issues? At some point before infinity, it would be considered excessive.
I think the sliding scale of how safe is playing it too safe is a discussion very much worth having.
There's probably none. They're probably just leveraging the high costs of a legal defense to bully individuals into submission. Corporations have armies of lawyers and can afford to spend years fighting in court, this guy can't. The threat of lawsuits is equivalent to a threat to set his money on fire.
Check out their "justifications":
> The automaker argued that Rothweiler's work contained code that violated its copyrights; used its "proprietary API information" to create more code
Seriously doubt that. It's not like they gave this guy access to their source code or internal documents.
> and that the integrations provided functionality identical to what currently exists in Mazda's own mobile apps
Not protected by copyright.
If there's an active route, you rotate the dial twice quickly to select the search icon.
That's on Android Auto on my Mazda. It's very similar in the built-in nav system.
And in no case do you have to lean forward to peck for small touch boxes - the controls are naturally at your hand and each move has a tactile click.
Touchscreens are "souicide" as more and more distracted driving research shows.
I.e. actually GitHub took the stuff down, not Mazda.
Self-host your shit for Pete's sake.
So good thing it's connected to the internet and has four screens.
Not any of my cars that I've owned
And it also depends what exactly you want to measure: air, motor or inside temperature? People might get confused. And inside temperature might differ a lot: behind the windscreen it might be a lot hotter than at the floor.
I'd guess it's part just some knee-jerk business ideology and attempts at vendor lock-in and SaaS scams. Lock-in is clearly anticompetitive, and probably illegal, but law enforcement cares more about people smoking weed etc.
The upcoming EU data act seems to try to tackle some of these. But I have very little hope it will amount to much. EU doesn't regulate business, business regulates EU.
I mean, safer relative to what they used to be, yes.
But compared other modes of transportation, not so sure.
They can also autogenerate the counter claim so an author just needs to click “dispute.”
I’m sure there are lots of valid dmca complaints against GitHub repos, like any site that allows hosting random files. But I think if GitHub wants to encourage programming, they need to invest and be more proactive in supporting programmers from people like the jerk lawyer at Mazda (or probably some stupid “ip protection” consultant) who filed this spurious seeming complaint.
The headunit was trivially easy to hack iirc - was based on an old version of Android obviously without security fixes, think it was from a website called mazdahacks? From there I had full AA without restrictions.
No idea if the site is still around but...
I imagine they are testing this out as a higher end/cost feature that isn’t fully implemented, and based on sales/feedback, they’ll roll it out to other models in a couple of years.
Depending on my specific need, I may use the touchscreen or the wheel. My kids in the passenger seat strongly prefer the touchscreen.
We have multiple systems, some with a public API some not.
The biggest problem is simply support. We'd LOVE to have more public ability to interact but I simply can't support every independent developer out there.
Also, people agree to a legal terms of service to get access BUT don't always follow it (e.g., data storage agreements, use case agreements, etc).
Coming at it from Mazda's POV, it could be that but it also could very well be the monetization aspect.
The dial itself also sucks. It has both a rotary spinner that's too easy to turn and a 4-way joystick that's too easy to nudge. If you happen to drive across a tiny bump (especially with the stock shocks, which are really stiff), you can entirely lose your place and have to hunt for the highlighted control before you can resume. I have to lean forward because my eyesight isn't that great compared to before. It's not bad enough to stop driving, but not good enough to see Android Auto on that tiny screen, of which Maps is only like 2/3, and each button is tiny.
Touch screens don't really have that problem because there's not a control that has focus at any given time. You just poke whatever you want, regardless of current context.
Touch screens (like on Teslas) are worse than traditional buttons. But the Mazda spinner is even worse than touch screens. It is far far more distracting, IMO, and a life-threatening dealbreaker for me.
It's cool if you like them though... I just won't be buying a Mazda anymore, but that car (to my surprise) got pretty high reviews and nobody even mentioned the infotainment UX. Shrug. I'm just picky about these things.
Basically - customization and integration is a limiting factors and whats the point to have these limits when customization and integration is not your goal?
I daily miss items with the rotary controller in a way that I never do in any other car with a reasonably implemented touch screen for CarPlay/Android Auto (effectively almost every single new non-Mazda/Tesla vehicle on sale across the entire car industry). I know people who have refused to buy a Mazda that otherwise met their needs solely due to this issue - sectors like the CX-5/CX-9 etc compete in are staggeringly competitive nowadays and customers have a ton of options that all have working touch screens for carplay/android auto on the move.
The Miata, you just have to put up with it, given the cheap roadster market currently consists of the Miata and nothing else.
This comment was meant for the normal folks who spend a lot of time in our vehicles and are willing to accept a level of risk that comes along with having some sense of comfort.
But that was not my point.
At the end of the day, no matter how well it's built, a car is a several tons lump of steel launched at significant speed. It's an inherently deadly machine.
Having a lapse of attention while driving a car? you might easily cause a someone to die.
Having the same lapse on a bike? you might cause some broken bones.
Having the same lapse while walking? you are good for some "Oh... I'm sorry".
I forget the term for this, but it’s the same as me stating I like pancakes and you coming at me saying I hate waffles, when I wasn’t talking about waffles at any point. Those types of arguments are insane and I won’t engage with them. I wasn’t saying those things, I’m not defending against your claims that I did.
After Fukushima we were asked to provide specifications for acceptable operating environment radiation levels, after some negotiation they relented and gave us a figure we could test at, so engineers drove hardware to a spot with high background radiation and ran it for a couple of days off a generator to test.
The Japanese customers also insisted that each display on the hardware be the same shade of white, so they would all look nice in a datacenter, so our LCD displays have specifically graded white LEDs.
So yes, the line was very obvious because these are events that happen in real life, risk that you say you wanted to eliminate by absolutely playing it safe: "_anything_, there is no such thing as excessive 'playing it safe'"
I can only assume that your original comment was reactionary and hyperbolic, but then got upset over where that kind of hyperbole lead in the past.
Strange how HNs assume what country others reside in and apply their opinions, projecting them even, onto anything possible, whether or not the thing they are applying them to is at all related to what they reply with, and how they like to put words into the mouths of others with absolutely zero context to be able to make such assumptions, and are in denial about the ignorant-like state of their psyche and daily life as an idiot.
An effective defense has to protect your time and money. One such defense is to never let your real identity be plucked from obscurity and fixated on by a legal team.
Also, the Fiata is based on the ND1 and so still has the smaller engine, but I'd totally get a Fiata over an ND1.
Mazda hacks is still around but looks like there's some more protection in it than there was a few years ago so it's harder to setup.