New DMCA rules mean you can fiddle with your tablets, routers, cars (as if you weren't anyway)

[bananas]

Source: The Register

The Librarian of Congress in America has updated the list of technologies that hackers can tinker with without breaking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Under the terms of the DMCA, the Librarian must revise the list of devices and technologies that can be investigated and altered by people using them. In the past this has led to a ban on a ban on smartphone unlocking (now rescinded) and other idiocies.

The latest list [PDF], however, shows welcome signs of sanity. Tablets are now on the list of devices that can be legally examined and customized by their owners, and smart watches, and televisions. Wi-Fi routers have also been added to the list, allowing security researchers to check for hidden flaws and backdoors.

Let's be honest: researchers were already doing this, but now it's officially totally OK with Uncle Sam.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/28/new_better_dmca_rules/

[fbc]

1. But, functionally, fiddling with your router may be impossible in the future

thanks to the FCC guildines described here:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/fcc-open-source-router-software-is-still-legal-under-certain-conditions/

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. About cars, from Hemmings

Feds Grant Exemption to Copyright Law, Allowing You to Lawfully Service Your Own Car

On Tuesday, October 27, the U.S. Copyright Office granted an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) that will allow vehicle owners to circumvent portions of the act in order to effect diagnoses, repairs or modifications to vehicles without fear of prosecution.

You might be asking yourself the question as to why a law designed to protect Mickey Mouse well into the 21st century would have anything to do with repairing your own vehicle. The DMCA was passed by Congress in 1998, going into effect almost immediately, around the same time the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act also flew through Congress. During an era when this country’s corporations have been casting off the actual manufacturing of hard goods in the name of “intellectual property,” protecting those idea assets became their number one priority with lawmakers.

But with the DMCA passing through Congress with essentially no opposition, those businesses got to write the laws without having to worry about their far-reaching effects. The DMCA criminalized creating any kind of tool, technique, technology or service designed to circumvent digital copyright protections, often known as “DRM” for digital rights management, whether or not any of them are ever used to violate copyright. In addition, any individual circumventing DRM technology—or possibly even attempting to develop a method to circumvent it—can also be held criminally liable, again whether or not he actually violates copyright. The law is thought to be so overreaching that researchers have canceled conferences just discussing the subject for fear of those discussions violating the law.
....

So, how does the DMCA affect you, the car guy? If the only cars you ever wrench with were developed before the advent of modern electronic engine controls and the conquest of your car by the computer chip, then you had nothing to worry about. However, with so much software controlling so many primary operating functions of a modern car, and with the law so very broad in its scope and harsh in its punishments, some attempts to diagnose, repair or modify a vehicle may include circumventing the digital rights management portion of the software. And, until Tuesday’s exemption, if you had done that, you would have been violating the law.
....

For the full legal ruling, got to the Library of Congress’s web site.