Under a recently issued series of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemptions, vehicle owners will soon legally be allowed to access their vehicle codesoftware. The Library of Congress, whose copyright office issues such exceptions every three years, permitted access to the software for, among other reasons, diagnosis, repair and modifications.

The exceptions will go into effect in one year, and they must be renewed in three years. They also apply to certain agricultural vehicles, such as tractors. Vehicle owners still may not extract vehicle code, replicate it, and/or sell it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation proposed the vehicle code exemption because researchers have already “learned about a string of significant security vulnerabilities in vehicles,” despite the previous “legal gray area” of digging around in a vehicle’s computer code. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration also supported the vehicle code exemption because it is consistent with the proposition that consumers be allowed “to engage in the longstanding practice of working on their own vehicles.”

On the other hand, many automotive groups opposed the regulation because they generally believed that consumers have other, safer resources for investigating their vehicles’ code, “such as manufacturer-authorized repair shops and tools.” The vehicle code regulations come on the heels of a large Volkswagen recall, the root of which involved computer code that potentially helped the vehicles circumvent emissions testing.

“This access control rule [which disallowed vehicle code access] is supposed to protect against unlawful copying,” said Kit Walsh, an Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney, in a statement. “But as we've seen in the recent Volkswagen scandal—where VW was caught manipulating smog tests—it can be used instead to hide wrongdoing hidden in computer code.”

Over the summer, two security researchers demonstrated how they could wirelessly hack a Chrysler Jeep’s computer systems, taking control of its transmission, brakes, and steering. The story helped prompt a 1.4 million-vehicle recall by Chrysler to correct the vehicle code issue.

No doubt regulators and companies alike will watch the effects of these vehicle code exceptions closely as consumers receive greater freedom to access and tinker with product code.

Sources: http://news.yahoo.com/car-owners-tinker-vehicle-software-u-copyright-authorities-181245814--finance.html http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/27/9622150/dmca-exemption-accessing-car-software http://www.wired.com/2015/07/jeep-hack-chrysler-recalls-1-4m-vehicles-bug-fix/ http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/hacking-your-car-fine-says-u-s-copyright-office-n452911 http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/27/450572915/soon-itll-be-ok-to-tinker-with-your-cars-software-after-all

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