DRM To Be Used In Renault Electric Cars 231
mahiskali writes with this interesting news via the EFF's Deep Links "The new Renault Zoe comes with a 'feature' that absolutely nobody wants. Instead of selling consumers a complete car that they can use, repair, and upgrade as they see fit, Renault has opted to lock purchasers into a rental contract with a battery manufacturer and enforce that contract with digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that can remotely prevent the battery from charging at all. This coming on the heels of the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership IP Rights Chapter leak certainly makes you wonder how much of that device (car?) you really own. Perhaps Merriam-Webster can simply change the definition of ownership."
Re:Defensive move - Informative update. (Score:5, Insightful)
...I can use medicine longer than is safe (expired) and kill myself and a lot of people....
The 'expired' date on medicines (and food) does NOT give a time after which they are unsafe to use.
Please concentrate, because this is slightly non-intuitive. The manufactures lobbied, not to provide this, but to provide a time UP TO WHICH it had been tested to be safe.
Now, those two times may be very similar for cases where an item spoils quickly - a cake or bread, for instance. But in many cases medicines (or food) can last essentially unchanged for many decades. In those cases a manufacturer will NOT test for several decades and try to find the maximum shelf life, but will test for, say, 5 years. That's a reasonable length of time, and he will be very happy if after 5 years a warehouse has to throw away perfectly good items which would have lasted another 15 years, and buy some new produce from him again.
If you are using something with an outdated shelf-life, consider the chemistry. For instance, a sealed jar of sodium bicarbonate isn't going to go 'off' even if it's 100 years old...
Re:And all these computer parts in cars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Plenty of good reasons. The real question is: Is closed source software safe? and the clear answer is "We have no idea... since it's closed. But it's probably not"
Re:And all these computer parts in cars... (Score:5, Insightful)
I translated the original article and they don't seem to mention whether it is a deadman/watchdog kind of kill switch that needs to periodically hear from Renault that it is OK to continue to operate, or if it is a specific signal to stop operating that is only issued when that situation is deemed necessary.
If it is a "one-time" signal, then that is possibly open to spoofing/hacking and potentially very disrupting for legitimate owners in good standing if someone figures out how to remotely shut them down. That would be quite the coup for hackers if they could stop the entire fleet.
If it is a deadman kind of thing, one hopes that the company would continue to support sending that signal for as long as even a single car was still on the road and the owner was in good standing.
Either way, I don't think I would buy one of these.
Re:Simple, Don't Buy Them (Score:5, Insightful)
And If you don't want a cell phone with GPS, buy one that doesn't have it.
Welcome to the small picture.
Re:And all these computer parts in cars... (Score:2, Insightful)
We use lighter materials than were used back then and you're more likely to be killed by the engine getting pushed into your lap by whatever you hit (which was allowed to happen by the "crumple zones") than you ever were by slamming into the steering wheel.
That's the absolute opposite of the truth. Crumple zones don't extend into the passenger compartment. And you have no evidence they are less good than they were 20 years ago. They can be lighter because these days they can be designed and virtually tested on a computer. Which means the designers know much more about how they crumple, and can save on metal where it is not required.
Car companies aren't selling what's safer, they're selling what they can easily convince YOU is safer;
Bullshit. Cars are independently tested for safety, at various establishments around the world. And they have far more genuine safety features as standard than they used to. Such as for example side impact bars.
selling what's actually safer would mean losing the sales they get when you total your crumple-box in a 5MPH bumper kiss.
You will come to far more injury and more likely die in a car that does not crumple. As will pedestrians you may hit. You are just plain wrong in your belief that a more solid car is a safer car. It is not. It's the difference between a stuntman jumping off a roof onto a pile of cardboard boxes, or jumping off and hitting a pile of bricks.