this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
1298 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

59358 readers
5091 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Mazda recently surprised customers by requiring them to sign up for a subscription in order to keep certain services. Now, notable right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann is calling out the brand.

It’s important to clarify that there are two very different types of remote start we’re talking about here. The first type is the one many people are familiar with where you use the key fob to start the vehicle. The second method involves using another device like a smartphone to start the car. In the latter, connected services do the heavy lifting.

Transition to paid services

What is wild is that Mazda used to offer the first option on the fob. Now, it only offers the second kind, where one starts the car via phone through its connected services for a $10 monthly subscription, which comes to $120 a year. Rossmann points out that one individual, Brandon Rorthweiler, developed a workaround in 2023 to enable remote start without Mazda’s subscription fees.

However, according to Ars Technica, Mazda filed a DMCA takedown notice to kill that open-source project. The company claimed it contained code that violated “[Mazda’s] copyright ownership” and used “certain Mazda information, including proprietary API information.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 101 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Doesn't stop companies from sending bogus DMCA takedowns to sites like GitHub.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 94 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

There are no penalties for filling a bogus DMCA takedown and the legal cost for restoring the content falls on the victim of such a takedown: the DMCA legislation was designed exactly for it to be used as Mazda and many other use it against individuals and small companies who can't spend thousands of dollars fighting bogus takedowns.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why is there no big alternative hosted outside of the US where your DMCA does not apply?

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 10 points 1 month ago

There are other centralised code hosting services, for example Codeberg, but they are equally scared of any legal action even when it doesn't directly apply.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)