FSF: EPA opposed DMCA exemptions that could have revealed Volkswagen fraud

Dear LWN,

We have written previously about the [organizations and individuals][1] who
opposed exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA)
anti-circumvention provisions. These drones oppose the rights of users to
backup, modify, and study the software and devices that we own. The DMCA's
anti-circumvention provisions create legal penalties for simply accessing
your software under your own terms, and raises those penalties even higher
should dare to share the tools needed to do so. It creates real penalties for
anyone who wants to avoid Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) controls. The
granting of exemptions to these totalitarian rules is a broken and
half-hearted attempt to limit the damage these rules bring, granting for 3
years a
reprieve for certain specified devices and software.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) side-stepped this process and [sent
a letter][2] separately directly to the Copyright Office. In the letter they
argued that users should not be able to access and modify the software on
their own vehicles. In their estimation, this would enable users to violate
emissions controls. So it would be better for them if the hammer of the DMCA
remained hanging over the head of every user or researcher who wanted to
access the software on their vehicle.

Of course, just a few months after telling the Copyright Office that users
couldn't be trusted with access to their devices, the EPA revealed a major
scandal involving Volkswagen. It turns out that Volkswagen had for many years
cheated the emissions test performed by the EPA. Volkswagen had
surreptitiously included some code in their diesel vehicles that would detect
the EPA's tests and have the car change its performance in order to meet EPA
mandates. Once the test was over, the code would revert the vehicle to its
normal, high-polluting functioning. This scam apparently went on for years
before it was detected by researchers. 

Of course the irony is that if users and researchers had the right to access
the software on their cars, they might have discovered this fraud years ago.
As Eben Moglen, founder of the [Software Freedom Law Center][3] [noted][4]
"If Volkswagen knew that every customer who buys a vehicle would have a right
to read the source code of all the software in the vehicle, they would never
even consider the cheat, because the certainty of getting caught would
terrify them.” Volkswagen is already a contributor on the kernel Linux, and
as Bradley M. Kuhn, President and Distinguished Technologist of the [Software
Freedom Conservancy][5] pointed out it is likely that Volkswagen vehicles
already contain some free software. But some is not all, and
clearly they kept much of their software secret in order to hide their scam.
If all the software on the vehicles was free software they never could have
perpetrated this scheme.

Researchers also could have discovered the fraud had they not been hindered
by the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, as Kit Walsh of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation [argued][6]. The EPA of course failed to understand all
this when drafting their letter promoting the use of DRM.

But there is a more galling fact at play here. What the EPA argued in their
letter was that the exemption should not be granted under the DMCA as a means
for enforcing efficiency standards. That clearly isn't the stated purpose of
the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and highlights one of the
fundamental problems with DRM. That a government agency would try to
commandeer the DRM of private actors, not to enforce copyright but as a means
to enforce something wholly unrelated, demonstrates a central truth: DRM is
not about copyright; it's about control. It's about dominating users. It's
about spying on them. It's about installing [rootkits][7] onto their
computers. It has nothing to do with rights, and everything to do with
restriction.

We can't let governments and corporation use DRM to take over our lives. This
is what you can do today to fight back:

If you microblog, please share the following message (or your own) with the
hashtag #DRMshame. We strongly suggest that if you use [Twitter][8] to
publicly call the EPA  and Volkswagen out, you do it in a way that avoids
using proprietary software:

* @EPA You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to use Digital
Restrictions Management #DRMshame <https://u.fsf.org/fraud>
* @VW  All software on your vehicles needs to be free software without DRM to
restore our trust #DRMshame <https://u.fsf.org/fraud>

Here's what else you can do.:

* Join the [Defective By Design][9] mailing list to keep up to date on the
on-going fight against DRM.
* To help fund our work, consider [donating to the FSF][10].


Happy hacking, 
Donald Robertson
Copyright and Licensing Associate

[1]: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/meet-the-drm-drones
[2]:
http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/USCO-letters/EPA_Letter_to...
[3]: https://www.softwarefreedom.org/
[4]:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/nyregion/volkswagens-di...
[5]: https://sfconservancy.org/
[6]:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/researchers-could-h...
[7]: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/sony
[8]: https://www.fsf.org/twitter
[9]: https://defectivebydesign.org/join
[10]: https://donate.fsf.org
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Sent from the Free Software Foundation,

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