Do you own ALL of your bike?

So with software becoming proprietary and copyrighted in ECU's , which almost all bikes now include to control fueling, ignition and a variety of traction controls, manufacturers in equipment have built lawsuits (US) that the copyrighted software remains the property of the original OEM. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (again US) means you cant legally touch the programming without falling on the wrong side of the law.
Reflashing an ECU, which about a thousand performance shops do, is actually illegal in context.
Some manufactures are going to great length to make jailbreaking the ECU a lot harder. And they all record changes so removing a mod before going to the dealer might not leave you in the clear.

Not a motorcycle company , but the largest equipment manufacturer in the world, John Deere, issues 'an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle' , your just driving the tractor.

Then there are the warranty issues of an altered ECU, and they are now building hidden into the software, data collectors that will let them know if the ECU has any program changes. The onus would be on them to prove the change affected the breakdown, but with electronic suspension and everything else running through the 'brain' , it might be awkward and long process.

are we entering the phase where you buy a new bike, but don't own all the operating systems? Tin foil hat on tight......

The funny part of this is that the way the Power Commander operates would completely circumvent any such legal or technical protection. The original ECU is untouched, it just works around it.

The new RSV4 calculates maintenance periods based on the engine load you put on it. A good idea... or a bad one, you pick. For certain, it's tracking the use of the bike and it should be obvious to a dealership if you've had it at the track and/or raced it. I suspect that other bikes are doing the same or will follow suit.

Not exactly what you were asking, but not exactly not, either.

FWIW you can buy a "race ECU" or get the ECU flashed to race specs, which disables several things including all emissions checks... lets you pull the cat / change the exhaust etc. So not all is lost.

I own about 110% of my bike, including spare parts.

The only concession I make to technology is transistorized ignition.

It's not tinfoil territory anymore. Caterpillar's proposed new leasing contracts allow Caterpillar to brick the ECU on vehicles if the lessee falls behind on payments. It's natural to assume a hefty fee will accompany re-activation.

Wait until the TPP takes effect. Lawyers worldwide are drooling at the possibilities and Apple will likely lead the charge. Think Different indeed.

crankcall said:

So with software becoming proprietary and copyrighted in ECU's , which almost all bikes now include to control fueling, ignition and a variety of traction controls, manufacturers in equipment have built lawsuits (US) that the copyrighted software remains the property of the original OEM. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (again US) means you cant legally touch the programming without falling on the wrong side of the law.

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Interesting. I doubt this is the intended function of DMCA though.

DMCA, as I understand it, is primarily aimed at circumventing measures put in place to prevent, for example, copying of BlueRay discs and then disseminating these digital copies on the web for everyone to download. Same with music and other like works.

You bought your bike from Yamaha (exempli gratia); or you bought it from someone else who bought it from Yamaha. In the end, Yamaha was paid for that motorcycle and its intellectual property. This is not the case with things DMCA was intended to cover, such as pirated movies and music download sites. Digital copies being made and sold for profit (or distributed freely) and denying the original creator profit don't really apply to the re-flashing of a paid-for ECU.

But DMCA might make sense in the following scenario: Someone reverse-engineers a Yamaha ECU and produces a near replica in hardware. They lack the chops to write firmware so they hook up a debugger to the Yamaha ECU, read the firmware out and installs it in their ECU. They then market this ECU to some hypothetical market (Formula SAE cars, engine swaps in bikes etc) and begins making profit. Clearly the copying and use of Yamaha ECU firmware could be seen as a copyright infringement.

I've sometimes wondered about the aftermarket for ECU flashes. In the old, old days you could buy a "chip" from Superchips for GM C3 & P4 ECMs (so think late 80s and early 90s) which looked like this:



The PROM used in these contained all of the code as well as the calibration data. Superchips clearly copied the contents of GM PROMs, edited a couple of values in calibration tables (usually to bump spark timing) and then burned their own PROMs and sold them. Copyright infringement?

Newer stuff is likely altering only calibration values and not touching code. Is writing bytes over existing calibration values infringing on copyright? Gray area to me.

What is almost assuredly illegal in altering these calibration tables is the EPA/emissions-compliance side of things.

Reflashing an ECU, which about a thousand performance shops do, is actually illegal in context.
Some manufactures are going to great length to make jailbreaking the ECU a lot harder. And they all record changes so removing a mod before going to the dealer might not leave you in the clear.

Not a motorcycle company , but the largest equipment manufacturer in the world, John Deere, issues 'an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle' , your just driving the tractor.

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There may be some light at the end of that tunnel:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-petition-inspect-and-modify-car-software

Then there are the warranty issues of an altered ECU, and they are now building hidden into the software, data collectors that will let them know if the ECU has any program changes. The onus would be on them to prove the change affected the breakdown, but with electronic suspension and everything else running through the 'brain' , it might be awkward and long process.

Click to expand...

Warranty issues are okay with me. A long-standing tradition in the Subaru community is to flash a Cobb Stg 1 or Stg 2 calibration. They ramp up the boost, run crap gas and break a ringland or two. They then flash it back to stock and sob to Subaru trying to make a warranty claim. Subaru has every right to know that such a modification took place when it is presented with a stock-appearing car with mysteriously-broken ringlands.

Flywheel said:

It's not tinfoil territory anymore. Caterpillar's proposed new leasing contracts allow Caterpillar to brick the ECU on vehicles if the lessee falls behind on payments..

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To play devils advocate, when you're leasing a vehicle it's far from being technically "yours", however. It's a glorified rental, basically. For the technical owner to maintain some control over it still shouldn't be frowned upon IMHO, even though its via a means that some would consider overbearing or sneaky. However, if you were the ones fronting a tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars piece of machinery to someone based on a promise to make payments that could suddenly stop one day...you might think it so wrong anymore.

Buy said Cat outright and they likely won't care about your ECM ever again...unless perhaps it's stolen and the rightful owner requests such, and they're willing to accommodate that, but that's a different situation and a potential benefit to the owner vs a negative at that point.

Flywheel said:

It's not tinfoil territory anymore. Caterpillar's proposed new leasing contracts allow Caterpillar to brick the ECU on vehicles if the lessee falls behind on payments. It's natural to assume a hefty fee will accompany re-activation.

Wait until the TPP takes effect. Lawyers worldwide are drooling at the possibilities and Apple will likely lead the charge. Think Different indeed.

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Time to buy a horse. Emissions are rough on those things though.

I can't think of a quicker way to put yourself out of business than to start dictating to your customers what they can do with the vehicle they just paid a huge price for.

You own ALL your bike, you do not have the right to COPY the ECU and go and build your own....

Roadghost said:

I can't think of a quicker way to put yourself out of business than to start dictating to your customers what they can do with the vehicle they just paid a huge price for.

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Unless they all colude to do it at the same time, then where does one go to get a vehicle?

RedDogDarren said:

Time to buy a horse. Emissions are rough on those things though.

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When they invented the automobile they though.... Great, no more horshit all over the place. Now we gotta worry about air quality. No magic bullet I suppose

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...mption-legalizing-vehicle-software-tinkering/

Tinker as you see fit.

Whether the resulting tinkering remains in compliance with other requirements for road-legal vehicles (e.g. emissions) is of course quite another matter.

This problem has been around for a long time. Think Geohot vs Sony

Blackfin said:

Warranty issues are okay with me. A long-standing tradition in the Subaru community is to flash a Cobb Stg 1 or Stg 2 calibration. They ramp up the boost, run crap gas and break a ringland or two. They then flash it back to stock and sob to Subaru trying to make a warranty claim. Subaru has every right to know that such a modification took place when it is presented with a stock-appearing car with mysteriously-broken ringlands.

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Whether a tech working on the vehicle is savvy enough to be aware of this is questionable, BUT, all modern day cars have ECUs with non-volatile memory capabilities for recording the number of times an ECU is altered/flashed. Auto manufacturers are increasingly using undocumented records (particularly when more than just 1 undocumented) of the ECU being altered/flashed as evidence the car was not running original programming to deny warranty claims.

I personally know that GM and VW have been doing this for sometime on their turbocharged engines, notably the inline 4 found in everything from Buicks, to HHRs, to Pontiacs with GM, and the 1.8T and now 2.0T inline 4 family with VW. VW used to let people get away with it over and over again about a decade ago with the 1.8T engine era. But now both VW and GM definitely do check for this, and I would be surprised if other companies like Subaru aren't also doing this now.

Paulo M. said:

But now both VW and GM definitely do check for this, and I would be surprised if other companies like Subaru aren't also doing this now.

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For the last few years GM (on their Duramax diesel trucks) has a section of the NVRAM where the ECM records the maximum torque figure that has passed through the transmission. When guys feel that the 400 HP their truck left the factory with is somehow not enough and add a tuner to add another crapload of it, it leaves a telltale....so yeah, when they tear out the transmission (most common issue) and then try to claim warranty, well..not so much.

PrivatePilot said:

For the last few years GM (on their Duramax diesel trucks) has a section of the NVRAM where the ECM records the maximum torque figure that has passed through the transmission. When guys feel that the 400 HP their truck left the factory with is somehow not enough and add a tuner to add another crapload of it, it leaves a telltale....so yeah, when they tear out the transmission (most common issue) and then try to claim warranty, well..not so much.

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Now diesel truck owners tune mostly to fix small nuances and their fuel mielage. The dead pedal on the new duramax can be quite annoying/dangerous and when you can increase your fuel mielage by ~15% for ~$1500 with the added side affect of more power, which if abused will obviously over load other components. Speed/power isn't always the only reason to tune a +$60k truck and loose the warranty.

I figure if your deep into tuning and pass the power commander level you'd have your own standalone ecu with a program not made by your manufacture program anyways.

And I rather be old school in playing with jets, etc.,

dricked said:

Now diesel truck owners tune mostly to fix small nuances and their fuel mielage. The dead pedal on the new duramax can be quite annoying/dangerous and when you can increase your fuel mielage by ~15% for ~$1500 with the added side affect of more power, which if abused will obviously over load other components. Speed/power isn't always the only reason to tune a +$60k truck and loose the warranty.

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I agree, I know a lot of guys tune to fix issues aside from solely tuning for more power, but I think you'd have to agree that there's a good percentage that also do it just for the power...then they can tell their Cummins friends (for example) that they're making 500hp and therefore have the bigger balls.

I don't get the pickup power wars myself. Some guys with 3/4ton trucks are making more horsepower (claiming they "need" it to tow their 6000# travel trailer) all while I'm pulling 100,000+ pounds with less horsepower in my class 8 truck. <shrug>

starboy869 said:

I figure if your deep into tuning and pass the power commander level you'd have your own standalone ecu with a program not made by your manufacture program anyways.

And I rather be old school in playing with jets, etc.,

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While it's possible to run an engine with a stand-alone controller and they most certainly do exist (MoTeC on the high end, Megasquirt on the low end) there is a mountain of programming related to OBDII, interfacing with traction / stability control, instruments, etc which none of the aftermarket controllers have. If you are building a race car, or something that isn't a daily driver and isn't subject to emission testing, then the aftermarket controllers will work. Leaving the stock ECU in place and tinkering with the maps while leaving all that programming in place allows an OBDII-based emissions test to be passed, your cruise control will still work, traction control will still work, etc., which is a much better deal for a daily driver.