Mazda’s DMCA takedown kills a hobbyist’s smart car API tool

Just start charging exorbitant amounts of money for every API call; problem solved! —Spez

(Also: Fuck Spez)

This will be over soon. When the EU's Data Act comes into force, car manufacturers will be obliged to allow access to vehicle data.

This doesn't make any sense. API requests are not proprietary.

I didn’t really get it until I read the article (shut up 😃), but it seems pretty clear that Mazda’s primary concern here appears to be access to this API through Home Assistant cutting off future (maybe current) owners’ requirement to subscribe to their app for features.

Eh, it's preferable when companies go ahead and self-identify as being comprehensively dog shit and worthless.

Just another company to throw on the list who will never receive a single dollar of my money as long as I live.

Won't lose a wink of sleep over it. Good luck, Mazda.

DMCA is broken, intellectual property is a scam.

I don't get it. People are working for free to add a feature to your product which might move more people to buy said product. Make users who use external features acknowledge some waiver that your company is not responsible for damage. If it turns out to be really good, you can fork it, hire the original inventor and turn it into a paid product. Isn't that a risk-free win? Am I missing something?

A Federated git repo would make this immune from an easy take-down.

Well then, anyone have this code archived? Time to make sure it makes it to torrent networks. The only way we render the DMCA irrelevant is to make it useless.

Make sure to keep the checksums in place.

What a fucking joke. Let me tell you, these car OEMs are fucking SHIT at API development in general. Shit, it's a fuckin miracle when they actually have APIs. A major OEM (won't mention as it's work related for me) just recently published their APIs and MY GOD are they fucking trash, inconsistent, and throw 5xx for fucking any reason (this is absolutely NOT a small or new OEM by any fucking means... Luxury brand)

This is simply a shit company trying to punish people because of their own incompetencies when it comes to API design and management. Oh and just anti-consumer in general, just like how they attack right-to-repair at every fuckin turn possible.

FUCK capitalism, it's fucking broken; instead of ensuring that competition drives innovation we instead get.... LESS control LESS features for MORE across the board (subscriptions, anyone?). Anyone talking about the free market's inherent innovation is a FUCKING GODDAMN MORON

So .. is there a copy of the repo left that we can replicate endlessly?

I'll be buying a new car soon. Fuck Mazda.

Should be legally protected and these companies should receive heavy fines for false DMCA claims

Permanently Deleted

Never buy Mazda. Gotcha.

I already thought Mazda sucked and made shit products, so it’s nice that they confirmed it’s not just their products that are mediocre at best, it’s their whole business.

Edit: Turns out my long standing perception of Mazda is woefully incorrect. I could have sworn they had a string of bad reliability issues in the early 2000’s and 2010’s but it turns out that’s just plain wrong. Couldn’t tell you what I was thinking of. Leaving the OG comment to laugh at my mistake.

They can still eat a bag of dicks though for this DMCA abuse though.

This is like sueing someone for knocking on your door. Just lawyers and business vampires tripping over their own dicks.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Before last week, owners of certain Mazda vehicles who also had a Home Assistant setup could create some handy connections for their car.

In a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice sent to GitHub, Mazda (or an authorized agent) alleges that Rothweiler's integration:

Frequent Home Assistant contributor J. Nick Kolston, or bdraco on GitHub, was the first of many commenters confused by Mazda's code claims.

Reverse-engineering for interoperability, such as exposing the Mazda app's particulars to Home Assistant, could be considered a fair use exception to the DMCA, as explained by the EFF.

Integrations involving other car brands, including Subaru, the Nissan Leaf, and Tesla's Wall Connector, are still present.

"We genuinely believe there is a common ground between us and Mazda when it comes to enabling the owners of their cars to explore the possibilities of their own data," Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen wrote.

The original article contains 523 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!