ACA urges expanding digital copyright repair exemption

WASHINGTON — Expanding the consumer exemption for auto repair under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a necessity for auto repair professionals, the Auto Care Association (ACA) told the U.S. Copyright Office during an April 10 hearing on the DMCA.

The DMCA exemption currently allows access to encrypted software for car owners only for purposes of repair, according to Aaron Lowe, ACA senior vice president for regulatory and government affairs, who testified at the hearing at Copyright Office headquarters in Washington.

However, said auto repairers must have the DMCA expansion exempted to them, Mr. Lowe said, because car owners often do not have the knowledge or technological capabilities to perform their own repairs.

Companies with expertise in software development should be allowed to access embedded software in order to make repair solutions available to both servicers and consumers, he said.

"This provides obvious benefits to the market and the public," Mr. Lowe said.

"Vehicle repair software will be of consistently high quality and reliability. Additionally, the costs of circumvention and software repair can be spread among the many thousands of servicers that acquire the solution."

Telematics systems should also be included in the exemption, according to Mr. Lowe.

"Currently repairers and consumer are dependent on access to the onboard diagnostic ports on vehicles," he said.

"Should manufacturers determine to limit data from that port to only legally required emissions-related information, car owners and those that provide repairs for them would be forced to depend on the vehicle manufacturers for critical diagnostic information at whatever cost they wanted to charge," he said.

The DMCA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on Oct. 28, 1998.