EU drops rule that would prevent self-driving car data from being copyrighted

[mrmondo]

IMO the title is a little misleading - I read 'EU drops rule' as that the EU had removed a rule / cancelled it.

Should probably be something like "EU states that telemetry data collected from self-driving cars may be subject to copyright protection".

Then the bigger discussion should probably be - 'What is telemetry data?'.

If telemetry data is _any_ data collected from a car that could be remotely accessed, then in theory I'd argue that digital oil sensor readings, digital odometer readings and digital tyre pressure readings are all telemetry data if they are stored in a place that can be remotely read.

If that's the case - it could lead to the situation where car manufacturers demand (by law) that you are only allowed to service your car with them and not be a mechanic of your choice.

That may start as a small inconvenience that luxury car owners may be able to afford but as those features come to lower end models it may hurt average or less well off consumers.

Further more, what happened to 'facts' not being copyrightable (generally speaking).

[tjoff]

If I take a picture with my camera the camera manufacturer will not get the copyright. How on earth are car manufacturers gonna be the ones that get the copyright?

(I'm sure you are correct but it feels absurd)

Will software companies claim copyright on logs?

[ofcrpls]

This seems like a direction fallout of the VDA's position paper from 2016[0]

[0]https://www.vda.de/dam/vda/Medien/EN/Themen/Innovation-und-T...

[shostack]

>"That may start as a small inconvenience that luxury car owners may be able to afford but as those features come to lower end models it may hurt average or less well off consumers."

Longer-term, I wonder if that isn't what will ultimately happen anyway if the concept of car ownership sufficiently changes to be predominantly renting from a pool of vehicles, or a model where you "own" it, but lease it out to the pool.

[ivankelly]

this is personal data, GDPR gives you the right to get a full dump of it.

[b_tterc_p]

Hypothetically I think it may make sense to limit arbitrary mechanic shops from repairing driverless cars. If they mess something up that causes the software to malfunction, then the fault of blame gets even more obscure. I would instead hope that such a change would be coupled with reduced car ownership.

[Hermel]

The title is very misleading. The parliament just voted to not include a clause that would have explicitely made that data not copyrightable. Unfortunately, the article does not tell us why this clause was removed. Maybe it was just removed because it is unnecessary?

[dang]

Ok, we've reworded the title above to try to reflect that.

[jandrewrogers]

Automotive telemetry data in many countries is subject to multiple regulatory regimes, not the least of which is GDPR, related to use of this data and who is entitled to access it. Exclusion from copyright protection would appear to be at odds with these regulatory regimes. Entitlement to access usually includes the government and manufacturer.

[arountheworld]

Likely somebody paid for it. EU is creating the law for big corporations, so it seems like one of those would like to copyright telemetry data and EU just amended it to please them.

[llampx]

Where did this People's Party comes from? Sounds very newspeak-ish, considering they only push through legislation benefitting large corporates.

[lumberjack]

They are the centre-right coalition of all centre-right political parties in Europe. It is beyond laughable levels how they corrupt they are. You can predict their stance 100% of the time by assuming it is the business friendly position.

[jahabrewer]

Maybe their full name is the "(Corporations are) People's Party".

[Kliment]

It's a direct translation of the name of their founding member, which is the Spanish Partido Popular. And yes, they're right-wing corporatist authoritarian in Spain too.

[tormeh]

It's a group of mostly centre-right parties. So, conservatives, christian-democrats and the like.

[amelius]

Related: Can we have a rule that crowdsourced data is public domain?

E.g.: Amazon reviews, IMDb reviews and data, YouTube videos, etc. Most of this data belongs to our culture.

[mindslight]

Your comment is a bit weak ("can we have a rule") - but this is exactly the type of thing we should be working towards. Why should software vendors gain legal control over our data, simply because we use their software?

If the compiler vendors could have pulled this crap back in the 80s, the Internet as we know it would not exist.

[Nasrudith]

This is a bit radical but here is a question - what is the public interest that copyrighting this data serves whatsoever - regardless of who it belongs to?

[pavlov]

Not surprising considering the lobbying power of German car companies who are investing in this field.

[ucaetano]

Isn't all telemetry data currently copyrighted? Streetview? Pictures of a street? Satellite images?

Why would it be public domain?

Honest question, I'm not understanding how telemetry data is different than airborne laser scanner data, Streetview, map data, satellite pictures, etc.

Or even server logs generated by an iPhone for Apple, Tesla's car data logs, etc.

[scotty79]

> Why would it be public domain?

Not sure if that's the case but they do not have element of creativity. They just copy real world so why would they deserve any monopoly?

[adrr]

Bigger question as mentioned in the article. Who owns the copyright? If I bought a car, I should own all the data from it.

[quotemstr]

Doesn't Feist preclude copyrighting raw data that wasn't created through some creative spark? That's in the US, granted, but I'd hope similar principles would apply in other jurisdictions.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Telemetry from a car is a side effect from using it rather than an intended product.

[shmerl]

Facts aren't supposed to be copyrightable. They aren't creative works.

[another-cuppa]

> Why would it be public domain?

Copyright is supposed to protect creative works. There is such a thing as a threshold of originality. There are database rights, but that is separate from copyright.

[noobermin]

Ain't it great that it's the same group that pushed the copyright directive. It's funny when the same actors end up being the bad guys.

[sieabahlpark]

I can't wait for someone from the EU to come in and defend this.

[Havoc]

Copyright on telemetry seems pretty stupid in the first place.

[hyperman1]

This seems to open a big can of worms: If it can be copyrighted, it has an author. So who is it?

* Is the driver the author of this data? If yes, does the car company need to get a license to fetch this data or are they pirates? Is the driver permitted to exercises authorship rights like distribution? Why not?

* Or is the car's creator author? Then the driver had no influence on the creation of the data, so can't be responsible for anything: His actions had no consequences.

* Or are both parties co authors? Then you need agreement from every author before you can do anything. This causes both problems at the top at the same time.

[deytempo]

I mean why wouldn’t you want a random video to pop up on mobile when you try to view their site?

[kevin_thibedeau]

That's fine. Of course such data would be owned by the vehicle's owner.

[choot]

I wonder how this will help EU people.

This decision doesn't seem pro consumer.

Maybe automakers control EU and it's a way to secure their future cash cow.

[nouveau0]

Nice work with the title OP

[torgian]

This is why I’ll stick to old cars for as long as possible

[Jyaif]

Old cars are more dangerous; I'm glad to see natural selection getting rid of technophobes.

[dang]

Url changed from https://jalopnik.com/eu-rules-that-any-data-your-autonomous-..., which points to this.

[drivingmenuts]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest very few people will own an autonomous vehicle and will probably rent/lease them instead, which solves the problem neatly, if it happens.

If you don't actually own the thing, then it's harder to claim the data is yours.

[visarga]

Neatly for who?