The big if here is that anyone would have bothered in the first place. There are far more enticing targets the DMCA puts out of reach, emission software doesn't ever seem to get mention but we can sure it will in the future.
What I want to see is that all current cars are put through the wringer to insure no other manufacturer is gaming the system.
That's still reactionary policy: "Ooh, we discovered it's possible to game the system doing X. Let's do more black-box testing and specifically look for X." I agree that's par for the course for the hamstrung Congress, but let's not taint ideological discourse with pessimistic realism.
It's also ignoring the larger picture, which I've seen echoed more across this thread: the software governing physical processes should not receive more protection than the physical process itself. Black-box testing is a very poor substitute for dismantling and testing each part in isolation, and if manufacturers are able to subvert regulation by encoding the more useful bits in software and then claim "IP" or "DMCA", expect to see more of these things in the future, not less.
So personally, I would go much further in my suggested response (but I'm not a politician): given the active subversion performed here, I would halt all sales and imports of VW products until they share all source code for their entire (US) range. That should serve as a better deterrent than fines IMHO.
> So personally, I would go much further in my suggested response (but I'm not a politician): given the active subversion performed here, I would halt all sales and imports of VW products until they share all source code for their entire (US) range. That should serve as a better deterrent than fines IMHO.
Why not just require that for all cars? It seems a completely sensible policy. Just doing it after a manufacturer has been caught cheating is a reactionary view too.
What I want to see is that all current cars are put through the wringer to insure no other manufacturer is gaming the system.