Adafruit: From Ultimate Driving Machine to Ultimate Rent-Seeking Machine: The BMW Logo Screw Patent.
If you haven’t already heard, BMW’s R&D teams have been busy “innovating.” Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on the things that actually matter—like stellar engine performance or the legendary driving dynamics that gearheads love. Instead, the C-suite execs decided that the best use of their engineering budget was to design a proprietary security screw specifically intended to prevent BMW drivers from fixing their own cars.
No biggie. In less than a week we’ll have thousands of Chinese Amazon sellers providing these tools to everyone for lose to.
It’s almost, as if the article answers that question with a resounding “no, that’s not going to help either.”
Yes, but. If they add enough “special” things you need, that will reduce the number of average people and independent mechanics that will go through the trouble of getting all the “special” tools. Thier goal isn’t to stop you. It’s to inconvenience enough people so that they won’t bother. Which drives more business to thier shops, which in turn makes them more money. And since they are publicly traded, it doesn’t even have to actually make them money. Just make the market think it might.
Its all a plan. People think I’m a conspiracy nut when i explain it. I think they’re dumb for not seeing it. Capitalism is the best planned scam.
This is the only focus on the ultra wealthy market, let the wanna be people pay too much, and fuck the rest of the low profit margin people.
Good news is this how you get a French/Russian Revolution. Eventually.
Yeah, security screws are security theatre. I had an electronics screw driver set that came with a bunch of the rarer screw bits by default. Actually ran into one I didn’t have, then noticed another set with that one (plus other features like the long bendy bit for hard to reach screws) next time I was in the tool section and just bought it.
That said, I won’t be needing this one. Driving a BMW would go against the image I’m trying to cultivate of not being an asshole.
Until you’re halfway through putting in new brake pads and realize you need a specialty bit and now you’re stuck without a working car until you get that Amazon package.
At that point that bolt is getting destructively removed and replaced with a different bolt from the hardware store. Unless they have custom thread pitches, there’s going to be an easy replacement.
Edit but I don’t own a BMW and never will, my first car was the bargainest basement commuter car and my next one will be too.
That would be circumventing a protection mechanism. Isn’t that a violation of the DMCA in the US?
No. It is a physical item. So long as 5here is no branding it would be fine
Amazon does not want to enforce this. By the time one seller is banned, 10 new accounts sell the same thing again.
Yes and and violating anti-circumvention is now a crime… not a civil offense, prison. For repairing an item that you own.
I guess that’s what we, the labor class, get for not spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbyists like the Founding Fathers intended.
The digital millennium copyright act? That thing that companies use to take down copyright violation videos and photos?
I think this is more likely patent law which is not something that has ever stopped Chinese manufacturing from producing cheaper alternatives to the same concept.
The DMCA has a section that says (high level) it is illegal to circumvent a technological protection measure that protects copyrighted materials. DMCA was used for years to prevent farmers from repairing their John Deere’s equipment themselves. They only got that 2 years ago after a legal battle. So the question is: can a fancy screw be considered a TPM?
DMCA is interpreted very widely.
It criminalizes circumventing anything that could be used to protect copywritten information. So they just add copywritten stuff where it isn’t needed to criminalize anything they don’t want you to do. It’s why washing machines now have proprietary software and circuit boards instead of mechanical switches and why printer ink cartridges have chips on board.