Let us repair our cars!

Petition Start: April 2017
Petition Aimed At: Car Owners, Enthusiasts and Mechanics
Did you know that it may soon be against the law to repair your car? Not just to modify it (which is almost understandable), but to simply try and repair it on your own?
The reason actually comes down to copyright issues. You see, cars are now getting so incredibly complex and high tech, that they are now classified as computers in many instances. This means that the usual laws don’t quite apply in the same way that they used to. Instead, cars are now subject to the same copyright laws that apply to computers.
You are not allowed to simply open up your computer and start modifying it technically. The reason for this is that computers are at risk of being copied – and in particular, this is true of the software side of things. As a result, they include electronic ‘locks’ and various forms of encryption that are designed to prevent you from getting in and reverse engineering it yourself.
And it goes against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to bypass these locks! That’s right: even if you have entirely honest and genuine motives and you simply want to make a repair to your own computer, you are not allowed to because that would mean bypassing systems that have been put in place.
And now the same is true of many cars as well. And soon the number of affected vehicles will increase.
Hopefully, you don’t need me to tell you that this is unacceptable. We should all be entitled to use our own technology as we see fit and certainly to repair it if it ever goes wrong. At the moment, the only way to get a repair is to send the vehicle back to the manufacturers and have it repaired and returned to you. This is fine if you’re in warranty but otherwise it will get expensive.
So what can be done? Whether the answer is a change to the law, a change in the way cars are manufactured or something else it doesn’t matter… as long as something is done!