Mazda is angry a customer used an API in a manner they couldn’t control. You can read the DMCA takedown notice here.
Just start charging exorbitant amounts of money for every API call; problem solved! —Spez
(Also: Fuck Spez)
This will be over soon. When the EU’s Data Act comes into force, car manufacturers will be obliged to allow access to vehicle data.
Also isn’t it Mazda’s fault for creating an API that anyone can access and get information from? Someone in Mazda IT is probably frantically looking for the email chain where he was told to “just make it public” so our outside analysts can use it.
I think yes, assuming nobody grabbed an API key out of the Mazda app or something.
Quite often these integrations just take the authentication token or cookie during OAuth or the normal login process.
Actions like that would be impossible with WEI.
A huge project at my work got pushed back because a company we are working with decided to make the API public…
And if available in Europe, do you think that information will not appear elsewhere? Mazda is not going to create a separate API for them alone.
This doesn’t make any sense. API requests are not proprietary.
Yep, this looks like a blatant abuse of the DMCA by Mazda. Either Mazda is engaging in scummy behavior or they need better lawyers. Either way, it makes me want to never buy another Mazda.
That doesn’t stop anybody. Just this morning Amazon sent out a wave of C&Ds because people were using their public APIs to access “proprietary data.”
It reads to me like: “this app does the same thing as our app therefore they must have copied our code; there is no other possible explanation”. Cool story, bro. I hope the developers will fight back but that takes lots of money.
The article states this was a hobby of his and he won’t be defending it as it would entail financial cost of mounting a legal defense.
I didn’t really get it until I read the article (shut up 😃), but it seems pretty clear that Mazda’s primary concern here appears to be access to this API through Home Assistant cutting off future (maybe current) owners’ requirement to subscribe to their app for features.
man, remember when you could buy a car and it wasnt connected to the internet?
What a load of horse shit.
Just like with hue, and Chromecast, and Android TV, and a million other smart devices, it’s perfectly lawful (and IMHO necessary) for individuals to launch their own integrations with their the products they own. People don’t need their bullshit “service”, and by buying the vehicle they have a legally protected right to alter it and it’s software for their own use.
That they bullied this guy into taking down the repo despite what the law protects him to do is disgusting, if not also predictable.
I hope someone with the time and resources goes to the matt with one of these shit companies and make them own up to their exploitative practices.
I for one will be altering my Mazda how I want and sharing my alterations to get around their shit subscription model with everyone I can.
Eh, it’s preferable when companies go ahead and self-identify as being comprehensively dog shit and worthless.
Just another company to throw on the list who will never receive a single dollar of my money as long as I live.
Won’t lose a wink of sleep over it. Good luck, Mazda.
I’ll move closer to the city and walk or use public transit.
Frankly, that’s unlikely. The free market will always make sure someone is there to disrupt, and I’ll always support the disruptor.
I supported the disruptor to cable so hard they became the thing they disrupted and now I don’t have netflix
Perhaps for chapter consumer products, but starting a car company that produces normal mass produced cars is not really done overnight. And Tesla produces the most shite cars of all of them only really disrupting by cutting out customer service at this point.
When that happens, someone appears to make their version of the product without it.
Yep. I wouldn’t want to make it into a list but bmw and mazda are already on my blacklist
Yep Mazda is my first auto maker blacklist… I’ve got Sony at the top from numerous incidents around 2004-2006, and Google since 2016. (obvs can’t get 100% away from Google because they keep buying companies, but I only need to get rid of my Nest and Fitbit shit to be completely google-free!)
