IMO the title is a little misleading - I read 'EU drops rule' as that the EU had removed a rule / cancelled it.<p>Should probably be something like "EU states that telemetry data collected from self-driving cars may be subject to copyright protection".<p>Then the bigger discussion should probably be - 'What is telemetry data?'.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Further more, what happened to 'facts' not being copyrightable (generally speaking).
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?
Related: Can we have a rule that crowdsourced data is public domain?<p>E.g.: Amazon reviews, IMDb reviews and data, YouTube videos, etc. Most of this data belongs to our culture.
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?
Isn't all telemetry data currently copyrighted? Streetview? Pictures of a street? Satellite images?<p>Why would it be public domain?<p>Honest question, I'm not understanding how telemetry data is different than airborne laser scanner data, Streetview, map data, satellite pictures, etc.<p>Or even server logs generated by an iPhone for Apple, Tesla's car data logs, etc.
This seems to open a big can of worms: If it can be copyrighted, it has an author. So who is it?<p>* 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?<p>* 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.<p>* 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.
I wonder how this will help EU people.<p>This decision doesn't seem pro consumer.<p>Maybe automakers control EU and it's a way to secure their future cash cow.
Url changed from <a href="https://jalopnik.com/eu-rules-that-any-data-your-autonomous-car-generates-is-1829666845" rel="nofollow">https://jalopnik.com/eu-rules-that-any-data-your-autonomous-...</a>, which points to this.
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.<p>If you don't actually own the thing, then it's harder to claim the data is yours.