DIY Tuners... D.Blundell (father of PGMFI.org) being sued by Hondata...
10-26-2007, 10:44 AM
#1
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DIY Tuners... D.Blundell (father of PGMFI.org) being sued by Hondata...
For all of you who like to tune, DIY it and such... PGMFI.org has been the home of everyone wanting to disassemble Honda ecu code... and tune it. D.Blundell, the orginator of the site... no longer the owner... is being sued by the well known Hondata folks... a company who I will forever steer people away from.
http://forum.pgmfi.org/
and
http://forum.pgmfi.org/viewtopic.php?t=11755
You may or may not remember a matter dating to May of 2006.
Someone posted a k-pro downloader on the pgmfi forum. I didn't remove it as quickly as Hondata desired due to exams and being busy as hell. Cease and desists, letters back and forth, demands and counterdemands, etc. (I'll post all the correspondence exchanged previously later.) And yesterday (10/23/07) I get a proper lawsuit on my back step. Not quite proper service, but I get the point.
I'm kind of wondering what the hell Hondata are trying to accomplish. They seem to forget that I have been one of their strongest advocates, encouraging people NOT to go reverse engineering their software. I would think that losing this would be much more harmful than anything else they would seek. I no longer own PGMFI.org (Vladimir Ivanov purchased it last http://forum.pgmfi.org/year) so my ability to affect policy and decisions is limited. I hope they don't think I have any money for them to have...
Oh well.
If anyone thinks they can help or knows of a good IP / internet attorney in LA, let me know. If you have a friend who thinks they can help, show this to them - there is nothing here that isn't public record. I'm more or less broke from trying to get my business off the ground and caring for my family, so it looks like I'll be using the credit cards to pay for my defense. If you feel like contributing to the legal defense, you can send paypal to blundar@gmail.com - Vladimir has already said that he would use some of PGMFI's paypal funds to help out, if needed.
Peace
-Dave Blundell
blundar at gmail dot com
Someone posted a k-pro downloader on the pgmfi forum. I didn't remove it as quickly as Hondata desired due to exams and being busy as hell. Cease and desists, letters back and forth, demands and counterdemands, etc. (I'll post all the correspondence exchanged previously later.) And yesterday (10/23/07) I get a proper lawsuit on my back step. Not quite proper service, but I get the point.
I'm kind of wondering what the hell Hondata are trying to accomplish. They seem to forget that I have been one of their strongest advocates, encouraging people NOT to go reverse engineering their software. I would think that losing this would be much more harmful than anything else they would seek. I no longer own PGMFI.org (Vladimir Ivanov purchased it last http://forum.pgmfi.org/year) so my ability to affect policy and decisions is limited. I hope they don't think I have any money for them to have...
Oh well.
If anyone thinks they can help or knows of a good IP / internet attorney in LA, let me know. If you have a friend who thinks they can help, show this to them - there is nothing here that isn't public record. I'm more or less broke from trying to get my business off the ground and caring for my family, so it looks like I'll be using the credit cards to pay for my defense. If you feel like contributing to the legal defense, you can send paypal to blundar@gmail.com - Vladimir has already said that he would use some of PGMFI's paypal funds to help out, if needed.
Peace
-Dave Blundell
blundar at gmail dot com
and
http://forum.pgmfi.org/viewtopic.php?t=11755
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10-26-2007, 02:09 PM
#3
My questions would be:
a)did someone post it on his server?
b)what is his disclaimer?
c)How is the software illegal?
If you own the hardware you can write whatever software I want to interact with it, hence the whole crakced iPhones, those arent illegal. A good laywer should be able to get the defendant some good money.
a)did someone post it on his server?
b)what is his disclaimer?
c)How is the software illegal?
If you own the hardware you can write whatever software I want to interact with it, hence the whole crakced iPhones, those arent illegal. A good laywer should be able to get the defendant some good money.
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10-26-2007, 02:21 PM
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someone posted it on his server. they asked him to remove, he did eventually.
the software violated hondata's terms of services of some bs, so there are 50 other john doe's on the suit.
and that's about it. suit looks like the claim over $10k of lost revenue
the software violated hondata's terms of services of some bs, so there are 50 other john doe's on the suit.
and that's about it. suit looks like the claim over $10k of lost revenue
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10-26-2007, 03:01 PM
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Hopefully all this does is make Hondata look even crappier than they already are. Dave just doesn't have the means to deal with this, so again.. .hopefully he finds a good lawyer or someone steps up.
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10-26-2007, 03:09 PM
#8
My questions would be:
a)did someone post it on his server?
b)what is his disclaimer?
c)How is the software illegal?
If you own the hardware you can write whatever software I want to interact with it, hence the whole crakced iPhones, those arent illegal. A good laywer should be able to get the defendant some good money.
a)did someone post it on his server?
b)what is his disclaimer?
c)How is the software illegal?
If you own the hardware you can write whatever software I want to interact with it, hence the whole crakced iPhones, those arent illegal. A good laywer should be able to get the defendant some good money.
The software isn't illegal, they want to sue for lost profits that they would have otherwise made if the software was never created.
---------
Ok, this is what I understand from some googling.
Hondata sells software that allows you to reflash the honda ecu with a different firmware. This different firmware is encoded or has some sort of proprietary code built in that only allows it to be modified or downloaded by real hondata software. Some guy some where figured out a way to rip the hondata ecu code from certain K series ecus that have previously been burned with hondata. Hondata got pissed because someone found a work around and wants to sue the pants off the owner of the site because he didnt remove the links fast enough.
EDIT: yea this is pretty ridiculous I must admit.
Last edited by Saml01; 10-26-2007 at 03:19 PM.
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10-26-2007, 10:03 PM
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I hope either the bad PR makes them drop this... or Dave gets a lawyer that will destroy them.
It's basically a big company trying to keep a monopoly....
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10-26-2007, 11:04 PM
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Heh, I did consider MS'ing my car. But the honda ecu can do pretty much everything needed. And the free software exists to do just that... thanks to people like Dave.
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