Quote from: GhostlyGrenade on June 30, 2020, 04:44:34 PM
Quote from: StealBlueSHO on June 30, 2020, 04:03:16 PM
At the end of the day I support tuners protecting their IP. And as far as I am concerned, the amount of time a tuner spends messing with tables to get the desired results is part of that IP.
So if someone completely rips off someone else's tune, that could be decades and years of knowledge that someone is taking as their own.
Now the real danger here is not the average Joe who rips it and tweaks himself into oblivion. That is zero revenue lost to the tuner...
Its the guys who open up a shop say "Super Secret Inc" and sell said tunes to 100's of people... that's when the damage happens.
Tuners make no money off a single data logged tune if you think of the time spent on it... one customer who has a interesting issue in the tune wipes out any hours gained on a few straight forward sales... so they have to sell a ton of tunes to support a business...
Look at the prices for tunes on other platforms that require data logging.. its significantly more than the $150 we pay.. a custom tune on almost any other platform is stupid pricey..
So the argument of should tuners lock their tunes? I would simply say yes, if anything, to prevent Joe from opening a tooning shop, and just reselling a tune they don't understand... and heaven knows if they tweaked it not understanding the full impact of their modifications..
I could go on... but for those worried about adjusting wheels sizes, etc.. in MOST cases, a tuner will make that change if you need it.
So if someone downloads a movie, they would have definitely went to see it otherwise right? The lost revenue argument doesn't hold up.
This isn't like a book or movie/music...you can't just make 100 copies and sell em. You wouldn't need datalogging if it was that easy.
Surely this IP can be copyrighted then? Patented?
Oh....so this is more like adjusting a pass through filter. I'm just tweaking existing settings...and if by chance I match the timing curve of another...I'm stealing erm "plagiarizing" if you will.
My point is only the end user is harmed. If a tuner wants to steal a tune(which most tunes aren't swappable between cars...except gearhead AO)
They will most likely do a bin dump. There is no current protection against this.
You could copyright a tune, but you'd be copyrighting that exact coded development, and since every car is a different strategy, setup and configuration you'd go broke trying to protect your investment and it would be counter intuitive. Instead the industry relies on integrity between calibration engineers to not steal or copy data from one another. Does it happen? Most definitely as people will do anything to make a buck. But much like a mechanical component, hours of R&D goes into the development of a proper calibration and rather than charge $1000 per tune like some Mustang tuners, we rely on volume from the market to make up the difference.
Luis has monthly classes both online and in person to teach Mustang tuning. He's had many clients offer large sums of money to purchase his templates, but there is a certain art with tuning that is refined only through trial and error to understand why the changes are needed and what each tuning modification affects in the long run.
If you look hard enough, there are services out there that cater to the DIYer and actually have ripped HPT files from many tuners. Last I saw many of Gearhead's diesel files were on there for $20 each, as well as most of Lund's calibrations.
I know we're all trying to get through this game as cheap as possible, but when you buy a tune you aren't just buying a file, you're buying a tuner's experience, knowledge and expertise on the platform. Post sale support is just as important as the pre-sale marketing.