metoxide said:Some ems allow several maps to be programmed and selectively locked. This allows Tuners' maps which is by right their intellectual property to be locked in while standard maps from manufacturer to be accessible. Please understand that real tuners spent hundreds of dynohours to come up with their maps. I sure as heck don't want some enterprising customer to start pirating the map I sold him.
The "intellectual property" is an interesting issue. One side of the argument is that since customer has already paid the tuner for his hard works on tuning, the "intellectual property" is now passed and rightly belongs to the customer. It is now the property of the customer and it is up to him as to what he does with it.
Tuning is not the same as writing a book or creating a commercial software or stuff that can be patented. Proper practice of tuning should be about getting the engine tuned in for the conditions specific to that one car only. It is not something that a tuner should mass produce, upload it onto any one similar vehicle ems that he is asked to tune, and charge his customer a fee. What will you feel if your car has the same tuning as your freind/rival's car of the same spec(but not necesarily in the same conditions) because the tuner just upload an old copy of his mapping collection to your ems and return the car to you after you pay him? You will surely feel dissatisfied and your car may also be performing lousier than your friend/rival's car and you probably want to get another tuner to redo the tuning for you. Or you might as well sell your ems and go for rechipping of your factory's ecu after all since you also cannot have access to the mapping contained in the chip anyway.:regular_smile:
I stand to be corrected and others' experience and opinion is welcomed:regular_smile:
a spin-off of the software crisis XD