The difference is this company provides a bunch of cloud services to roll out specific tunes at scale.
From the original filing:
> "EZ Lynk worked with/previewed the EZ Lynk System for at least two delete tune creators during development and before launching the EZ Lynk System. Those creators later disseminated delete tunes using the EZ Lynk System. There were numerous social media websites, including the “EZ Lynk Forum,” where third parties discussed using the EZ Lynk System to defeat emission controls. The Forum was run by EZ Lynk and one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development, and it provided contact information for EZ Lynk technical support. EZ Lynk representatives interacted with posts and videos about deleting emission controls and installing delete tunes, including tunes from one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development."
So it does seem like the DOJ is going after them for collaborating on developing and enabling the tunes. I suspect the subpoena is about establishing damages.
On top of that, wow, if you're familiar with how humans think and how prosecutors write indictments, that's some weak sauce. Look at this:
> EZ Lynk worked with/previewed the EZ Lynk System for at least two delete tune creators during development and before launching the EZ Lynk System. Those creators later disseminated delete tunes using the EZ Lynk System.
They worked with some developers. No claim that they knew what the developers were planning to produce at the time. Later the same developers published something alleged to be illegal.
> There were numerous social media websites, including the “EZ Lynk Forum,” where third parties discussed using the EZ Lynk System to defeat emission controls. The Forum was run by EZ Lynk and one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development, and it provided contact information for EZ Lynk technical support.
Users posted things on social media. There was a thing called "EZ Lynk Forum" that wasn't even entirely controlled by the company and from what I can tell was actually a Facebook group. The group listed the (presumably publicly known) contact info for their tech support.
> EZ Lynk representatives interacted with posts and videos about deleting emission controls and installing delete tunes, including tunes from one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development.
"Interacted with" as in the company's peons weren't lawyers, so their PR flacks liked posts praising the company and their tech support answered tech support questions, without paying attention to whether the user was doing something they weren't supposed to.
This is looking increasingly like a farce. That kind of stuff is vapid. If a user has a tech support question and mentioning that they want to defeat emissions means the company refuses to answer it then the user just comes back later or with a different account and asks the same question without mentioning their use case, right?
These kinds of prosecutions are the worst. It's punishing a company for saying the wrong things, i.e. having insufficiently aggressive lawyers, even if it has no real effect on what they do. It's a trap for the unwary and a bludgeon against companies insufficiently bureaucratic to have all their employees trained in corporate censorship practices.
Now you have me wondering if this is their real target, to go after people who are defeating CRM on their vehicles so they can repair them themselves or in their small mom-and-pop garage of choice. But right to repair is popular, so they have to claim it's for something else.