As an aside, this is not the first round of this particular fight, and it has been won by consumers before. See the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act[1], for example.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
151–160 of 405 posts
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#152I am not a lawyer, so I'm probably wrong on some of the finer points here, but I'm going to postulate an analogy here. Why can't we equate the software inside a computer inside a vehicle with the mechanical equivalent? What then would our rights be? It obviously doesn't require permission to move a valve or a gear around. Therefore, it shouldn't require permission to move a few bits. It also doesn't require permissio…
"Why can't we equate the software inside a computer inside a vehicle with the mechanical equivalent? What then would our rights be?" Well, probably because software is unlike the mechanical equivalent. How could it not be? When I own a hammer, and I sell it to you and hand it to you, you have it and I don't. Music scores, software, movies etc. don't work that way, so they need a different system to work in. That syst…
No legal or moral principle mandates we treat all software identically under the law without respect to use case, though. Tractor firmware, Adobe Photoshop and that digital copy of the U2 album you didn't want are all software, but they're expressions of very different things with distinguishing characteristics. In the case of the tractor firmware, an obvious distinguishing characteristic is that the firmware is just as critical to the function of the tractor as any mechanical part. I don't see any reason why the law couldn't mandate that you own your copy of that firmware. (Actually, I don't see any reason why the law couldn't mandate that in all the cases I mentioned; I think people on both sides of the IP debate are making a categorical error by assuming that the zero marginal cost of software reproduction changes everything. It doesn't. It just changes, well, the marginal cost.)
In another comment, I think you said that you thought describing this as "challenging the notion of ownership" as pandering to the (presumably anti-IP) audience. Maybe, but there's very little difference in practice between "you do not actually own your tractor" and "okay, you own your tractor, but don't own this critical thing without which the tractor cannot run, and you're not allowed to modify that thing in any way or even replace that thing with something you can modify." The second clause doesn't give whoever owns that critical thing possession of your tractor, but it gives them at least some level of control of your tractor. Maybe you're comfortable with that, maybe you're not -- objectively the same case can be made for my iPhone, after all, and I'm generally okay with that. But if my iPhone is put out of commission for a week by a firmware cockup I'm just going to be inconvenienced, whereas a farmer might lose a lot of potential income if that comes at the wrong time. I don't think it's irrational to argue that the law should recognize that difference.
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…
"Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all." We still have family farms in North Dakota, so I guess it might be a regional thing. Also, for those counting incorporations (like a couple of newspapers), you have to be stupid not to incorporate.
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Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree. The family owned farmers care too. For the big equipment, like combines, there's a handful of people everyone pays to have their fields harvested. This person get's compensation in the form of money and other services (someone else will plow their field for instance). People own their own tractors and share time to get things done, otherwise you'd have to own all of the equipment (which is only justified wh…
Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…
That may be true in Iowa, but in Utah, there are still quite a few family farms. Even if we are a shrinking minority, it still seems worthwhile to fight to own our own small pieces of equipment.
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#155It's pretty clear to me what a reasonable solution to this would be. If you buy a laptop you don't "own" the OS you have a license to it and you can install another OS on it you just won't be able to get tech support for the non-standard OS. If you buy a tractor you should be able to do the same and the manufacturer should be required to provide enough information about the hardware systems and their functions that if someone wants to write a open source tractor OS they could. (Think DDWRT, for Tractors)
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#156I'm not a lawyer, and I have a fairly pedestrian grasp of the DMCA. My understanding is that the law, created in the Internet's infancy, is meant to protect and prevent direct copyright infringment. Can anyone explain why they're allowed to (seemingly) abuse this act? They're not selling pirated copies of the tractor control software?
"Can anyone explain why they're allowed to (seemingly) abuse this act?"
Simple. It's not being abused. It's working as intended.
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is getting meta and no longer directly responsive to the article, which I don't wholly disagree with. A tractor and a book are different situations. Books are hard to copy, while files are easy to copy. Writers have to get paid, and people are cheap and don't want to pay them... even while they will pay the same for a fancy cup of coffee. Hence a scramble for some way to set up a toll booth that is hard to circu…
Stallman is not a tenured academic. He's the president of a non-profit (the FSF). He makes his living from people's voluntary donations and (I presume) speaking fees.
He does not get paid by the FSF, nor does he accept speaking fees (insofar as I am aware; I'm not sure if there are certain sponsors, but he insists that those be donated to the FSF, not himself); his time is donated. He received a MacArthur grant a while back, while he is able to live off of.
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…
Is this land that is being bought for future subdivisions? Definitely have seen this in areas by suburban areas. Certainly not all farming is being done at a loss?
> Certainly not all farming is being done at a loss?
A big corp can calculate differently from your small farmers. It's OK to them if the field turns profitable finally in 20 or 30 years because they have enough other sources of income to pay for the mortgage (or buy the field out of pocket).
The small farmer on the other hand would be bankrupt by then.
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#159I think it is interesting to frame this debate in terms of the near future of self driving cars. The true benefit of those cars will only be realized when they dominate the road and can freely communicate with each other. That could lead to crazy things like stop lights and stop signs disappearing and cars flying through intersections at nearly full speed. But what happens when individual owners start altering the software of these machines? Let's say they "overclock" their speed to travel at 105% of "normal". That would put not only themselves, but everyone on the road at risk. It would threaten to prevent the whole system from realizing its potential. Should that person still have the right to alter the car they own? I simply don't know.
Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you can. The cost is higher, but you can make a copy. So if the cost is really small (not $0, but small) it changes? Also to note, in these cases, we are talking about both the code and the rest of the machine. Is this to say that if any part of the machine can be copied for close to $0, we can remove ownership? Any single piece of that engine can be easily and cheaply copied, so once again, why the difference?
Copyright law is an exception. The laws of the physical world mean that, if you give/sell an object to another party, you no longer have access to it yourself. This is where concepts like the first sale doctrine come into play - it's your one tangible thing, and you can do with it whatever you like. You control that one, and only that one, instance of the thing. Intangibles can be given/sold to another party without…
But what makes it intangible? The really cheap (but still non-zero) cost to copy? In which case, why would this not apply to any physical machine that has a really cheap cost to copy?
It seems the answer is 'Because it doesn't.' at which point I see copyright law needing to be overhauled.
For example, why can my painting be protected by copyright but my engine design not? And if they are both protected by copyright, then why can't I just give a license to use the engine design while selling them the actual physical material (N kilos of iron, M kilos of carbon, etc.)?