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We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

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Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#261

Post by bryanlarsen »

randomdata wrote: post #212
bryanlarsen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that 1668 acre farm is not a corporate farm, it's a family farm run by a single operator without hired hands.

May still be corporate, because corporations are a way of structuring a business, not an indication of how large or how many people are involved with the business. I expect most family farms are also corporations or even multiple corporations.

A 1668 acre farm around here is a small farm, and is probably not incorporated. But certainly many are. But as you said, incorporation does not make it less of a family farm.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#262

Post by MarkMc »

apricot wrote: post #48

Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymore, you are granted a license to use them. When will it stop? More and more everyday objects are incorporating software and firmware in many different forms. I remember reading Stallman's sh…

> As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights... When will it stop?

I don't want it to stop - I think it's a good thing. By making a book impossible to pass from one person to another, the publisher is able to extract an income that is closer to the total benefit people derive from reading the book. In short: authors make more money. And so more books will be written, and readers will have a wider choice of better quality books.

And it's not just that digital books kill the secondary market for books - they also allow publishers to be highly discriminatory. If you are a woman in your 20s you pay full price for the new Taylor Swift biography, but a man in his 50s is offered a generous discount. For the latest Glenn Beck polemic the pricing structure is reversed.

So not only do publishers get a larger slice of the book-value pie, they are also able to grow the size of the pie. Magic!

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#263

Post by knightofmars »

beat wrote: post #79
themartorana wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like my family. Also, small farmers buy a lot of tractors second, third, fourth-hand. Many are still running 50 years later. This is as much an attempt to kill the secondary market and the right to resell. Without being able to buy and fix up used farm parts/equipment, many (including my family) would be fiscally unable to farm - full stop.

This is something to consider with any software-driven systems now... what's the realistic lifetime of the system? Will the vendor always be there to support the software? Ten year old software is a problem. Twenty year old software is a HUGE problem, from a vendor point of view.

There will always be tinkerers that take outdated hardware and breathe new life into it via new custom software. The problem lies in the new legal restraints placed around the marriage of the software and the hardware. I'll add, when I say "tinkerer" I'm not talking about an amateur hobbyist. I'm talking about the professionals who live and breathe in the world of after-market parts and their repair.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#264

Post by Confusion »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #245

Let's go reduction ad absurdum with this: Imagine that this also applies to medical equipment and that you do not own your own mechanical heart beating in your chest. Furthermore, only franchised doctors will be allowed the encryption key to tweak your heart settings. Will the company that provided you with your heart reserve the right to terminate the software license, and consequently your life, at will? Will they…

Nothing absurd about it: there have already been cases of closed source pacemakers that had security vulnerabilities that won't be fixed by the seller (arguing they can't replace the firmware) and can't be fixed by the buyer.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#265

Post by PythonicAlpha »

briantakita wrote: post #253
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying concepts from one scientific discipline to other disciplines does seldom fit. I think it is more a sign of pseudo-scientific trickery to back the own thinking, that is most often used in unsound economical theories. It is a fact, that while monopolies are good for the monopolists, it is bad for societies at large. And no "ecological" concepts can convince me from the opposite. One example: While bigger banks…

> Applying concepts from one scientific discipline to other disciplines does seldom fit. I find analogies useful. I also find the utility of Science to be valid but limited at times, particularly in complex systems that evolve. > I think it is more a sign of pseudo-scientific trickery to back the own thinking, that is most often used in unsound economical theories. You are assuming that my motivations are different f…

> I find analogies useful. I also find the utility of Science to be valid but limited at times, particularly in complex systems that evolve.

So, it very much sounds to me, that you prefer just unproven theories, that one can draw from arbitrary analogies over sound science.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#266

Post by rhino369 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #243
rhino369 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Deere would say that you can reflash, smash, or replace the eeeprom if you want. But you can't create a new piece of software based on the old one. I think you should be able too, because what is the harm, but I don't think the book analogy holds. You aren't allowed to rewrite a book, even if you keep the copy yourself.

If I understand correctly, yes, you absolutely are allowed to rewrite a book if you keep the copy yourself.

I think you could argue that it is fair use, and maybe it is, but you are creative a derivative work. That is copyright infringement, unless the fair use exception fits.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#267

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

jackreichert wrote: post #92
fsloth wrote: post #33

Open source answer is: http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ (I'm not saying it's a viable answer at this point but the work they are doing is intrguing.)

It's really just a matter of time until such manufacturing has a viable open source mainstream alternative. Then we can look forward to small dev shops building affordable custom robots for everyday use.

"Affordable" and "custom" tend to not go hand in hand. There are many people building tractors from scratch right now, just hop on YouTube for a look.

Want a custom accounting package for your small business? I'll build you a simple one for $30,000. In the meantime, you can go buy QuickBooks for $199 right off Intuit's site.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#268

Post by dropit_sphere »

sker wrote: post #83
apricot wrote: post #48

Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymore, you are granted a license to use them. When will it stop? More and more everyday objects are incorporating software and firmware in many different forms. I remember reading Stallman's sh…

What happens when we have computers implanted in our brains? Do I no longer own my brain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elQC62FUgqw

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#269

Post by angersock »

api wrote: post #189
angersock wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the existing world, creators starve all the time--consider the concept of the "starving artist". There is this meme that somehow not having copyright immediately implies no possible monetization strategy, and it needs to die.

There are other monetization strategies. A popular one is to offer something for free and then use it to conduct mass surveillance and sell your customers to advertisers and governments.

Or the Patreon model, where people can be patrons of an artist whose work they appreciate!

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#270

Post by seanp2k2 »

api wrote: post #136
apricot wrote: post #48

Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymore, you are granted a license to use them. When will it stop? More and more everyday objects are incorporating software and firmware in many different forms. I remember reading Stallman's sh…

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…

Regarding the cup of coffee, they've put DRM on that too: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/how-do-you-drm-a-...
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