Let's count to 1 million

Farmers of course still own their tractors (unless they lease them or similar) the same way that you probably own your car or your computer. What they don't own is the software running on those tractors. If you have a computer that came with Windows installed, you own the hardware but you only have a license to use Windows on it. The Software itself is still owned by Microsoft. The same goes for the software that is running on those tractors. The problem is that in the 90s many businesses pushed through some new very draconian copyright and intellectual property laws. among them the DMCA. At that point few people understood what this would do, but a lot of the ones who did could tell that this was going too far and was generally a bad idea. Nobody listened to them. Among these rules are the so called Anti-circumvention laws which basically says that you can't do things to software that the owner doesn't want you to, like removing encryption or copyright protections measure. These laws have been interpreted very broadly to mean that the farmers can't hack into their tractors software. John Deere makes farm equipment. A lot of that gear is automated by computers. When you buy a John Deere, they want you to buy John Deere accessories. They don't want a third party company to sell you a pesticide applicator or a seeder, they want you to buy the John Deere one. One of their competitors made a software patch to make a John Deere tractor interface with a non-John Deere towing part. John Deere is calling it 'hacking', saying that the operating system on their tractors should be treated like any other computer program. I can't sell an addon for Microsoft Office without Microsoft's permission, so they argue that their competitors should have to pay a licensing fee to alter the John Deere operating system. Its more akin to buying an iPhone and only being able to use Apple branded earphones and chargers and cases. An earphone is an earphone, not complicated, but DRM software only recognizes expensive Apple branded earphones. A battery charger is just a charger, but it'll only charge with an Apple charger. Funny thing is if the software that "John Deere owns" goes on the fritz, they won't pay to fix it. It suddenly becomes your issue even though they "own" the software. And yes, software misbehaves sometimes in tractors, usually requiring a tech with a computer to come out and fix it. Most everything on a modern tractor is electronically controlled. JD dealers think these copyright rules are stupid, farmers think they're stupid, and everybody reading that article probably thinks they're stupid too. Yet here we are, thanks to greedy higher-ups who have never worked a day on an actual farm in their life. I work in Ag broadcasting in the heart of farm country. I've asked a few people their thoughts on this. A lot of JD dealerships that are for the "Owners Right to Repair" say the software copyrights could create unnecessary traffic during harvest season. This is not a huge issue yet, because a lot of farmers haven't upgraded to newer equipment since corn prices have dropped significantly the last few years. However dealers are already swamped during harvest time, and this won't improve that at all. That 56 year old farmer who has been wrenching on tractors since he was a kid is more than capable to do some of his own basic repairs. There's no reason why they should have to send a mechanic out to a field to do something the owner is more than capable of doing. Sure, they will make money off a service call, but eventually that farmer is going to realize that this is a joke, and they'll lose him as a customer. An example of that: Recently a multi-million dollar farming operation around here quit buying new John Deere equipment because of this copyright issue. This ended up being a huge sales loss for the locally owned JD dealer. The owner of this larger farming operation said that he "felt betrayed." The last two generations of his farm had purchased JD equipment, and now they "are pulling a fast one" on him, and trying to get more money out of him with all of this even though he has been a loyal customer. Many others say they need to be able to repair their own equipment. I grew up on a corn and soybean farm. I remember dad's small wooden shed would be stocked with replacement parts of all kinds. He would be out in the field well into dark until the beans got too tough to harvest. Afterwords he would be out in that shop fixing things well past midnight. That's the big issue with all this copyright stuff. Most farmers only stop their equipment during the late hours during harvest. Dealers aren't open at this time. Many are also doing tillage work in the fields into midnight. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have something go wrong on the tractor at 11:00PM, and having to wait until tomorrow to get it fixed. No dealer is going to come out to fix it at that time, but yet many are out in the field still working. They can't afford to wast a good working day to deal with it. Farmers are a stubborn bunch. (In a good way.) They will fight this, and I stand with them. Sorry for the rant, but nobody is going to gain anything from this. Another thing I'll add is the fact that everything is spread out in the mid-western US. We had to get our parts from a dealer that was 70+ miles from where we lived. Can you imagine what a nightmare it would be if we had to get them to come out every time we needed to fix something? There's no way we could have afforded that. When DMCA is abused to the point of ensuring manufacturer lock in, something has gone terribly wrong. When you buy something, you should own it. This does not mean you own all the IP and distribution rights to everything that went into a product's development. But fixing your god-damned tractor is not about distributing pirated content and should not be a prohibited activity. This really isn't anything new. The commercial trucking industry has been moving toward this for several years. Cummins engine controllers require an encrypted handshake before they will allow any of the diagnostic test commands and before any parameter can be changed. Only the basic diagnostic codes and diagnostic reset (per SAE-J1939) can be issued without this handshake. We really need a comprehensive right to repair law that covers most consumer good. Everything from your leaf blower to cars need to be user repairable without special tools and software if you have the knowhow.