The iconic image of the American farmer is the man or woman who works the land, milks cows and is self-reliant enough to fix the tractor. But like a lot of mechanical items, tractors are increasingly run by computer software. Now, farmers are hitting up against an obscure provision of copyright law that makes it illegal to repair machinery run by software.
via NPR
Image: Farmer Dave Alford can’t fix his own tractors like this one because it’s run by software with proprietary digital locks.
Laura Sydell/NPR
I have to say I was taken aback when signing on to Forbes comments (with LinkedIn or Yahoo or Google+) it asks for all your contacts, and to manage them. Maybe I should have been permitting scripts from Forbes.PrfktExpln8n.0.my but maybe I need to be running preemption of a sort on the level of ‘nope’ required.
In other news, courts’ deprecation of those bits in the DMCA might not be thorough enough yet if this made it past fall planning with Farm Associations. More Iowa Register checking for me, whether it’s the Uber of crowdsourced agronomy news or not.