John Deere just told the copyright office that only corporations can own property, humans can only license it

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Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/22/drm-eschatology.html

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Private property will be fine. It’s personal property that is being attacked.

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Corporations are people, my friend. People are not.

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Seeing that Tesla is not included in this group of bullies, it would be nice if they could leap to the defense by locking down any of their vehicles owned by John Deere execs (or others) for a day - to drive home the point of this insanity.

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If you make bad enough laws, people will ignore them regardless of penalties. Complete prohibition of alcohol, cannabis, unreasonably slow speed limits, tight restrictions on ‘fair use’ et al prove my point.
Someone needs to write a complete set of fresh code for these machines and sell it to farmers for cheap. It wouldn’t be a violation of DRM laws if they aren’t using John Deer’s precious code at all.

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Serfdom is back. Pick up tools at the overseer’s hut an hour before dawn. Their Lordship will advise you when droit du seignur is due.

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The next step is to license coders. Coding is, after all, one step away from breaking DRM. Why else would anybody want to learn how, except to work in a corporate job where that license will come in handy. There ain’t no Second Amendment for programming! (No NRA either.)

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Huh. I’ve always sort of wondered what kind of status my toothbrush might have, compared to my rental unit, in a Marxist economy. Glad to know they’ve got this sorted!

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Both would be personal property.

Private property refers to ownership of the means of production being denied to workers.

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“John Deere just told the copyright office that only corporations can own property, humans can only license it”

I’m sure their shareholders will find this comforting.

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Noooooooooo!

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Fourth paragraph:

[quote=“doctorow, post:1, topic:99614”]
Just design your gadget so that using is in any way apart from the official, proscribed way requires breaking a copyright lock.[/quote]
I think the word should be “prescribed”.

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I wouldn’t hold up Tesla as any beacon of sanity here. They don’t allow for independent repair shops and have contacted owners personally when mod attempts are detected (because of course they can detect this).

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Ownership has always been a superstitious, stodgy idea. Getting rid of personal property is IMO a good thing - provided that people don’t recognize corporate ownership either.

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Well, there goes that idea.

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Folk have been known to incorporate themselves before. Maybe its time has come again.

The trick is replacing the code without violating the DRM. One to ponder about. I suppose the code might have some sort of ‘accident’ and need some sort of ‘transfusion’. It’d be a shame if that happened to your tractor.

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Then I guess you won’t mind when I come over and take all “your” stuff. Nice wallet you don’t own!

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Nice way to completely miss the point about the contrived nature of ownership. It is still self-serving bias, regardless of whoever that “self” might be. Gamifying it only perpetuates harmful cognitive biases/fallacies which would be better outgrown.

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Wouldn’t the obvious answer be for the farmers to incorporate?

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I’m pretty sure I’ve read a short story with that premise somewhere not a million clicks from here…