John Deere Wants To Be Able To File Copyright Claims Against The Way You Use Your Tractor

In the modern, digital economy, there are a whole lot of things you buy but still technically don’t own. Nearly all entertainment, for example: digital books, video games, music, and so on. Other software, too. But as basically everything continues to become some kind of computer in a specialized body, plenty of other goods are starting to be subject to licensing, copyright law, and non-ownership problems, too. Like tractors.

Famous farming machinery company John Deere is making the case that you don’t own your vehicles, Wired reports this week. In filings with the copyright office (PDF), the maker of the ubiquitous green and yellow tractor argues that because your tractor has a chip and some code in it, you don’t actually own it. You’ve just got an “implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”

We’ve been through this song and dance before — really, we’re still going through it right now — with specifically high-tech items. You might own the plastic, glass, and aluminum casing of your iPad but everything that runs on it, every single line of code that makes it go, is just something you have paid for the right to access until someone else takes it away or changes it. That affects your ability to unlock your phone, resell your used tablet, or in fact act in any way like you actually own the thing you went and bought and paid for.

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