When you buy a high-tech device like an iPhone, you realize much of the value is in the software, and you expect to agree to a handful of End-User License Agreements (EULAs) in order to use its apps.
After all, the creators of those apps have spent untold millions of dollars and person-hours creating them. They deserve to protect their intellectual property.
Smartphones, OK – but what about that tractor? John Deere is now in hot water with the ‘Right to Repair’ movement for making farmers sign EULAs in order to use their farm equipment – EULAs that prevent farmers from repairing their own gear.
There’s more to this controversy than meets the eye, however. John Deere is but one of thousands of enterprises undergoing digital transformation as it becomes a software company that runs its technology on tractors, rather than the other way around.
Background: Jailbreaking Farm Equipment
The origins of the John Deere controversy arose in the debate over ‘jailbreaking’ iPhones and other high tech devices. At issue: Apple’s right to protect its intellectual property had come into conflict with consumers’ right to run whatever software they wanted to on the smartphones they purchased.
The legal question behind this controversy centered on a part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that Congress passed in 1996. As written, DMCA criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works and also criminalizes the act of circumventing such an access control, according to Wikipedia.
However, subsequent to the passing of the DMCA, regulators took up the question of whether there should be exceptions to the law – situations where consumers might have the right to circumvent technical protection measures (TPMs) intended to protect intellectual property in certain limited situations that would also protect the rights of the intellectual property holders.
After an extensive discussion period, the US Copyright Office delineated several such exceptions in 2015, including guidelines that would allow consumers to jailbreak their smartphones. In fact, the new regulation specified 27 classes of intellectual property that the regulator would exempt from TPMs.
Read the entire article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/04/30/john-deeres-digital-transformation-runs-afoul-of-right-to-repair-movement/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Ted Van Pelt.
