Wired has an article which responds to the view of John Deere and General Motors on what the people who buy their vehicles actually own, which was expressed during comments on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):
John Deere—the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker —told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”
It’s John Deere’s tractor, folks. You’re just driving it.
Several manufacturers recently submitted similar comments to the Copyright Office under an inquiry into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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General Motors told the Copyright Office that proponents of copyright reform mistakenly “conflate ownership of a vehicle with ownership of the underlying computer software in a vehicle.” But I’d bet most Americans make the same conflation—and Joe Sixpack might be surprised to learn GM owns a giant chunk of the Chevy sitting in his driveway
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday April 24 2015, @06:30PM
Alright, so they own part of my car. What's the value of that part which they own? If it's nonzero, then they owe me money for taxes which I paid on something which they own. If it's zero, I'm going to take all the code they claim to own and post it online, and when they sue me for millions in lost revenue, I can prove they couldn't have any lost revenue because the code has no value.
...and if it's below zero, then I can post the code online and sue THEM for lost revenue, right? :)