John Deere is trying to retain de facto ownership of their tractors through an abuse of copyright law. Dissembling about "selling" a product that the customer c

John Deere is trying to retain de facto ownership of their tractors through an abuse of copyright law. Dissembling about "selling" a product that the customer cannot use as they desire (as long as they don't copy the firmware) is fraud. Also, except for circumventing any DMCA-covered "protection" on the firmware, you are not legally banned from modifying it. Use != copy. At best, you might be civilly liable for copyright violations. The law that restricts what you can do with the AR-15 is (I believe) criminal law. Transmission power is similarly banned. (through executive regulation, I think?) -- As for traffic control, common ownership is not only a terrible erosion of property rights, it also smells similar to border-security-only "security". "we can implement traffic control with common ownership" sounds similar to "we don't need encryption because we have a firewall". The only thing central ownership gets you is a false sense of security.