Sign the petition: We own what we buy!
You paid for your car, but do you really own it? Not if some major corporations have anything to say about it.
Here’s the deal: John Deere, General Motors, and other large manufacturers are making a case to the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress that even after customers buy their product, it isn’t fully theirs.
They’re arguing that certain components – like the software inside – still belongs to the manufacturer. If they succeed, they’ll be able to legally block a farmer from fixing his or her own tractor, or a hobbyist from tinkering with his or her own truck.
I’ve introduced legislation to stop them, but the U.S. Copyright Office will make a major decision on this very soon. Join our petition to the U.S. Copyright Office and tell them this is bad news for consumers.
Intellectual property rights are important, and they should be protected, but this is an example of corporate overreach at its very worst.
If someone tries to hack a product to steal software or violate the rights of a company, that’s a problem. But for the average tinkerers and do-it-yourselfers, this is a trip to the Twilight Zone.
More than that, it has big implications for everything that runs on software – which, these days, is almost everything.
They say we don’t own the things we buy. I say they’re wrong. Sign our petition and let’s go get our stuff back.
Ron
