Why Copyright Law Stops You from Fixing Your Tractor

By Sara J. MacLaughlin, Indiana Farm Bureau, Inc. 

You notice your tractor isn’t working correctly. You like to fix your equipment, why should this be any different? If your problem involves the computer on your tractor, you might not be able to fix it without violating federal copyright law.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was intended to update copyright laws to bring them into the electronic era and to combat piracy of digital works. DMCA section 1201 sought to keep people from circumventing the technological protections put into place to control access to digital copyrighted works. For instance, disabling protective measures in copyrighted software so that an operating system can be installed in an unauthorized computer violates section 1201 of the DMCA. See Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp., 673 F. Supp. 2d 931 (N.D. Cal 2009). Also, unlocking a cellular telephone so that the telephone could be used on another cellular network can violate the DMCA. In Trac Fone Wireless, Inc. v. Anadisk LLC, the defendant resold cellular telephones that were originally locked for one particular cellular network and unlocked them to work on other cellular networks. 685 F. Supp. 2d 1304 (S.D. Fla 2010). The defendant unlocked the telephones by bypassing restrictions and reprogramming the software in the telephone. Id. at 1317. An important factor for the court was the fact that the defendant was doing this commercially. Had the defendant unlocked the phone for his own use, the court may have found that his actions fell into an exemption to the DMCA.

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