Revised Paper Topic
Question being investigated:
How are IP laws and policies affecting grassroots innovation and forcing a return to more analog, fixable technologies?
Proposal:
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) has had an adverse effect on grassroots innovation as it has taken ownership of products out of the hands of their users, limiting the potential for innovation to the manufacturers and their shareholders. While the effects of this can be seen with cars and digital products, the greatest impact can be seen with agricultural equipment, more specifically tractors, which traditionally are viewed as relatively simple, mechanical devices, but are now becoming increasingly dependent on digital systems. Small-scale farmers have always been more than just food producers, they are problem-solvers and mechanics as well and, traditionally, tractors have been modified and repaired by their farmer owners to better suit their needs and perform tasks more efficiently without the need for outsourcing. After the passage of the DMCA, repairs and modifications to tractors must be performed solely by the manufacturer or else, the farmer faces the charge of piracy, which comes with exorbitant fines and possible incarceration. Unfortunately, even if the farmers follow the correct procedure of requesting replacement parts, they suffer economic losses due to their fields laying fallow during the wait time before the repairs are completed. Large-scale industrial agriculture operations do not have the same economic concerns and, generally, are unaffected by this legislation. Interestingly, some farmers see limitations of the newer model tractors and have responded by returning to older models that do not use technologies protected by the DMCA. Moreover, groups have arisen that are finding ways to work around the DMCA by creating open source farm equipment that is cheap and easy for small-scale farmers to manufacture on their own. While there has been a creative reaction against the DMCA as well as legal efforts to allow for agricultural opt-outs from the legislation and to pass additional legislation at the state and federal level to limit the power and scope of the DMCA, it is still directly influencing the infrastructure by threatening the viability of small-scale farms and, ultimately, decreasing the diversity of the agricultural system. Furthermore, by taking the ability to repair these agricultural products away from the farmers, the system as whole suffers from a decrease in the number of people who can innovate and problem-solve. Beyond the agricultural sphere, this inability of users to tinker with, re-engineer, and repair the products they purchased is severely limiting the scope and diversity of innovation in the United States. This lack of innovative diversity will lead to significant problems in the future.
To examine this problem and its impact on the culture, the economic, technological, and environment spheres, (the infrastructure), the policy-making and legal spheres (the structure), and the cultural trends and ideologies (the superstructure), must be assessed in terms of their connections and various motivations. Preliminary inquiries into these tangled relationships indicate that while the superstructural trends support the sub-group of the economy, the small farmers, it is clear that the existing policies, stemming from the political structure, are creating a choke point in the system that threatens to quash the viability of that sub-group. There is a solution to be found in the mapping of these complex relationships. This solution is one that will improve the the role small farmers in a changing post-industrial society and the value they bring to the local communities in which they are situated, a goal that will help bring about a more sustainable, preferable future for the culture and the world as a whole. Furthermore, this case study represents the tip of the iceberg when thinking about the Internet of Things and the future ownership that is based on software.
