Dan Aberhart hosts Cory Doctorow -- author, journalist, and special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- for a State of Iron live briefing on right-to-repair and digital sovereignty in agriculture. The anchor event is the John Deere $99 million right-to-repair settlement, but Doctorow's central argument is that the settlement addresses a symptom, not the cause. The cause is Canada's Copyright Modernization Act (Bill C-11, 2012), which makes it illegal to bypass digital locks on any device -- including farm equipment -- even when the purpose is legal repair or the installation of superior third-party components. Doctorow ties parts pairing, farm data harvesting, and the remote immobilization of stolen Ukrainian tractors into a single argument about technological self-determination, names the specific Canadian organizations working on the issue, and closes with a call for farmers to use their political power -- citing the Grangers' 1890 fight with the railroads as the historical template that produced the Sherman Act. Cory closed by sharing he had just found out he is cancer-free, that enshittification entered the Oxford English Dictionary that week, and that his new book was the Number 1 bestseller in Canada.
Cory Doctorow has spent 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation watching the same story repeat across industries: a digital lock gets built in, a legal framework gets constructed around it, and the people who depend on the machine lose the right to fix it. He coined the word for how this happens. Enshittification is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
In agriculture, the mechanism is called parts pairing -- a chip that decides who is allowed to fix your equipment and what components can connect to it. The data your tractor generates is a second layer of the same argument. And the remote immobilization of stolen tractors in Ukraine is a third. Cory's position is that all three are the same issue, that the law enabling them passed in 2012 after 6,132 Canadians said no and 53 said yes, and that farmers are one of the most effective political forces in this country when they choose to use it. This is not Growing the Future's verdict on any equipment manufacturer.
What's Inside
- What enshittification means and why John Deere became Cory's clearest example of it outside tech platforms
- Parts pairing: how a chip on your equipment determines who can fix it and what components can connect to it
- How data generated by your tractor was being siphoned -- and why data ownership and right-to-repair are the same underlying issue
- Honeybee, a Saskatchewan head-end manufacturer, cannot connect their products to Deere equipment because of digital locks, not any technical limitation
- Canada's Bill C-11: the Copyright Modernization Act passed in 2012 after 6,132 Canadians opposed it and 53 supported it
- Digital sovereignty: from Ukraine's remotely immobilized tractors to what happens if that switch gets turned toward Alberta
- Why voting with your wallet does not work in a monopoly, and what the Grangers' fight with the railroads in 1890 has to do with where we are right now
- A specific call to action: CCLA, Open Media, and the EFF -- and why farmers are one of the most effective political forces in this country when they choose to be
Also discussed: Cory's new book "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI" -- Number 1 Canadian bestseller, New York Times list, and in the same week enshittification was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Resources Mentioned
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI -- Cory Doctorow (Number 1 Canadian bestseller -- available at Indigo and McNally Robinson)
Electronic Frontier Foundation -- eff.org
Open Media -- openmedia.ca
Canadian Civil Liberties Association -- ccla.org
pluralistic.net -- Cory's daily newsletter
Honeybee -- Canadian head-end manufacturer, Saskatchewan
Agri GPS bridge -- referenced by audience member Jim Hale as an example of third-party ag tech workaround
If you want to hear more from the GTF back catalog on what it costs when farm equipment goes down, start with: Matt Yanick's episode: Downtime: The ROI Killer.
And if the data question from this conversation stays with you, Wade Barnes' Farmers Edge series looks at who owns what comes off your farm.
Connect with Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
craphound.com
Book: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI -- Indigo, McNally Robinson, and all major booksellers
Connect with Growing the Future
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