DIY TRACTOR REPAIR RUNNING AFOUL OF COPYRIGHT LAW
DAVE ALFORD: My name is Dave Alford.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: He's that iconic___________.
ALFORD: I do farming on the family ranch here. I've been farming for the past ______ years and obviously, my family much before that.
SYDELL: Alford considers himself a small farmer. He's got a __________acres in San Luis Obispo along the central coast of California. Among his crops - snow peas, garbanzo beans, hay and seed crops.
ALFORD: You spend so much of your time in agriculture fixing things. I'm of a size that it's more ______________ beneficial to me to fix as much stuff as I can myself.
SYDELL: Alford and I sit in the air conditioning closed cabin of his John Deere 8520T tractor. In the cabin are little ______________ _____________ that monitor the engine.
ALFORD: So I can monitor, for example, what my ______________ are doing that's running the ______________ behind me. I can monitor the regular standard things in an engine.
SYDELL: And a little computer screen lets Alford know when something is wrong. Unfortunately, Alford isn't ____________ to fix it. John Deere has a digital lock on the software that runs Alford's tractor, and it won't give him the key. If something goes wrong with one of his tractors, Alford has to take it to an authorized John Deere _____________ The closest one is about 40 miles away. Or a John Deere rep has to come to visit with him. Alford had an issue about a year ago. The tractor belts were loose. He waited _________ for the John Deere rep to come.
ALFORD: The tech came out, and it took him a couple hours to _____________that there was one small sensor out, and that one small sensor - I think it was a $_____________ part.
SYDELL: The problem with this setup is that in farming, timing is everything. When the soil is soft enough to till, you got to go.
ALFORD: So if you have a small problem that does not allow your tractor to ____________and you have down time, it's costing you money and a lot of stress.
SYDELL: You may wonder, why doesn't Alford just _____________that digital lock and get into the software and __________ the problems himself? He could, but he'd be breaking the law. It's called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 or DMCA. It was written because ___________ ___________ were worried that people would break the digital locks on DVDs, make copies and pirate them. If you break the digital lock, you can face five years in _____________ and/or a half-a-million in fines. Though, we haven't heard of that happening to a farmer.
The law provides that every three years, the Library of Congress's copyright office can review the law and make _____________. Automakers, John Deere and others are opposed. John Deere would not talk on tape, but in an emailed statement, the company said _____________does not include the right to modify computer code that's embedded in that equipment. The company went on to say that unqualified individuals could endanger customer _____________. Ryan Talley, another farmer in San Luis Obispo says he understands safety concerns, but he thinks the manufacturers should work with the farmers.
RYAN TALLEY: I do feel, just philosophically, when you _____________a tractor, you own the tractor. And I firmly believe that these tractor _____________need to make it so that their clients or their customers can repair their tractors if they so decide to do so.
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