Right to Repair Splits Conservatives Between the Farmer and the Contract

Buy a tractor for several hundred thousand dollars, and you own it. Try to fix it, and you discover you own it the way a man owns a hotel room: every important part is locked, and the key is in someone else's pocket. The farmer in this picture is not a radical. He just wants to replace a sensor without waiting a week for a technician with a laptop.

This is a hard fight, because it puts two conservative instincts in the same pickup truck and has them argue about who drives. One instinct says a man's property is his own. The other says contracts and intellectual property are the foundation of a free economy, and that government should not rewrite either one because a bunch of customers are annoyed. I think both instincts are sound. I also think one of them has the better argument on this particular question, and I will tell you which. First, the case for each, stated fairly.

The terms

• Right to repair. The ability of an owner, or an independent shop the owner hires, to diagnose and fix a product, which requires access to parts, tools, manuals and the software and diagnostic codes that modern equipment uses.
• Section 1201. The part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 that makes it unlawful to circumvent a technological measure that controls access to a copyrighted work. Modern equipment runs on software, software is copyrighted, and the software is often locked by such a measure.
• Embedded software. The code in a machine's computers that controls the engine, the hydraulics and the diagnostics. A manufacturer can license it rather than sell it.
• Authorized dealer network. The dealers who carry the manufacturer's tools and are permitted to do certain repairs.

The case for the farmer

Here is the position as a farm-state conservative would put it. One: a farmer who buys a machine owns the machine. The common law has long held that an owner of a chattel may repair it, and the principle that an owner may use and fix what he owns is as old as property itself. Two: time matters in agriculture, because a combine that is down in harvest is not an inconvenience, it is a loss of a crop that can be lost only once a year, and a ten-hour drive for the dealer's technician is not a minor delay. Three: a repair monopoly is a monopoly even when it hides inside a software license. When the only person who can fix the machine is the one who sold it, the price of repair is whatever that person says. Four: farmers have always repaired their own equipment. The change is not that they want something new. The change is that a software lock has made something that was always allowed suddenly impossible.

The farmer's side also carries a Supreme Court precedent that points its way. In Impression Products v. Lexmark International (2017) the Court held that once a patent holder sells an item, its patent rights in that item are exhausted, and the buyer may use, repair and resell it. The case involved printer cartridges, not tractors, but the principle is the same one: after the sale, the owner's rights are the owner's.

The case for the contract

Now the other side, in words its defenders would accept. One: a manufacturer has a property right too, in its software, and the law of copyright and contract lets it decide how that property is licensed. Two: a machine that is safe and emissions-compliant on the day it leaves the factory may not be after an amateur modifies its software, and the manufacturer has a legitimate interest in not being blamed for the result. Three: a repair mandate is a government rule about what a private firm must disclose and sell. Today it is for tractors, tomorrow it is for something else, and conservatives who defend contract and free enterprise should not be quick to write mandates for private contracts. Four: the market has started to respond. Companies are listening to their customers, because farmers who are unhappy can buy a different brand.

That fourth point is not nothing. A manufacturer that makes its customers miserable does so at its own risk.

The federal rule at the center

Here is where I think the argument tilts, and it is where Washington enters the story. The lock is not only a private business choice. It is reinforced by a federal law.

Section 1201 of the DMCA, enacted in 1998, bans the circumvention of technological protection measures on copyrighted works. Congress wrote it in the age of movie discs and music downloads, to stop piracy. But the statute does not say that circumvention is lawful when the purpose is repair. A farmer who breaks the lock on his tractor's software to fix his own tractor is, on the face of the law, doing the same thing as a pirate who breaks a lock on a film. Congress did include a safety valve: the Librarian of Congress, on the advice of the Copyright Office, reviews the law every three years and may grant temporary exemptions for classes of works where the ban is harming lawful uses.

The Copyright Office has used that process. An exemption that began in the 2015 rulemaking covered the circumvention of software on land vehicles, including agricultural vehicles, for diagnosis, repair and modification by the owner, and later rulemakings have renewed and broadened exemptions for vehicle repair. That sounds like a solution. It is a partial one, for three reasons. The exemption lasts only three years at a time and must be renewed through a new proceeding. It protects the act of circumvention, but it does not give the farmer the tools to do it, and under the statute the trafficking in circumvention tools can still be a problem. And it depends on an agency's discretion, not the legislature's judgment.

Pause on the structure of that. An act of Congress made an ordinary act of ownership presumptively illegal, and the owner must beg an executive-branch agency every three years for a waiver. If I told you that a federal rule required farmers to ask permission every three years to repair what they own, you would call it the administrative state at work. You would be right.

What the evidence says

The Federal Trade Commission studied the question. In 2021 it issued a report to Congress on repair restrictions, titled Nixing the Fix, which looked at how manufacturers limit repair and whether the restrictions are justified. The agency found that there was scant evidence supporting manufacturers' justifications for most repair restrictions, such as safety and security concerns, and that restrictions could raise costs and reduce competition. I want to be careful about how I use a federal agency's report: it is an agency's view, and reasonable people may weigh it differently. Still, it was a bipartisan-friendly finding in the sense that it focused on competition and consumers, and it is an official document you can read in full on the FTC's website.

Then the industry moved. In January 2023, the American Farm Bureau Federation and John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding. As publicly described, Deere committed to give farmers and independent repair shops access to the diagnostic tools, manuals and parts needed for repair, and the Farm Bureau committed to encourage its members to work with the company's arrangements rather than seeking new state legislation in the meantime. The document is voluntary, it is not law, and it is a private agreement between a company and a trade group. Whether it is enough is the question, and you should read the memorandum itself, and the criticism of it, before deciding.

The state legislatures have not waited. In 2023, Colorado enacted a right-to-repair law for agricultural equipment, which took effect at the start of 2024. It requires manufacturers to make parts, tools and documentation available to owners and independent repairers on fair terms. Other states debated similar measures. The details differ, so check the actual text in any state you care about. The point is that this is no longer an academic question. A law is on the books in at least one major agricultural state.

The answer: fix the federal lock, be careful with new mandates

So where does a conservative come down? Here are the numbered premises.

1. Ownership is the starting point. A person who buys a machine owns it, and the right to repair what one owns is part of ownership. The burden should be on the party who would restrict it.
2. The worst restriction is one the government itself created. Section 1201 turns an act of repair into a federal offense unless an agency grants a time-limited exemption. That is not the free market. That is a federal thumb on the scale for the manufacturer.
3. The first reform should be the narrowest. Congress could amend Section 1201 to make clear that circumventing a lock for the lawful repair of a product the person owns is not a violation, while leaving the ban on piracy and on trafficking in tools to infringe copyrights untouched. That does not rewrite any contract. It removes a federal barrier and returns the question to the market.
4. Contracts still matter. If a farmer signs a lease or a service agreement that limits repair in exchange for a lower price, that is his choice. The principle is that a sale transfers ownership, while a lease does not. A law that gave an equipment lessee the same repair rights as an owner would be a different and harder argument.
5. Mandates should be a last resort, and narrow. A state law that forces a manufacturer to sell parts and tools on fair terms is a more serious intervention than repealing a federal lock. It may still be justified where a market is concentrated and the restriction is a real barrier. But the burden of proof should be on the mandate, and a sunset clause is not a bad idea.

I would note that the safety objection has weight in some cases. Emissions equipment and safety systems are regulated for reasons, and a carve-out for modifications that defeat those systems is reasonable. The right to repair is the right to restore a machine to its working condition, not the right to tamper with an emissions system and call it maintenance. A well-drafted law can say so.

Answering the strongest objection

The strongest objection from the contract side is: "You are going to let government dictate how a company licenses its own software." My answer has two parts.

First, the proposed fix mostly removes a government rule rather than adding one. The restriction I am attacking is a federal statute that a company is relying on. A conservative who opposes government favoritism should oppose a law that makes a company's lock a federal matter.

Second, the principle of the free market is not that sellers get every term they want. It is that buyers and sellers deal at arm's length and the law enforces a bargain that both sides understood. A farmer who bought a machine reasonably believed he was buying a machine, not a revocable permit to operate one. A rule that says a sale is a sale respects contract, because it takes the sale at its word.

I will concede the part of the objection that has teeth. If every state passes a different law, a manufacturer faces fifty regimes. That is a cost, and a federal fix, like the narrow amendment to Section 1201, is better than a patchwork. It is the old federalism argument turned around: when the problem is created by a federal statute, the clean remedy is federal.

Why this belongs in the conservative tradition

The dispute is hard because it is a dispute between two goods. A property right in an invention is a real right. The framers placed the power to grant authors and inventors exclusive rights in the Constitution itself, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note the words "limited Times." The right is secured for a purpose and for a period. It was never meant to reach into the machine shed of a man who bought and paid for the thing.

Both rights are old. The first conservative question is which one the law should favor when they collide, and the answer, I think, is the one that existed first and that the sale was supposed to transfer. The inventor has the right to be paid for the machine. Once he has been paid, the machine is the buyer's.

For other fights where the federal rulebook reaches into a farm or a driveway, see How Fuel Economy Rules Killed the Small Pickup and Supersized the SUV, which shows how a regulation reshaped a vehicle, and The Electric Car Mandate Is a Choice Washington Makes for Your Driveway. For the farmers' own record, see Farmers Saved the Soil After the Dust Bowl, Long Before Earth Day Existed and Cattle Eat Grass, Grass Feeds Fires, and That Makes Grazing a Wildfire Policy. And for the founding view of property, Madison Wrote That Government Exists to Protect Property of Every Sort is the place to start.

The case in brief

1. Right to repair divides conservatives between the owner's claim to fix what he bought and the manufacturer's rights in its software and contracts, and both claims are legitimate.
2. The sharpest barrier is a federal one: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes circumvention of a software lock presumptively unlawful, and owners must rely on three-year Copyright Office exemptions.
3. The Federal Trade Commission's 2021 report, the 2023 memorandum between the American Farm Bureau Federation and John Deere, and Colorado's 2023 agricultural law show that the question is live in the market, in Washington and in the states.
4. The best first step is a narrow federal amendment that makes lawful repair of one's own property outside Section 1201, while keeping anti-piracy protections.
5. State mandates are a heavier tool and should be narrow, tested against the market and written with safety and emissions carve-outs.

What you can do: Read Section 1201 and the current Copyright Office exemption for vehicle repair on the Copyright Office's website, then write your U.S. senator and representative to ask whether they support a narrow repair exception.