Jalopnik has a piece about your car's software, and what it means for your ownership. To be specific, whether it means you really own your car at all. Here's the thesis:

The Automaker's Alliance responds at the end of the piece, and the author snags his sleeve on the same sentence that gave me problems. The AA says:

Read the rest. For environmental reasons you should not be allowed to tinker with your car. To say nothing of the possibility that you will hack your John Deere tractor so you can use it to download music illegally. Gizmodo, quoting the EFF:

A Wired opinion piece takes a big whack at John Deere here, and the author notes that DRM even prevents people from hacking their kitty-litter cleaners. The author links to his own site's grumblings about pirate-proof cat-poop sifters, and here I'm less sympathetic. If something requires a particular part to keep working, and you don't want to buy that particular part, don't buy it.

The site also hammers Keurig for its DRM coffeepods, which still seems like an utterly bizarre and self-defeating idea. Amazon reviews have not been kind. At least no one has hooked up a cracked Keurig to a tractor to download code for bypassing the kitty-litter cleaner. YET.