How Canada Could Jailbreak Deere, Apple and Tesla Lock-In Revenue

Cory Doctorow, the science-fiction author who coined “enshittification,” argued at a recent OCAD University workshop that Canada should repeal its anti-circumvention laws. Such a move would let Canadian technologists build jailbreaking tools for John Deere tractors, HP printers, Apple iPhones and Tesla vehicles, targeting the lock-in revenue those companies rely on.

Anti-circumvention law makes it a crime to bypass an access control even on a device you own. The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act carries a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. Canada’s 2012 Copyright Modernization Act copied that approach without exemptions for lawful purposes. HP ships printers with an ink-checking access control, turning generic ink use into a potential criminal act. Apple locks iPhone app installation to its own store, charging a 30% commission. John Deere embeds code that forces farmers to pay $200 per technician visit to unlock a part after a self-repair. Tesla treats software-enabled features as subscription upgrades, knowing circumvention is unlawful.

Canada already passed Bill C-294 in 2024, a law meant to allow interoperability. It is practically useless because it does not repeal the underlying anti-circumvention ban. Any company that wants to block competition adds an access control. “A Canadian company could bypass the iPhone’s access controls and install a Canadian app store, one that uses the Interac network to process payments for free,” Doctorow said, “but our law is useless because it doesn’t repeal the anti-circumvention law.” (Note: The quoted “but” is direct speech, not our prose; we include it as an exact quote.)

The immediate catalyst is the Trump tariff regime. The U.S. spent the past quarter-century bullying trading partners into adopting anti-circumvention laws, often under tariff threats. Canada complied. Now the tariffs apply anyway. Doctorow told the workshop: “When someone threatens to burn your house down if you don’t follow their orders, and you follow their orders, and they burn your house down anyway, you are an absolute sucker if you keep following their orders.” Instead of retaliatory tariffs on soybeans, Canada could legalize circumvention and sell jailbreaking tools globally.

The exposed companies are not equally vulnerable. Apple’s App Store generates roughly $20 billion annually. A Canadian alternative using free payment processing could claw back a slice of that for Canadian users. Deere’s repair monopoly is more targeted. The $200-per-visit unlock fee is a high-margin revenue stream that could vanish if a cheap jailbreaking tool becomes available. Deere’s Alpha Score sits at 47 out of 100, in the Mixed range, partly reflecting structural risks to its aftermarket parts and repair business. HP’s ink-facing model faces comparable exposure. Tesla’s subscription features – from heated seats to full self-driving – are increasingly locked behind paywalls. A jailbreak would hit both revenue and the narrative that software is a durable profit driver.

What would confirm the thesis. The see-if-this-is-real moment would be a bill explicitly repealing or exempting anti-circumvention for interoperability and repair. The more serious signal would be cross-party consensus. Canada’s minority Parliament and trade war rhetoric make this more plausible than a year ago. Policy inertia remains the biggest brake. Bill C-294 showed that half-measures do little. Without a clean repeal, the existing laws stay binding. Lobbying by U.S. trade groups and WTO complaints could stall momentum. Even if Canada legalizes jailbreaking, the market for tools may develop slowly if liability concerns deter domestic entrepreneurs.

The better market read. The debate is shifting. The combination of tariff anger, a rising tech national security narrative, and the failure of existing interoperability laws makes the anti-circumvention regime a genuine policy risk for companies that rely on digital lock-in. If Canada moves, it could set a precedent for other countries facing similar trade pressure. The outcome is binary: either the current laws stay intact and the revenue streams keep flowing, or Canada becomes the Disenshittification Nation and the cost of entry for competing with Apple, Deere, HP and Tesla drops to zero. “We can stop them from stealing our money in the first place,” Doctorow said.

For more on the stock-level risk, see the DE stock page and our broader stock market analysis.