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This practice is pretty much rampant across all industries ranging from cellphones to luxury cars. One simple answer is big companies just want to extend their profits. Another reasons is they want their distributors or dealerships or middleman to thrive as well without which their business may get stagnant.

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Because copyright and software can be used to perform a backdoor attack to seize ownership of physical objects from you. You are looking at a full-on attack on the concept of ownership. You own nothing: It is licensed to you at the whims of the true owners.

Why wouldn't corporations, which are sociopathic "persons" defined exclusively by their avarice not want to do so? It is more profitable to prevent repair. It more profitable to force you into buying more.

This is a good point. In the ag business, the dealers of equipment make little to no money actually selling the equipment. They make their profit on selling parts and doing servicing. So, keeping the necessary software tools locked to authorized dealers would be popular with the dealerships. It ensures you have to go to the dealer and not some 3rd party mechanic shop.

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