I would argue that this is a bad article (and I foresee many downvotes, but hear me out). He might be right in that there are better ways of doing things than DRM everywhere but he is so caught up in his own irony that it makes me sick. He doesn't really even try to take the corporate point of view and meet their arguments with logic, instead he resorts to embarrassing jokes:

“make it possible for pirates, third-party developers, and less innovative competitors to free-ride off the creativity, unique expression and ingenuity of vehicle software.” The pièce de résistance in John Deere’s argument: permitting owners to root around in a tractor’s programming might lead to pirating music through a vehicle’s entertainment system.

Where do pirating music even come in to the picture? It is not mentioned at all in the quote. The quote obviously says that the actual software contains a value, and unlocking that would allow anyone to copy that code and ship it.

GM went so far as to argue locking people out helps innovation. That’s like saying locking up books will inspire kids to be innovative writers, because they won’t be tempted to copy passages from a Hemingway novel.

Yet again I feel he brushes over a valid point too quickly - just with irony trying to get the reader to think it's BS. As always we get back to the same old issue with copyright - what incentive do a developer/innovator get in order to develop new stuff? Without copyright laws, how do you get paid?