I like the idea, but I feel like it is almost a watered down protect artifact. The two have the same quanta cost both upped and un-upped, but protect artifact is forever, while these vines are only a soft protection. There might be some way to capitalize on how you can 'snare' your opponents permanents. There are 5 rare weapons that have activated abilities and 4 other permanents that do as well (maybe missed some, did that count fast). It seems to make the ability stated on the text to be the secondary effect and the soft permanent control to be the more primary use of the vines.
Perhaps a rewording of the text so that people know about the soft permanent control before they use it?
Another suggestion (that changes it a bit more) is to allow the vines to target creatures as well. This would take out their activated abilities until you kill the vines (like a soft lobotomizer). The vines can have 1 HP or something. That also allows you to buff your own creatures briefly against things like poison or fire shield. Might be too large of a change, but would allow it great flexibility in what you wrap in vines.