Right to Repair Gains Traction as John Deere Faces Trial
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Years ago, folks hacked a Jeep Wrangler remotely, with a WIRED reporter in the car: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
That freaked the shit out of vehicle manufacturers. It led to encrypted CANBus messages: https://dev.to/living_syn/can-bus-message-security-3h43
Problem was, your mom and pop repair shop would need a special $$$ 'authorized' dongle from the manufacturer to be able to diagnose problems beyond what plain OBD-II let you see. This effectively locked out third-party repair shops. People screamed and IIRC, a lot of car manufacturers backed down and just hardened remote access.
What Deere did was even more harsh. They tried to block off not only self repair, but third-party firmware that made the tractors work better, especially older ones that were out of warranty: https://schiller-tuning.com/vehicle-listings/agriculture/john-deere
They're trying to game copyright laws and click-through terms-of-service agreements to lock out third party repair.
This is a test case. If they lose, it'll be a BIG win for Right to Repair laws, covering phones, laptops, consoles, etc.
What Deere did was even more harsh. They tried to block off not only self repair, but third-party firmware that made the tractors work better, especially older ones that were out of warranty.
That's straight up a major federal crime in my country. So that should give Americans an idea how balanced their scale of justice is at the moment.
The consumer and supplier ALWAYS get equal and fair protection, lest a business becomes based on ripping people off with product instead of the product itself.
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Ok I'm a proponent of right to repair and despise manufacturing techniques that lock repair shops out, make spare parts from 3rd parties impossible to install, or create planned obsolescence, or any shenanigans like this. It's basically anti-everybody else and suggests weakness and fear instead of quality and strength.
But help me understand how it's possible that our "free market" is enabling this, unless it's just a controlled market charading as free?
Is John Deere giving the hardware away for free to those who sign long term subscriptions or something?
If John Deere is the Apple-esque ecosystem of tractors where is the "PC" diy manufacture and why doesn't the market support them.
But help me understand how it's possible that our "free market" is enabling this, unless it's just a controlled market charading as free?
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There are very few markets in the US that actually achieve Adam Smith's "perfect market" (perfect competition)
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The more expensive the individual item, the harder it is for there to be competition (costs of standing up factories, distribution and support, low volumes of sales etc), it's extremely expensive to set up in opposition to John Deere
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There are other market statuses other than "controlled" and "free" - the vast majority of US markets are Oligopolies (few sellers many buyers). Processed / packaged foods for example - 99% of market volume is done by a couple of players.
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A century ago there were many farm machinery manufacturers - the individual machines were less expensive in real terms, and the complexity much lower. A virtual monopoly (one very large and a few smaller players) has formed through insufficient regulation to protect competition - the big ones gobble up the small and competition gradually dwindles
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It's probably a good time for any farmer to get off john deere either way.
These days they fancy themselves an AI and data-driven solutions company rather than an equipment manufacturer: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/03/15/the-amazing-ways-john-deere-uses-ai-and-machine-vision-to-help-feed-10-billion-people/
To me that means they want to go the way of HP, enshittifying everything they have.
God HP is so fucking shit
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In the time it takes for all this to play out, all the farmers could recoup their potential losses and then some by replacing their JD investment with Kubota, who supports independent repair shops.
Of course, with the debt load most farmers carry, that’s easier said than done.
If the federal government set up a replacement program though, and shipped all the JD machinery to Ukraine where hackers know how to modify the software, everyone but JD would win.
f the federal government set up a replacement program though, and shipped all the JD machinery to Ukraine where hackers know how to modify the software, everyone but JD would win.
Funny you should mention Ukraine, a decade ago (iirc) Ukraine hackers cracked the JD interface and started making available a tool for farmers to manage their own tractors - John Deere sued
Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware
A dive into the thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking.
VICE (www.vice.com)
Although I suspect you already knew that
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Years ago, folks hacked a Jeep Wrangler remotely, with a WIRED reporter in the car: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
That freaked the shit out of vehicle manufacturers. It led to encrypted CANBus messages: https://dev.to/living_syn/can-bus-message-security-3h43
Problem was, your mom and pop repair shop would need a special $$$ 'authorized' dongle from the manufacturer to be able to diagnose problems beyond what plain OBD-II let you see. This effectively locked out third-party repair shops. People screamed and IIRC, a lot of car manufacturers backed down and just hardened remote access.
What Deere did was even more harsh. They tried to block off not only self repair, but third-party firmware that made the tractors work better, especially older ones that were out of warranty: https://schiller-tuning.com/vehicle-listings/agriculture/john-deere
They're trying to game copyright laws and click-through terms-of-service agreements to lock out third party repair.
This is a test case. If they lose, it'll be a BIG win for Right to Repair laws, covering phones, laptops, consoles, etc.
As somebody that works on a lot of Chryslers I can tell you I 100% despise theirb"security gateway" nonsense. Scanner has to be connected to vehicle and connected to wifi. You need a monthly subscription to access the security gateway otherwise it locks you out of the vehicle you can't clear codes nevermind run bidirectional functions or program modules. If everybody had their own nonsense gateway like this, no shops would be able to stay in business everybody would have to go to their respective dealers. How many subscriptions can you expect a shop to hold? It's pretty ridiculous. It also means if ur off roading in a wrangler and a fluke puts the PCM in limp mode, your not getting out of limp mode in the woods as you don't in have wifi connection to security gateway. Undoing terminals doesn't reset these issues anymore. Yes I have seen it happen where new JL wranglers have to lug out of the woods in limp mode over a fluke thing that just needed a computer reset. Yea ill stick to my 87 YJ when I go wheeling.
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Good. Fuck John Deere.
My thoughts exactly.
I can't believe how much progress the right to repair movement has made! It's one of the few areas of societal change that I'm actually happy to hear about these days.
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You mean it's gaining tractors?
I'll see myself out
Pretty sure that was the author's intent
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It's probably a good time for any farmer to get off john deere either way.
These days they fancy themselves an AI and data-driven solutions company rather than an equipment manufacturer: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/03/15/the-amazing-ways-john-deere-uses-ai-and-machine-vision-to-help-feed-10-billion-people/
To me that means they want to go the way of HP, enshittifying everything they have.
Did you know, John Deere never saw a tractor.
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The fact that they purposely cripple your equipment with software is ludicrous. It's even more ridiculous to expect farmers to know IT when they used to be able to fix their equipment with hammers and wrenches. After well over a decade, it's good to see movement is finally being made to address this absolute b.s. It's not just John Deere doing this, a lot of the major companies are selling you stuff you don't truly own. Take your phone for example.
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The fact that they purposely cripple your equipment with software is ludicrous. It's even more ridiculous to expect farmers to know IT when they used to be able to fix their equipment with hammers and wrenches. After well over a decade, it's good to see movement is finally being made to address this absolute b.s. It's not just John Deere doing this, a lot of the major companies are selling you stuff you don't truly own. Take your phone for example.
I think the problem is the farmers would be happy to know IT if it meant they could fix their damn tractor.
Deere doesn't want them to know IT, it wants them to just call their local Deere service center anytime anything doesn't work.
Problem is, if it's during a harvest or some other critical time, they can't wait a week for a service appointment so they have to pay through the nose for immediate call out. And much of the time, the problem is something that they are easily capable to fix on their own, but can't because they don't have access to the service software that only dealers get. Or it's a situation like iPhones where they can easily make the repair but need the software to authorize the repair.The result was a lot of farmers installing hacked Ukrainian firmware on their tractors, simply because the hacked version would accept any part connected and not require authorization from a service laptop.
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My thoughts exactly.
I can't believe how much progress the right to repair movement has made! It's one of the few areas of societal change that I'm actually happy to hear about these days.
It’s one of those things like hatred of healthcare CEOs, where even maga people can see that they are getting screwed, and that this is not the way things should be.
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John Deere is another one of those companies that started l
Out with high quality products and then got overrun by managers who care about money and nothing else and will lie, steal, and cheat to get it -
I think the problem is the farmers would be happy to know IT if it meant they could fix their damn tractor.
Deere doesn't want them to know IT, it wants them to just call their local Deere service center anytime anything doesn't work.
Problem is, if it's during a harvest or some other critical time, they can't wait a week for a service appointment so they have to pay through the nose for immediate call out. And much of the time, the problem is something that they are easily capable to fix on their own, but can't because they don't have access to the service software that only dealers get. Or it's a situation like iPhones where they can easily make the repair but need the software to authorize the repair.The result was a lot of farmers installing hacked Ukrainian firmware on their tractors, simply because the hacked version would accept any part connected and not require authorization from a service laptop.
I mean, they do know IT, more than the average person at least. And there are occasionally "jailbreaks" around for Deere.
