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posted by on Wednesday March 08 2017, @05:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the protecting-us-from-ourselves dept.

Nebraska is one of eight states in the US – including Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wyoming, Tennessee and Kansas – seeking to pass "right to repair" legislation. All eyes will be on the Cornhusker state when the bill has its public hearing on 9 March, because its unique "unicameral legislature" (it's the only state to have a single parliamentary chamber) means laws can be enacted swiftly. If this bill, officially named LB67, gets through, it may lead to a domino effect through the rest of the US, as happened with a similar battle over the right to repair cars. These Nebraska farmers are fighting for all of us.

Big agriculture and big tech – including John Deere, Apple and AT&T – are lobbying hard against the bill, and have sent representatives to the Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska, to spend hours talking to senators, citing safety, security and intellectual property concerns.

John Deere has gone as far as to claim that farmers don't own the tractors they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for, but instead receive a "license to operate the vehicle". They lock users into license agreements that forbid them from even looking at the software running the tractor or the signals it generates.

Another article on the topic at Techdirt.


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 08 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @07:32PM (#476667)

    So why do we need to coddle these idiots? They've made their beds, now let them lie in them.

    Also, I'm fairly sure CASE and International Harvester and CAT are at least somewhat American, and I think New Holland still makes stuff here too (though the ownership is now Italian).

    This seems more like telling a loyal, nationalistic GM owner to switch to a Ford, and him turning up his nose. It's just dumb. Or telling a loyal German Mercedes owner to switch to BMW or even VW.

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  • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:34PM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:34PM (#476729)

    ...telling a loyal, nationalistic GM owner to switch to a Ford, and him turning up his nose...

    I've met several gm and ford owners EXACTLY like that.

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.