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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 sjames on Thursday March 09 2017, @05:20PM (2 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday March 09 2017, @05:20PM (#477019) Journal

    So, if I simply crack JDs encryption and produce a diagnostic system that uses that discovered key, no issues at all?

    And who said anything about taking? I'm talking about copying, perhaps while employed by JD.

    No way around it, JD is depending on a state application of force to deny the right to repair.

    What makes it such a problem if the state withdraws it's offer to apply force in those situations?

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 09 2017, @06:43PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 09 2017, @06:43PM (#477062)

    The main problem I see is Federal copyright law. State law can't trump Federal laws.

    But this law isn't just removing the state protections for copyright and hoping some insider sticks the information on the internet somewhere; it's literally forcing the mfgr to provide information. That's rather different from removing a government-provided protection.

    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 09 2017, @08:05PM

      by sjames (2882) on Thursday March 09 2017, @08:05PM (#477103) Journal

      Due to federal copyright law, it's the only way the states can get that information out there where it belongs.

      Of course, let's not forget that JD only exists because of an act of the state. It is a legal fiction created by the state. I'm not so sure it's in the public interest to let them use DRM and the DMCA to lock people into their repair services.

      The point is that state backed force is already all over this. It seems disingenuous to argue that applying it in the other direction is somehow less permissible.