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Wired has published a long article about how the farming equipment manufacturer John Deere has just swindled farmers out of their right to repair their own equipment. Basically the manufacturer was allowed to write the agreement governing access to the firmware embedded in the farming equipment.
Farmers have been some of the strongest allies in the ongoing battle to make it easier for everyone to fix their electronics. This week, though, a powerful organization that's supposed to lobby on behalf of farmers in California has sold them out by reaching a watered-down agreement that will allow companies like John Deere to further cement their repair monopolies.
Farmers around the country have been hacking their way past the software locks that John Deere and other manufacturers put on tractors and other farm equipment, and the Farm Bureau lobbying organization has thus far been one of the most powerful to put its weight behind right to repair legislation, which would require manufacturers to sell repair parts, make diagnostic tools and repair information available to the public, and would require manufacturers to provide a way to get around proprietary software locks that are designed to prevent repair.
Motherboard also covered the topic about how farmer lobbyists sold out their farmers and helped enshrine John Deere's maintenance monopoly.
Earlier on SN:
The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California (2018)
Apple, Verizon Join Forces to Lobby Against New York's 'Right to Repair' Law (2017)
US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software (2015)
Jailbreak your Tractor or Make it Run OSS? (2015)
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 21 2018, @01:44PM (6 children)
Presumably John Deere is patented up to its eyeballs ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Friday September 21 2018, @04:47PM (4 children)
What could they possibly have patented? Machines have been doing this stuff since the days of work horses and steam power. How many different ways can crops be harvested or fields plowed?
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Friday September 21 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)
but it's now done "with a computer".
(Score: 2) by Kawumpa on Saturday September 22 2018, @08:52AM
You mean there's an app for that? ;-)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by richtopia on Friday September 21 2018, @06:52PM
It sounds like you don't understand patent law. My understanding:
1. Patent some obscure technique that is barely unique
2. Drive your competition to bankruptcy in court. It does not matter if you are right; you just need more money and lawyers
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 21 2018, @09:11PM
Yeah. And take computers. They've been around for decades now. Nothing new to patent there, either.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21 2018, @04:53PM
For tractors? Equipment that has been around for decades?