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The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

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Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#111

Post by sglane »

rjmunro wrote: post #109
weberc2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former John Deere employee here. The company isn't being spiteful or doing this to corner the repair market; they do it to avoid legal liability and fraudulent warrantee claims. They're an extremely risk-averse company. EDIT: By the way, I favor owner's rights (my family farms with Deere equipment, and I think there's tons of mutual advantage in open sourcing software in this case specifically and in general), but as…

In that case, just write the license contract to say "If you change the firmware, John Deere accepts no liability". Make people sign that if they want the unlock key. Presumably John Deere aren't liable for other kinds of misuse - e.g. if you crash it.

It's not that simple. A corollary is with cellphone firmware for the radio. They have to answer to the FCC. Updating the firmware will let you broadcast with more wattage, for example. FCC doesn't like that.

JD has to answer to the EPA. See Tier IV.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#112

Post by syshum »

weberc2 wrote: post #107
syshum wrote: post #73

>> they do it to avoid legal liability and fraudulent warrantee claims. That is simply false... Both can be done with out locking out owner They do this to Appease their Dealer Network, and to make sure their Dealers make money.... This has very very little to do with Legal Liability. Sorry you bought the corporate PR bullshit

Wasn't from the PR department, but engineering management.

I am sure that is how many in the engineering dept justify their unethical practices so they can sleep at night

But it still just BS they are selling to themselves

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#113

Post by pdkl95 »

cmdrfred wrote: post #77
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are (accurately) describing is the high end of the IoT space. The low end is almost equally disconcerting but in the other direction: no updates, no responsibility and wildly vulnerable to attack.

I find it cost effective to simply create a 2nd vlan at home for IOT use. It has no gateway for internet access and I can only access it from local devices or over my VPN. This way I can use inexpensive devices without the worry.

> create a 2nd vlan

That's only a temporary workaround. SoCs with an integrated LTE modem have been available for a while (e.g. Samsung Exynos). In the near future, manufacturers will try to remove even the ability to corral IoT spyw^H^H^H^H"smart" to the local network.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#114

Post by weberc2 »

rjmunro wrote: post #109
weberc2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former John Deere employee here. The company isn't being spiteful or doing this to corner the repair market; they do it to avoid legal liability and fraudulent warrantee claims. They're an extremely risk-averse company. EDIT: By the way, I favor owner's rights (my family farms with Deere equipment, and I think there's tons of mutual advantage in open sourcing software in this case specifically and in general), but as…

In that case, just write the license contract to say "If you change the firmware, John Deere accepts no liability". Make people sign that if they want the unlock key. Presumably John Deere aren't liable for other kinds of misuse - e.g. if you crash it.

As I understand, those contracts aren't legally binding, but they exist as evidence a company can point to in a trial to show that they tried to keep the user from doing X. An even more credible kind of evidence is actually making X technically difficult. Obviously they can't protect themselves against everything or they would go out of business (to use your example, they won't profit from selling stationary tractors). It's all risk management, and I'm not even saying I agree with their choices, only that their motives probably aren't as nefarious as Vice might want you to believe.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#115

Post by whalesalad »

neuromancer2701 wrote: post #80

Has this hurt John Deere's sales? It is not like they are the only game in town and the quality of their product has diminished over the last couple of decades compared to alternatives. We don't need right to mod legislation we need all companies to know that if you do this we will not buy your products.

They are mostly the only game in town. There are a handful of very large competitors (CLAAS, CASE + New Holland -- which are both Fiat) but the market is very heavily swayed in the direction of Deere.

Also, at least in the field of telematic connectivity (having your tractor 'online' to sync field operations, harvest data, etc...) Deere is leading the pack.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#116

Post by mitchell_h »

losteverything wrote: post #108

Help me bound things. # times in a year a Deere requires repair? My point of reference is my car. I can go several cars and not have to get a "repair" as long as I trade in about yr 4 or 5. Is Deere the Yugo of tractors wrt visits to the shop?

It's not the number of repairs, it's the sheer impact of repairs. Farming is a 48 weeks of relative calm. With 4-6 weeks a year of sheer, balls to the wall, 24x7, all out GO GO GO. Having a core piece of equipment fail in those 4-6 weeks can ruin an entire year. With farming margins being lower all the time, losing a year's crop, or even losing a percentage of that crop will bankrupt a farm.

So this brings in the question of "why not have two of everything?". pure cost. Combines easily run 500k USD. That's more then a lot of folks can afford for an idle piece of equipment.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#117

Post by whalesalad »

losteverything wrote: post #108

Help me bound things. # times in a year a Deere requires repair? My point of reference is my car. I can go several cars and not have to get a "repair" as long as I trade in about yr 4 or 5. Is Deere the Yugo of tractors wrt visits to the shop?

It's difficult to get a $750,000 machine with a top-speed of 25mph to a repair shop, so even if the frequency of those visits is low, it can be a massive burden. This assumes you can drive it there.

Also, farming is a seasonal thing with (sometimes) small windows to do certain things. If weather is great and your tractor is in the shop you might miss a good planting opportunity -- it could rain by and you might need to wait a few weeks before you can get in and work that field.

This kinda blew my mind when I first thought about it -- a farmer really only has like 50 chances (crop years) in their life to perfect their craft. One bad year can be devastating.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#118

Post by whalesalad »

kelvin0 wrote: post #88
bougiefever wrote: post #78

Farmers are an independent group. They are used to relying on their own skills and hard work to make a living, and they are not going to tolerate this. I think it is an overreach for John Deere and other manufacturers to control what I do with my (my!) devices. I really hope this law gets passed to prevent companies from doing this. Farmers can really help, because everyone knows we depend on them for our food, so an…

I think you are right, however it kinda seems they already put up with a lot more from companies selling them their 'patented' seeds and the constraints that come with those seeds. I once saw a doc mentioning a farmer that got 'fined' by a seed company because he had some seeds he did not pay for in his crop, these few plants that grew because the neighboring farmer was using them and the wind blew some on the side o…

You make a decent point, but if you're unhappy with a patented seed variety, you can change that the following season.

When you buy a combine you are making a pretty big commitment. They are many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not only that, but it's mostly in your best interest to buy the same brand to buy-in to the ecosystem of parts, dealers, knowledge, etc... so sometimes there is inertia to overcome if you want to transition from, say Deere to Case IH.

It would be like switching from Apple/Lightning to Android/USB-C except instead of a few thousand bucks on devices and maybe a hundred on cables, you're talking millions of dollars.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#119

Post by avmich »

chrisbennet wrote: post #99

Check this out: https://industryhack.com/challenges/hack-the-harvester/ "We invite all hackers, designers and forest machine enthusiasts to hack the harvester. We will take you to a visit to the Ponsse’s manufacturing factory, show harvesters in action and provide you with different APIs and data sets from the forest machines and the maintenance process. Now, Ponsse wants to build a community of tech startups and tal…

For the same reasons I think we all could benefit from an open source firmware on regular cars. I'm still looking into what car manufacturer opens their codes for computers in the car, but can't find any.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#120

Post by avmich »

weberc2 wrote: post #97
joe_the_user wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if avoiding liability for their products is great way to make money or not. But if they are making a large effort to avoid liability, they are doing that as a way to guarantee profits - ie, make money. Deere effectively has a monopoly on tractors at the scale discussed in the article. That's why farmers are buying the tractors and illegally moding them rather than buying competing brands - see comments e…

I'm not following. At which scale does John Deere have a monopoly? Anyway, There's nothing nefarious about protecting your profits by avoiding liability. You seem to want Deere to be this evil corporation, which simply doesn't resonate with my experience in any way.

The problem which bothers many is that JD gives no warranty and at the same time forbids analyzing and modifying the firmware. It's perceived as a conflict - just like avoiding liability in this case is viewed as a way to increase profits.
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