Live data from Hacker News

John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

apnews.com

11–20 of 320 posts

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#11
post #6

> Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years. $1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.

>probably $10 billion in profit

Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor.

Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#12
"...Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops..."

This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass.

Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't we be able to repair a tiny glued togethee tech gadget as well?

This is only getting this level of scrutiny because it's related to big ag, and John Deere is the worst example. They're a political football now and it's more of a feel good measure.

Most movements don't start out big. They are won by small steps. Personally I want a law that allows people to bypass security measure after a company stop supporting the device. I have unsupported amazon echo, google home, and apple ipads that work perfectly well and I would love add custom software or even put a different os too.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#14
post #7

Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.

Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to…

I don't understand, are 35hp tractors illegal under emissions rules? Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#16
Shout out to Louis Rossmann for doing a ton of work on Right to repair.

He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices.

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page

He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers.

https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/ring-video-doorbells

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to…

I don't understand, are 35hp tractors illegal under emissions rules? Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?

Tractors are legal above 25hp but it requires DPF, and at I want to say about 75, possibly more than that. Farmers generally hate DPF systems and will disable them the microsecond they get the right to repair.

>Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?

They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people to break the law and turn the screw, and everybody is happy.

========= re: below due to throttling ========

>Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.

There is because on the John Deere tractors you can't set the "screw" unless you have right to repair the engine system. John Deere has no screw because they're in the US and they're too afraid of US regulators.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#18
post #7

Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.

Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to…

If we could get our operators to just run regen when they should, it wouldn't be an issue. They don't mind filling DEF and we don't mind paying for it.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#19
post #12

"...Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops..." This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass. Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.

Having operated a ~1995 7800 with flat glass and a ~2015 7270 with curved, I know which one I'm picking.

Are automobiles using curved windshields so they have a stranglehold on the replacement windshield market?

Your example doesn't pass my sniff test.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#20
post #11
post #6

> Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years. $1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.

>probably $10 billion in profit Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor. Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.

Not OP but I went through some data and John Deere makes 5B NET profit for the worse years. 10B for their best (only looking back 10 years). I wouldn’t be surprised these anticompetitive (as in anti “consumer”) has netted them north of 10B.
Post reply on HN