Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

91–100 of 320 posts

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

#91
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.

I made an educated guess that John Deere is roughly the size of Monsanto so in the tens of billions category, which is usually enough revenue to play really dirty with senators, regulators, lobbyists, and customers.

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

#92
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.

It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes. But the regulations that would require John Deere to change their practices and designs for repairability are not about your rights, they are about what we require John Deere to provide. And the more you require John Deere to provide, the more costs add up. When designing regulations that we require compa…

There is an obvious way to do this that doesn't impose high regulatory costs. A simple rule: The customer (and their independent mechanic) has access to anything the company has access to. Now you're not forcing them to write new service documentation, only to not restrict documentation they wrote anyway to their own dealers. You're not forcing them to support third party replacement parts, only preventing them from inhibiting it through software locks etc.

You don't have to force them to do anything, all you need is for them to not prevent others from doing certain things. Which is easy, because it's preventing documentation from being copied around or preventing independent third parties from making compatible replacement parts which requires active effort.

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

#93
post #67

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

I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.

I love his videos. He makes you feel like we can actually fight back and win. If he changed his style I think something great would be lost

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

#94
post #22

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…

Right to repair doesn't change any of that. Farmers were adjusting that screw anyways, that was the entire point. I'm not mad at farmers for doing it, I'm mad at John Deere at cheating the system.

The point is that when the firmware was locked down, it was vastly more difficult to bypass emissions restrictions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say John Deere was cheating the system. Arguably they were taking compliance more strictly before this ruling.

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

#95
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.

Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.

I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208

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

#96
post #40

There's a cognitive dissonance on this site where everyone claims to hate this attempt at regulatory capture, yet they would do it too if it was their tech company and call it a "moat", and many are actively working towards that.

Two different groups: the hackers, and the money people.

I heard someone say recently that one reason tech sucks is because the sociopathic narcissists domesticated the hackers.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.

I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208

HN audience prefers text to video; videos rarely do well here compared to other sites.

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

#98
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.

It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes. But the regulations that would require John Deere to change their practices and designs for repairability are not about your rights, they are about what we require John Deere to provide. And the more you require John Deere to provide, the more costs add up. When designing regulations that we require compa…

> It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.

It's actually so simple you answered it right here! It's John Deere's problem to comply with the regulations we as society require of them - that is the cost of doing business.

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

#99
post #73

"Right to repair" isn't some kind of little negotiated contract fiddling. A company can't agree to a 5-year right to repair. Right to repair is a normal freedom, like speech, like using everyday objects you buy or make, generally walking around, meeting people, etc. Don't let's get all twisted up here and start thinking some dumb-ass business plan is the starting point in our basic conceptualization of humanity.

> Right to repair is a normal freedom

Right to try to repair is a normal freedom.

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208

HN audience prefers text to video; videos rarely do well here compared to other sites.

Agree. I almost never watch them when posted in comments. Sometimes if it’s a main article I might.
Post reply on HN