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

apnews.com

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

#111

Post by cobbzilla »

Papazsazsa wrote: post #41
Cider9986 wrote: post #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

The man is an icon. Reminds me of old internet, when activists we doing it for The User.

Reminds me of a line from Tron, where the other programs ask Flynn in disbelief:

> You fight for the users?

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

#112

Post by kestiny »

shuwix wrote: post #109

We need same for Lenovo Deere, John Dell ... Soldered RAM's, soldered SSD's lately, batteries which have by purpose just slightly different size not to be interchangeable. And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.

and the car

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

#113

Post by Balgair »

maldev wrote: post #108
Cider9986 wrote: post #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

I wish he wasn’t such an ass. Had a never meet your heroes moment outside defcon a few years ago. Not a friendly person and went from big fan to disdain when I hear his name.

I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone.

Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.

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

#114

Post by delfugal »

Great Stary. I wish he could go after the large format printer industry. (The really big printing machines). Those machines are locked for service and require service contracts, and you still can't get under the hood. And when the company decides to obsolete the product, customers are thrown out on their backsides.

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

#116

Post by true_religion »

koolba wrote: post #65
Grombobulous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This concept of percent of profits shouldn't be considered in the context of fines. For regulations to have teeth, punishments shouldn't just slap you on the wrist just because harmful practices weren't responsible for a lot of profit. In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn'…

> Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?" To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.

Fines are strictly punitive. The only goal of the fine is to change behavior, not to be 'fair'.

It's true that the fines differ per the act, but that's only because the act itself determines how much people would desire to continue it despite a deterrent.

The fine for jaywalking is less than the fine for speeding because (a) society doesn't want to stop jaywalking as desperately and (b) even a small fine of $25 will cause people in cities to follow the rules and not cross the road willy-nilly but with speeding even with the fine you may want to still speed hence why almost all states also give you only a few chances to break that law in a year before they take away your license.

---

You're supposed to collect damages on top of the fine.

Which is why John Deer is paying our almost $100 million[1].

An additional $50 million plus FTC oversight for 10 years is to ensure John Deer comply, and to set a standard for further fines if they do not comply. If they continue to willfully not comply, like some people continue to jaywalk or speed, the fines will drain billions or reach a point that the company will be dismantled.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-is-paying-farmers-99-...).

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

#117

Post by gkanai »

shuwix wrote: post #109

We need same for Lenovo Deere, John Dell ... Soldered RAM's, soldered SSD's lately, batteries which have by purpose just slightly different size not to be interchangeable. And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.

Apple too. They solder in the SSDs and memory.

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

#118

Post by sothatsit »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #92
sothatsit wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This sounds like a reasonable approach.

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

#119

Post by arwhatever »

aceki wrote: post #10

As much as I hope this is a turning point, I’m not holding my breath. John Deere was one of the most egregious offenders in the right-to-repair movement, especially with how expensive their tractors are. There’s definitely a difference paying for the repair of a ten of thousands of dollars machine versus having to buy new AirPods. I’m no expert in US law, but my understanding is an FTC settlement doesn’t create any p…

We’ve got to be sure the manufacturers get a solid decade or two to profit off of these schemes, so that future manufacturers know it will be worthwhile perpetrating future schemes.

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

#120

Post by shevy-java »

Good. However had, one question still remains: why did the US government not have this automatically put in place in general? The title refers to one company for the most part. The question is why the US government, which assumingly should work for the people, prioritizes private commercial interests over individual ownership models.
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