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Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

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Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#41

Post by bluGill »

NexRebular wrote: post #23
spicybright wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hearing about farmers trying to organize for at least the past 5 years to tackle this. I'm not going to hold my breath for much progress, sadly. An "open tractor" from a new company is also going to be hard to justify with how thin margins are with farming. Maybe some techies can get together to make repair easier. New electronic control boards, diagrams of how to machine their own replacement parts, etc. f…

Wonder if they could start buying company stock to get enough voting power to make a difference...

No entity can legally own more than 10% of John Deere's stock. I forget why that rule is. Something they are in, perhaps finance? If farmers are acting as a group they probably would be in trouble for individual purchases that collectively violate the rules.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#42

Post by iamstupidsimple »

verisimi wrote: post #33
jbkiv wrote: post #28

This has become a general problem. There seems to be more money in "software services" than in building tractors and motors. John Deere is not unique. All common rail engines require a visit from a "certified engineer" who has access to the software. This is terrible in the marine industry where you can't get one in the middle of the ocean and you can't repair yourself either. What do you do? Do you sail to a harbor?…

I get what you are saying.... that we can use the law to gain the right to repair. But step back - how is any of that morally right? Why should people have to fight corporation in court to get a basic right to repair the thing they bought? Its insane! Surely, if there was any sense to this, the presumption would be in favour of the purchaser by default! Regardless of any service contract or other legal agreement. Tha…

Stallman and FSF predicted this decades ago, but they failed to foresee not many people really care about being able to control their computers as much as big expensive hardware purchases like vehicles. DRM and general lack of free-software rights is the root-cause.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#43

Post by jbkiv »

verisimi wrote: post #33
jbkiv wrote: post #28

This has become a general problem. There seems to be more money in "software services" than in building tractors and motors. John Deere is not unique. All common rail engines require a visit from a "certified engineer" who has access to the software. This is terrible in the marine industry where you can't get one in the middle of the ocean and you can't repair yourself either. What do you do? Do you sail to a harbor?…

I get what you are saying.... that we can use the law to gain the right to repair. But step back - how is any of that morally right? Why should people have to fight corporation in court to get a basic right to repair the thing they bought? Its insane! Surely, if there was any sense to this, the presumption would be in favour of the purchaser by default! Regardless of any service contract or other legal agreement. Tha…

I agree with you say verisimi. Pretty sad. As much as I hate trial lawyers, as of today we would not be better off without them. Bad corporations will squeeze money out of you as much as they can.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#44

Post by heavyset_go »

shagie wrote: post #35

For industrial equipment (such as a tractor), who is liable for injuries if the equipment is repaired or modified by a 3rd party and it goes to court later? https://www.biren.com/blog/2020/september/defective-machiner... In particular https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1200/1245... > The [misuse/ [or] modification] was so highly extraordinary that it was not reasonably foreseeable to [name of defendan…

Any idiot who tinkers with cars can flash custom firmware on their car's ECU without a problem, and cars can very easily maim or kill users and the people around them. I don't buy this argument.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#45

Post by rafale »

John Deere will just claim they never sold him a tractor, but rather signed a custom contract with him that gives him access and custody of one in return of some constraints he agreed upon.

If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. But you could argue it's already undermined, both by the government itself and the fact that somehow John Deere managed to achieve a monopoly in a sector critical to national security.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#46

Post by jbkiv »

aaron_m04 wrote: post #32
jbkiv wrote: post #28

This has become a general problem. There seems to be more money in "software services" than in building tractors and motors. John Deere is not unique. All common rail engines require a visit from a "certified engineer" who has access to the software. This is terrible in the marine industry where you can't get one in the middle of the ocean and you can't repair yourself either. What do you do? Do you sail to a harbor?…

Can't John Deere just have customers sign away their right to sue or be party to a class action? They could make that a requirement for new customers or customers seeking repairs.

They can. Up to a point. If you push too much one day you will face a jury composed of normal people. We have experienced that in some states with non compete agreements. It got to the point that you could no longer work anywhere else. Sometimes the company would make you sign documents saying that they owned the IP you were creating AFTER your departure. Don't push too hard because at one point you will that jury of normal people. And they will make their mind very quickly.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#47

Post by Kon-Peki »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #15
CamperBob2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately 'regulation' is entirely in Deere's favor, thanks to the USPTO and their habit of allowing companies to claim underlying ideas rather than specific implementations. E.g., US8874261 mentioned in this article: https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/02/18/john-deere-patents-hyb... https://patents.google.com/patent/US8874261B2/en?oq=8874261 Claim 1 from that patent: A method for operating a mobile robot, the metho…

That's not how patents work. Each claim is not a patented thing. A chain of claims forms the patented thing. There's at least 9 dependent claims hanging on that first one.

Right. It’s best to think of the claims in a patent as a set of DAGs (a single patent can contain multiple “inventions”). To infringe, you have to go from a starting node to a connected ending node and implement/match all nodes along the path.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#48

Post by imgabe »

cletus wrote: post #40

The example is of course egregious ($600 for a software update for a wire that got wet, basically). I fully support being able to repair your own stuff but I have no idea how you regulate this so companies don't gouge "owners" for aftermarket services. Earlier today there was a thread about e-bike battery prices (tl'dr they're ridiculous expensive). I really wish rechargeable batteries had interchangeable form factor…

Apple can make the customer whole and then go sue the 3rd party manufacturer. Apple has far more resources and clout to hold manufacturers accountable than any one customer. “Don’t make crappy parts or Apple will send a team of lawyers to bankrupt you” would be a credible threat.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#49

Post by userbinator »

cletus wrote: post #40

The example is of course egregious ($600 for a software update for a wire that got wet, basically). I fully support being able to repair your own stuff but I have no idea how you regulate this so companies don't gouge "owners" for aftermarket services. Earlier today there was a thread about e-bike battery prices (tl'dr they're ridiculous expensive). I really wish rechargeable batteries had interchangeable form factor…

So how do you guarantee something third-party will do what it claims to?

You don't. There's something called freedom and personal responsibility. Unfortunately the corporations and governments seem quite determined to take them away from us.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#50

Post by consp »

cletus wrote: post #40

The example is of course egregious ($600 for a software update for a wire that got wet, basically). I fully support being able to repair your own stuff but I have no idea how you regulate this so companies don't gouge "owners" for aftermarket services. Earlier today there was a thread about e-bike battery prices (tl'dr they're ridiculous expensive). I really wish rechargeable batteries had interchangeable form factor…

> Earlier today there was a thread about e-bike battery prices (tl'dr they're ridiculous expensive)

Small rant about those since I missed the earlier thread today: It's even worse. They are stupidly expensive yes, but even if you source them yourself they will cost you another 100 dollar/euro/pound to "enable". It's DRM for batteries and serves no real purpose except price gouging. If you rip out the 18650 cells (which are in almost all detachable models which is the majority) and replace them you have to re-enable the device. If the battery somehow drains "completely" and you are able to get it out of safe mode, which is quite possible since the battery isn't actually dead, you have to go to a dealer and pay the surcharge as well. There are plenty of good second hand models available which are useless due to the battery DRM since the price of the battery will be about 3-5 times the bike.

> So how do you guarantee something third-party will do what it claims to? If you use bad RAM chips in a Macbook, the consumer is going to blame Apple not whoever supplied cheap, shoddy parts (for the record, I hate soldered in RAM).

Just like when your car goes to a garage and doesn't work afterwards: the person who 'fixed' it. I can't get it in my head why people think this will be different for other things than cars.

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