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

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Great news, the fine is so small doesn’t matter, but curing the wrong does. My hope is this standard will apply to modern cars as well, repair manuals and the software tools to interact with the cars are also heavily restricted by the manufacturers.

It was always crazy to me that farm equipment was locked down. I almost understand yuppie buying an E-Class not working on their own car, but a farmer not able to work on his own tractor just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how John Deere was still so popular and seemingly beloved.

The settlement changes nothing [0]

[0]: https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/this-doesnt-break-the-m...

In the last decade, on a fleet of almost 30 Deere machines from lawnmowers to high-clearance sprayers and combines, I could count on one hand the number of times I've needed the Deere laptop to diagnose a problem to fix it.

Thank you all involved! Bring it to our cars next! I'm looking at you, electric vehicles!

1 million dollars? Like, less than 1 tractor after financing? How will they recover from this?!

Good. It's a tractor, not some tiny glued-together tech gadget.

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 precedent like a court case would, so I don’t anticipate this leading to other offenders, like in tech, being held accountable. Their support is too important right now.

Ultimately, I think the underlying motive for the administration is scoring a win for a core constituency, farmers. Tariffs and immigration enforcement have really harmed the viability of their farms, but at least the admin can say the did something for them.

Nevertheless, I’m glad that John Deere is being forced to provide parts and information to individuals and repair shops.

so happy to hear this, I know many farmers that went with other brands or used equipment without chips. most farmers I know just want pure mechanics anyway

This should be extended to software We have the Digital Human Right to adversarial interoperability no matter the dimension/interface.

1 Million isn't enough. The CEO should personally pay 1 million, the Deere corp should have to pay 100 M.

Good, do Apple next.

I’ll believe it when I hear farmers telling me it’s true

"...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.

[flagged]

The very concept of IP was a mistake. I understand it helped make a lot of work possible. But virtually nothing useful came from nothing, and the reservoir of human knowledge belongs to all of us. Unless you are Isaac Newton, you took a good idea and made it better or more applicable. Pretending like you own it is just dishonest.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

--Isaac Newton