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Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware (vice.com)
Tractor owners across the country are reportedly hacking their John Deere tractors using firmware that's cracked in Easter Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums. The reason is because John Deere and other manufacturers have "made it impossible to perform 'unauthorized' repair on farm equipment," which has obviously upset many farmers who see it "as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time," reports Jason Koebler via Motherboard. As is the case with most modern-day engineering vehicles, the mechanical problems experienced with the newer farming tractors are often remedied via software. From the report: The nightmare scenario, and a fear I heard expressed over and over again in talking with farmers, is that John Deere could remotely shut down a tractor and there wouldn't be anything a farmer could do about it. A license agreement John Deere required farmers to sign in October forbids nearly all repair and modification to farming equipment, and prevents farmers from suing for "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment [...] arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software." The agreement applies to anyone who turns the key or otherwise uses a John Deere tractor with embedded software. It means that only John Deere dealerships and "authorized" repair shops can work on newer tractors. "If a farmer bought the tractor, he should be able to do whatever he wants with it," Kevin Kenney, a farmer and right-to-repair advocate in Nebraska, told me. "You want to replace a transmission and you take it to an independent mechanic -- he can put in the new transmission but the tractor can't drive out of the shop. Deere charges $230, plus $130 an hour for a technician to drive out and plug a connector into their USB port to authorize the part." "What you've got is technicians running around here with cracked Ukrainian John Deere software that they bought off the black market," he added.
Surely, liability is way more important that get things done. I guess that's why electronics has become a golden cage and the times of hacking ataris/commodore/spectrums is long gone. That's what's making society dumber.
Corporate shill. Liability is with the owner, because that's common fucking sense.
The problem with a company like John Deere is they loose touch with their customers. John Deere obviously forgot that they service the farmer not the other way around. This too me would have a negative affect on new equipment purchases as well. Growing up in a farming community I know that many farmers do a lot of their own maintenance on equipment. Like any of us saving a little money and avoiding driving that big tractor to a dealer seems like a no brainer. Sadly this kind of behavior is happening to cars and trucks too, where the manufacture wants to lock the DIY out of fixing their cars.
Bollocks.
If you buy property is yours you should be able to do whatever you want with it.
Regarding the restrictive "contract" the farmer has to sign, that should be illegal.
One possible way around might be if the farmer's wife buys tractor, then farmer's wife sells tractor to farmer. Farmer is not then bound to the contract someone else signed for property he bought from his wife on the second hand market.
I'm British and very economically left wing (no not liberal in any sense of the word) but private property belongs to you not the shitty corporation that made it. Corporations have too much power thanks to liberal economics.
Liability is with the owner, because he was forced to sign a contract that makes him liable for anything.
There, fixed that for you.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The owner of the tractor. Sorry, I have to be specific in this time and age: The person who paid good money to use a tractor that the manufacturer still thinks is theirs.
Just like the way it has always been.
The main difference being that if you use "original" firmware, rest assured that NOBODY will be liable. If anything, JD will certainly have a way to brush it off on the farmer anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Is John Deere legally liable if an UNMODIFIED tractor malfunctions and hurts someone? Nope, that's right there in the summary of the license agreement. Why do you think THAT will change because of modified firmware?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
That too unfortunately but regardless, surely it's common sense that if you modify something you're taking on liability.
Time for competition to form the Open Tractor consortium. Components chosen for easy market access, easy repair and open source firmware. Tractor design for easy component access, with signature checks and protected registering for sabotage prevention. "I didn't change the autonomous driving and insecticide spreading components. Why does it tell me so? Aha, hackers employed by the envious cousin, next farm!"
Bearing in mind that the summary talks about not being able to take a machine to an independent mechanic to have a transmission replaced I'd guess few to none, unless independent mechanics somehow charge for neither time nor parts.
If this were rented equipment, I would understand the company's stance. But if someone outright buys an item, it's theirs. Stop legally binding people to stupid shit when they decide to fork out their hard-earned money for your products. Just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it has to be the norm. Christ.
I tend to rant.
Liability is with the owner, because that's common fucking sense.
The owner is, and remains, John Deere. The farmer is renting it, and agreeing to pay its bills.
The more this shit spreads out from the software world, the sooner it ends.
No, libertarians are the ones that believe that oppression is too important to be left to the government and should be handled more efficiently by the private sector.
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Actually a sane legal system (still not the USA) does not permit you to sign your legal rights. You can sign a contract claiming that you are waving your legal rights but those clauses are null and void as far as the courts are concerned.
The US definition of "liberal" and "conservative" are going the way their definition of "socialist" went a long time ago: The gutter.
They define it by the loonie fringe groups. Being a liberal means that you're somehow in SJW territory, and being conservative means you have to agree with the Westboro Baptist Church bullshit. The idea that most people belong to NEITHER camp but are actually moderates, close to the center and generally ok with accepting some things the "other side" has to say and give it at least a whirl as a thought experiment, i.e. the notion that it could actually be that the "opponent" is RIGHT with some of the things he's saying, that's become a completely alien concept.
Because if you don't toe the party line and drink the cool-aid, you're one of THEM!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My job description says my place in society is to hack equipment I did not design or develop.
May I be present when you discuss with my CEO why his CISO can't pentest and risk assess the tools he's supposed to roll out company-wide?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Speaking from experience; they do this because a large portion of their profits are made in repairs. If you are a farmer and you only have a few weeks to get your crops planted and your equipment breaks down you will pay way more than what the repair is actually worth if you are losing money each day it's not in operation, in fact you may even be looking at bankruptcy and ruin all because the local dealerships wants $$$$ for a repair that should cost $$$ You will pay the extra money because the alternative is worse
And yet they continue to buy John Deere products, perpetuating the cycle.
Is John Deere legally liable if an UNMODIFIED tractor malfunctions and hurts someone? Nope, that's right there in the summary of the license agreement. Why do you think THAT will change because of modified firmware?
Like most here, you don't understand how US law really works. My best friend is a lawyer, we've known each other since college, and he's taught me a lot over the years. One of the things he's taught me is that when you sign an agreement that says you sign away your rights, that doesn't necessarily mean you actually have signed away your rights. There are various ways around this kind of thing, including arguing something that amounts to saying that John Deere coerced you into signing that and you had no choice but to agree. Also, you seem to not realize that once you get to court, anything is possible. Depending on how good the lawyers are, the judge's personal involvement in the case (whether he/she steers the jury with comments or leaves them alone to do whatever they will), and the jury itself, any kind of verdict is possible.
You may want the government and corporations to do your thinking for you and mindlessly do as you're told like an insect. Most of us, on the other hand, want to keep both sovereignty and property rights, and have no intention of adopting the mindset or property rights perspective of an ant colony. We have no interest in joining you in devolving into a bipedal drone.
Naw. Libertarians believe that companies that oppress users will fail in the marketplace. (Let me know when John Deere, Microsoft, and Apple oppress their way out of the marketplace). I kinda like libertarians. They are often nice people who mean well. And they are frequently quite good on civil liberty issues. But they are remarkably slow learners.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The Left/Right divide has gotten ridiculous, to the point where being a moderate makes you the enemy of just about everyone.
Besides, if I read paragraph 13 correctly, the owner of the tractor has to indemnify John Deere and its dealers against all and any lawsuits, even if John Deere or the dealer is at fault for the cause of the lawsuit. That goes beyond everything I've seen in software EULAs so far. Those usually demand only indemnification against lawsuits that arise out of actions by the owner.
The thing about EULA's is that you can put anything you like in there. You can demand the forfeiture of their first born if you like. What matters is what a court of law will enforce, EULA's are CYA memos, not legally enforceable contracts.
What is enforceable depends on how bad the courts are in your area.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Sorry, but there is exactly NO reason to need a "specialist" to make an oil change or switch out a spark plug. There is also no technical reason to put the electronics behind an encrypted access instead of creating an open standard.
Yes, there's more money in services and vendor lock-in. That doesn't mean I have to understand or even support such practices. It's despicable, and I only use that world to remain civil.
I can understand when you say that you don't want to be liable for shoddy service and faulty maintenance, but disallowing it altogether is NOT the way to go. It's trivial to create relevant seals for physical service and signatures for electronic maintenance to identify "official" service work from "self serviced" machines, and void certain (extended) warranty promises if someone you didn't approve monkey wrenched the machine.
It's been that way for a long while with cars now. Some extended warranties only apply if you keep going to the official service partners and have them change your oil in the prescribed intervals and have them do all inspections, along with doing all the repairs they require to sign off your service booklet.
But the ultimate choice of whether to go with the official service and enjoy the extended warranty promise or to waive it and fix your own gear is up to the owner. And yes, I do consider the person paying good money for your product the OWNER of the product from the moment of PURCHASE.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, but to do this, you have to actually go to court which is an insurmountable obstacle in many cases and fails to provide timely relief in others.
You cannot be moderate.
You're instantly lumped into one side. Say you don't agree with something Trump said and you have to be a SJW. Say that no, you don't think their position is true, get asked why you hate minorities and how long you've been a member of the KKK. Explain that you sure as hell don't agree with the alt-right (whatever that may mean now, anyway, since nobody ever really explained to me what alt-right really meant, and whether it's the opposite of ctrl-left, which doesn't do anything either, at least on my keyboard... but I ramble) and we're back at being asked whether you enjoy sucking Laci Green's femdick and how much money you dumped on Sarkeesian.
And don't you DARE to say that you don't care much about either of them. At best, the board moderator will block you for a week for starting a flame war...
Not wanting any part of that mudslinging just isn't possible anymore. Not being part of one bullshit movement automatically means you MUST be in the other, equally insane, one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Libertarians believe very strongly in property rights and that one of government's most important functions is to preserve property rights:
Same problem: just as "liberal", "libertarian" has changed its meaning in American English.
Historically, the libertarians were non-statist (non-Marxist) communists.
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Somalia is libertarian. Limited government, those with wealth can afford private armies, and wealth dictates who wins nearly all the time. This is why there are no functional intentionally defined libertarian governments on earth.
Enforcement of legal contracts is one of the few "legitimate" areas for the Government to be involved in, according to most Libertarian types I have spoken with. The proper role for the Government and courts is to act as the armed enforcement agents for the corporations.
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That's it.
A lot of people don't realize that click-through agreements are mostly unenforceable because they're almost all one-sided contracts.
When you purchase a product, it's your to use. This right is enshrined in all kinds of law in both the US and Canada.
So "click OK to agree to the EULA/contract" is attempting to impose restriction without commensurate compensation. You already have the right to use the software, regardless of whether or not you click OK, so the EULA is not providing you any compensation. That makes it invalid, except when tied to services that you don't own.
But I'd be happy to see a new law introduced (in Canada, at least) that explicitly outlaws EULAs for everything non-service related, and severe restrictions on service agreements as well.
Hell, make onerous service contract agreements themselves taxable assets.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The liberals (at least here in the USA) aren't the ones worshiping the "invisible hand", those are the libertarians.
I'd research alternatives to John Deere. I think there are actually some, right? If there are, I'd go to the Deere dealers first. I'd take my time, chat up the sales guy, get all the way to what looks like a closed sale. Then just as I'm about to sign I'd back out and tell him why. Waste their sales guy's time, and tell all your buddies to do it too.
If all of the companies are pulling this shit, it might be time for another tractorcade like we had in the 70s. Block the Beltway and turn up the turf on the Mall like they did back then. Maybe that'll get their attention.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?