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Farmer Lobbying Group Sells Out Farmers, Helps Enshrine John Deere's Tractor Repair Monopoly (vice.com)
Jason Koebler writes: The California Farm Bureau, a group that lobbies on behalf of farmers, reached a "right to repair" agreement with the Equipment Dealers Association (which represents John Deere and other manufacturers) last week. But the specifics of the agreement were written by the manufacturers, and falls far short of providing the types of change that would be needed to make repairing tractors easier. In fact, the agreement makes the same concessions that the Equipment Dealers Association announced in February it would voluntarily give to all farmers. The agreement will not allow farmers to buy repair parts, break firmware DRM, or otherwise alter software for the purposes of repair.
Hmm...seems like those famers would be better served NOT sending their money to this lobbying group, and instead support one that would support their needs?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If farmers do not actually own the vehicle they pay for, but instead only receive a âoelicense to operate the vehicleâ as John Deere claims, shouldn't repairs all be at the cost of John Deer, and any losses due to mechanical or software failure mean John Deere is liable for damages...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Any group that "lobbies on behalf of $group" will whore their services to the highest bidder.
It just happens that the Equipment Dealers Association offered them a sweeter deal than the farmers that they ostensibly represent.
Not that they will return the farmers' money or anything like that.
Should have let the California Raisins negotiate instead.
The best part of having the California Raisins represent you, is that if they fail and you are in danger of starving you can feast on the tasty flesh of your negotiation team.
The best negotiators are always the ones with skin in the game, however wrinkly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not sure if Mahindra does the same thing or not; but I've noticed a few ads for them up here now and then, on radio stations where ag people might be listening.
The Deere hats are seen by some as being as American as the flag almost; but real patriots don't sit still for shit like this. I'd be all over this if I were in marketing for those other companies. Suggested slogan: "Shoot your Deere this season".
I thought right to repair laws were interesting to Slashdot?
For many large farms, their farming equipment is far more advanced and cutting edge, then most silicon valley firms.
If you really want to play with the high tech stuff go into farming.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Their equipment has DRM to prevent 3rd-party parts, I believe. They SHOULD be forced to because those are the terms they wanted.
Okay, I get that farmers should be able to repair their own equipment (if they actually own it, not leased) using 3rd party parts and mechanics. But Deere absolutely SHOULD NOT be forced to sell parts to someone if they don't want to. They are a private company, and as such, they get to choose the customers they serve and sell their shit to--period.
The problem is that in order for an official repair to take place, famers have to truck the equipment to the nearest repair center ($$$ and time to arrange a truck), have the repair done by authorized techs ($$$$$), and then truck it back ($$$ and more time to arrange a truck). Not only does that waste a lot of time for the farmer (and potential cause crop loss due to the wasted time), it is quite expensive, especially if the equipment needs to be brought to the shop multiple times.
Most farmers are pretty handy and can do their own equipment repairs, and don't need to spend all these gobs of money on trucking the equipment and paying someone else to repair. All they need is the manuals & schematics to help troubleshoot, the diagnostic equipment that connects to the onboard computer, and the necessary replacement parts, and most can do an on-site repair in a fraction of the time and cost.
JD on the other hand, doesn't want to give out the paperwork, doesn't want to release the diagnostic tools to private owners, and doesn't want to sell parts to private owners.
Basically, the whole argument comes down to money. Farmers want to be able to perform cost effective repairs on equipment that they *own*. JD wants to make money off repairs and wants to prevent owners from doing their own repairs since they won't make much money from repairs that way.
The divergence from Libertarianism is when they prevented reverse-engineering of the DRM. In a truly free market, John Deere is free to try and lock in as much as possible, and third parties are free to try and break that lock and undercut them.
And how did tractors get this special right, I'm sure game console manufacturers would love to be able to legally lock out the third party controller market...
John Deere, low prices? Where and when did that happen?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
lol, you obviously haven't compared tractor prices in a while. The reason they stick with John Deere is the high tech pieces can all communicate with each other. Do some research on precision farming, where the everything talks to each other (tractor/planter/sprayer/combine). When the tech has problems, or when a a particular techie farmer wants to do something different it is a pain in the ass. When it works they get increased yield for less expenditures.
Now I know a few who are keeping "an old" tractor in the shed in case they have electronics problems they have something to use for the couple days until it gets fixed. The big farmers don't care because they have multiple units. The guys who really get burned are the little farmers with a mid range $100k tractor that can't afford a backup....but honestly, they are being driven out of business by a lot more things than downtime from computer failures on a tractor.
John Deere isn't the only option, but Case IH and New Holland are really the only other two that are in the same league for broad equipment. Sure you could get a Claas or Gleaner combine if you have a specific need like long crops or higher moisture but you won't have a planter by either of them.
Dude. This place is a cesspool of libertarians (both right and left wing). You know what we think about your imaginary property
There is no single "libertarian" view of intellectual property.
Libertarian perspectives on intellectual property.
From the citation: Libertarians have differing opinions on the validity of intellectual property.
I grew up in a farming community, and the political views of farmers is basically: The damn government should keep their hands off my crop subsidies!!!
If they wanted to be left alone, maybe they should tone down the criticism of how everyone else are living their lives...
Er, wut!?
Seriously.
If someone is trying to control how you live your life, then they are the nearly polar-opposite of a small-'L' libertarian. Believing that everybody should stay out of other people's business and leave everyone else the hell alone to think, believe, marry, smoke this or that, or say stupid and hateful shit or sing beautiful music, etc etc is the short version of being libertarian. Not some stupid shit about lawlessness/Somalia and no government.
Just a government that isn't in your grill all the time micro-managing, regulating, invading your privacy and violating civil rights, and taxing the shit out of everything and everyone, all resulting in the US having the world's largest percentage of a nation's citizens incarcerated in prisons.
Yeah, libertarians are a real scary bunch, alright.
Watch out, some sneaky libertarian could be covertly leaving you the hell alone right NOW!!!1!!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There's a lot of factors that work against them here.
At this point, it's an effective monopoly. They'll call it "market leader," but their "lead market position," makes it hard to produce cheaper tractors, or to compete in the same market for new equipment, either at scale or dollar for dollar.
For large farms, it works in their favor, so the biggest of the big appreciate having single vendor suppliers with dedicated staff and a rotation of equipment. So the big bucks still favor them anyway, and that's not likely to change.
However, this hits small farms especially hard. The equipment is good, but it's far more complex than your average commuter vehicle. Blow a sensor and your land lies fallow for a few days because the system will refuse to start the motor. You need an authorized repairman to come out, suss it out, source a replacement, and fix it. Half the time it's just them putting their authorization code in to restart while you're chasing daylight. Imagine every time your computer crashes, you'd need to get a microsoft tech out - even if you're running linux - to authorize you to reboot your machine? That's a 300-450 cost, a few hundred for the appointment plus $150/hr.
Not only that, these farms are on a fairly high risk/reward system. They have to pay out now, and the weather and markets dictate later what their effort was worth. They're risk adverse. It's hard to go with a new tractor, system, etc. Sure, the ability to fix it yourself is great, but not if you're required to exercise that right 5x more than you would with the known brand.
So there are folks out there trying to make replacements, but it's like trying to sell linux to the stereotypical mom. Sure, it can do as much, and yeah, technically it might be able to do more than that old chestnut, buuuuuuttt.... well, find a folk who refers to "the facebooks" and starts browser searches with "please," and see how far you get with them installing, configuring and using linux on their own. Oh, and it costs more than windows too.
That's the problem with a monopoly, it doesn't compete fairly in a capitalist market. They've locked down the product, the repair and replacement parts AND the repairmen, and ensured there's no realistic competition in any of those markets, and unlike apple, who's faced a lot of flack for attempting to deliberately lock out third party parts or repairs, they've successfully lobbied state and federal governments to double down on their farm equipment cartel. They're actually trying to make it not only difficult to do manually, and impossible to get the parts elsewhere, but they're trying to make it literally illegal. The claim is that you COULD modify software or settings which impact emissions and other features, which are protected by law, and therefore consumers can't be allowed to do so.
The fact that they could get a farmers right lobby group to effectively cave shows the power of their monopoly, and that's just another sign that it's not a free market.
It's against the hacker ethos. Period. RMS started his software crusade because he couldn't change a printer's software driver. I'm pretty sure the gun nut ESR would be against this as well. Lessig was also against this kind of legislation and he was working for a Supreme Court judge appoint by Reagan. I think our opinion is quite broad across the political spectrum. Unfortunately there is a Cult of the Mac in the house which seems to think it's better to discard our values in the name of... what?
How well did the lawsuit of Apple vs the repair guys go exactly? Yeah right.
If this went to court I can expect what would happen to John Deere.
Has there been a time in recent history that farmers weren't getting screwed over in CA... or that a CA based lobbyist group didn't sell out their constituency? Welcome to the snowflake state.
If you want to make a controller for a game console expect to buy a license. The XBone's controller has DRM in it that's protected by the DMCA. It also has code covered by patents (a common trick of Nintendo's that they used to force you to buy carts from them).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What free market? It is a special, weird law (DMCA) that is preventing them from repairing the tractors. A free market wouldn't ever have anything like DMCA.
The (power takeoffs/accessory wiring) are like lens mountings for cameras.
They get locked into ecosystems.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ummm.... No. Not even close. John Deere has the right to make whatever products they like and market them however they want. As does Husqvarna and Kubotai and every other manufacturer. But they are ALL required to deal honestly with the customers, and restrictive "terms of use" must be FULLY DISCLOSED at the time of sale.
And once the product is sold, it BELONGS TO the purchaser. They can break it, modify it, fix it, whatever they want. "Right to Repair" laws ought to be unneeded because they should be flipping obvious. If Deere wants to sell tractors that cannot be repaired, then the dealer needs to have big signs up in the showrooms. And they'd better make sure sure that you can't take them apart with ordinary tools.
I take it you haven't been inside a modern tractor?
Most attachments are electronically controlled from the drivers cab, it all has sensors, it all needs to communicate, it all refuses to do a damn thing until you hook it up to an approved tractor.
Printer cartridge protection is nothing by comparison.
No sig today...