4 ms·

John Deere is attempting to make sales of their tractors 'leases' to enforce their ban on self repair: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

John Deere is attempting to make sales of their tractors 'leases' to enforce their ban on self repair: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/ http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

joncp 10y ago
That article doesn't mention leasing, but that seems like a reasonable compromise. If you, as a manufacturer, are hell-bent on locking down your firmware and parts supply, then you have to stop pretending that you're selling anything. Only providing leasing is a way to be honest with customers about your intent.
keeganjw 10y ago
This kind of repair sabotaging is absolutely nuts. Takes things to a whole new level.
TaylorAlexander 10y ago
I am super hardcore stallman-esque pro openness, but I also have somewhat libertarian views on how people should be allowed to operate. My thinking is: let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor. If you pass a law requiring some kind of openness, companies against openness will just hang out at the edge of what is legally permissible. I am curious what the HN crowd thinks of this, if a legislative solution could be desirable, and why.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I think it is tricky. One outcome would be, like you said, a competitor showing up, offering more open goods. Another is no competitor showing up at all. People won't suddenly stop buying tractors or phones just because they're in fact being leased. They'll adapt, and in few years people will honestly say there's no demand on the market for owning products. People choose only from what's available.
- randomdata 10y ago
  > let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor. I once read somewhere that it takes 13 years to bring a new combine to market, which I can believe. They are complex machines that can only be tested in real world conditions during the relatively short window of harvest. So, in reality, it might be more than a few years before a competitor can arise (assuming none of the existing players are willing to be that competitor) even with sufficient investment.
- restalis 10y ago
  "My thinking is: let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor." To me this is akin to "let them do the bad thing, someone will surely come in in no time and the problems will disappear on their own"! Well, first, this is not (at least to me) an issue that we're not sure yet if it's good or bad and will know only when we'll have a competitor doing it differently to serve as a comparison base. This is a clear cut condemnable practice from the manufacturer's part, which does not have a positive impact for the society at large. We don't have to wait and let it happen. Second, if we'll let it be long enough, it'll get ingrained into culture. Then, even if future competition is to pop up, they won't have to only deal with an existing powerful monopoly living off a large margin or system, they'll have to also deal with how things got accustomed to be done (and a successful full scale disruption is never easy nor guaranteed). If you need an example for this, just look at the struggle electric vehicles manufacturers had (or still have) to endure.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  The problem is that, like most libertarian ideas, this just doesn't work in the real world. There's a such thing as "barrier to entry", so for something like a really simple smartphone app, this kind of thinking works decently because it's easy for a college student to code up an alternative program in his spare time, but for something like a giant piece of farming equipment, there just aren't many companies able and willing to jump in there, and put up a ton of money and then develop a good product fast enough to overcome the incumbents' first-mover advantage and inertia. In short, if this theory actually worked, someone would have already done it. Instead, large established incumbents are mostly moving to this kind of behavior, because it's more profitable for them, even though it screws over their customers. When the customers have no viable alternatives, the customers aren't going to stop being customers. This is basically why we need laws for things in the first place: you can't trust people to act in the best interests of society (they don't: they're greedy), and the real world is too complex for "the invisible hand" to solve these problems through competition. A good example of all this is Tesla cars: some people have been screaming for electric cars for decades, even resorting to building their own. The incumbent automakers did some half-assed attempts, mainly to please regulators in California, but never invested any serious effort into it. So finally an independently wealthy guy comes along and decides to make his own car company. (And even here people have a lot of complaints: Teslas are extremely locked-down and they'll threaten you for plugging into the Ethernet port.) Building a modern car just isn't that easy, even if you eliminate the gas-powered engine, and not many people or companies have the resources to jump in and have a go at it, so competition is naturally limited. So yes, a legislative solution is highly desirable IMO. We've been down this road before: carmakers refused to honor warranties on vehicles if they were repaired or maintained outside of official dealerships, or with non-OEM parts. This necessitated passing the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, which forbade this practice, and only allowed manufacturers to refuse to honor warranty claims if they could prove that an owner's modifications or use of improper parts directly caused the problem. There is also a "right to repair" law in Massachusetts, which forces the aforementioned Tesla to make available factory repair manuals in that state (at a ridiculous cost though), but they only make them available within that state, and no other. What we really need is a federal law that goes much further than MA's law. Small business is the largest employer in this nation by far, and independent repair shops are being forced out of business by these consumer-unfriendly practices. The right to repair isn't just for end-users, it also gives end-users the ability to benefit from competition among repair shops, something you don't get if you can only go to official manufacturer shops. Anyone with libertarian leanings should appreciate this, and the benefit to small business.
- kevin_b_er 10y ago
  The problem is already a legislative one. Copyright law is being abused to deny ownership of physical objects. The problem is already directly caused by law.
  - TaylorAlexander 10y ago
    This is a good point. I am generally anti-copyright but that view is somewhat recent and I still sometimes have an internalized belief that copyright is natural. However we invented copyright and I do think we should either go to something like 5 year terms or eliminate it completely. I completely forgot that without copyright, this issue would be dramatically different. They could still use obscurity to a point, but we would have the legal right to discover what they are doing and reproduce it.
DoubleGlazing 10y ago
I know a John Deere dealer in Northern Ireland who is considering moving to another brand because of this. As he puts it the people he deals with "would burn him alive" if they couldn't fiddle around with their own equipment. Farmers with livelihoods on the line tend to get rather angry when their equipment plays up.

joncp 10y ago

That article doesn't mention leasing, but that seems like a reasonable compromise. If you, as a manufacturer, are hell-bent on locking down your firmware and parts supply, then you have to stop pretending that you're selling anything. Only providing leasing is a way to be honest with customers about your intent.

keeganjw 10y ago

This kind of repair sabotaging is absolutely nuts. Takes things to a whole new level.

TaylorAlexander 10y ago

I am super hardcore stallman-esque pro openness, but I also have somewhat libertarian views on how people should be allowed to operate. My thinking is: let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor. If you pass a law requiring some kind of openness, companies against openness will just hang out at the edge of what is legally permissible. I am curious what the HN crowd thinks of this, if a legislative solution could be desirable, and why.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
I think it is tricky. One outcome would be, like you said, a competitor showing up, offering more open goods. Another is no competitor showing up at all. People won't suddenly stop buying tractors or phones just because they're in fact being leased. They'll adapt, and in few years people will honestly say there's no demand on the market for owning products. People choose only from what's available.
randomdata 10y ago
> let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor. I once read somewhere that it takes 13 years to bring a new combine to market, which I can believe. They are complex machines that can only be tested in real world conditions during the relatively short window of harvest. So, in reality, it might be more than a few years before a competitor can arise (assuming none of the existing players are willing to be that competitor) even with sufficient investment.
restalis 10y ago
"My thinking is: let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor." To me this is akin to "let them do the bad thing, someone will surely come in in no time and the problems will disappear on their own"! Well, first, this is not (at least to me) an issue that we're not sure yet if it's good or bad and will know only when we'll have a competitor doing it differently to serve as a comparison base. This is a clear cut condemnable practice from the manufacturer's part, which does not have a positive impact for the society at large. We don't have to wait and let it happen. Second, if we'll let it be long enough, it'll get ingrained into culture. Then, even if future competition is to pop up, they won't have to only deal with an existing powerful monopoly living off a large margin or system, they'll have to also deal with how things got accustomed to be done (and a successful full scale disruption is never easy nor guaranteed). If you need an example for this, just look at the struggle electric vehicles manufacturers had (or still have) to endure.
Grishnakh 10y ago
The problem is that, like most libertarian ideas, this just doesn't work in the real world. There's a such thing as "barrier to entry", so for something like a really simple smartphone app, this kind of thinking works decently because it's easy for a college student to code up an alternative program in his spare time, but for something like a giant piece of farming equipment, there just aren't many companies able and willing to jump in there, and put up a ton of money and then develop a good product fast enough to overcome the incumbents' first-mover advantage and inertia. In short, if this theory actually worked, someone would have already done it. Instead, large established incumbents are mostly moving to this kind of behavior, because it's more profitable for them, even though it screws over their customers. When the customers have no viable alternatives, the customers aren't going to stop being customers. This is basically why we need laws for things in the first place: you can't trust people to act in the best interests of society (they don't: they're greedy), and the real world is too complex for "the invisible hand" to solve these problems through competition. A good example of all this is Tesla cars: some people have been screaming for electric cars for decades, even resorting to building their own. The incumbent automakers did some half-assed attempts, mainly to please regulators in California, but never invested any serious effort into it. So finally an independently wealthy guy comes along and decides to make his own car company. (And even here people have a lot of complaints: Teslas are extremely locked-down and they'll threaten you for plugging into the Ethernet port.) Building a modern car just isn't that easy, even if you eliminate the gas-powered engine, and not many people or companies have the resources to jump in and have a go at it, so competition is naturally limited. So yes, a legislative solution is highly desirable IMO. We've been down this road before: carmakers refused to honor warranties on vehicles if they were repaired or maintained outside of official dealerships, or with non-OEM parts. This necessitated passing the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, which forbade this practice, and only allowed manufacturers to refuse to honor warranty claims if they could prove that an owner's modifications or use of improper parts directly caused the problem. There is also a "right to repair" law in Massachusetts, which forces the aforementioned Tesla to make available factory repair manuals in that state (at a ridiculous cost though), but they only make them available within that state, and no other. What we really need is a federal law that goes much further than MA's law. Small business is the largest employer in this nation by far, and independent repair shops are being forced out of business by these consumer-unfriendly practices. The right to repair isn't just for end-users, it also gives end-users the ability to benefit from competition among repair shops, something you don't get if you can only go to official manufacturer shops. Anyone with libertarian leanings should appreciate this, and the benefit to small business.
kevin_b_er 10y ago
The problem is already a legislative one. Copyright law is being abused to deny ownership of physical objects. The problem is already directly caused by law.
- TaylorAlexander 10y ago
  This is a good point. I am generally anti-copyright but that view is somewhat recent and I still sometimes have an internalized belief that copyright is natural. However we invented copyright and I do think we should either go to something like 5 year terms or eliminate it completely. I completely forgot that without copyright, this issue would be dramatically different. They could still use obscurity to a point, but we would have the legal right to discover what they are doing and reproduce it.

DoubleGlazing 10y ago

I know a John Deere dealer in Northern Ireland who is considering moving to another brand because of this. As he puts it the people he deals with "would burn him alive" if they couldn't fiddle around with their own equipment. Farmers with livelihoods on the line tend to get rather angry when their equipment plays up.